It was the release day of her new album, and Hannah Frances couldn’t stop crying. After a turbulent year of traveling and recording, the 26-year-old songwriter’s fifth full-length collection of music was finally out in the world — a milestone worth celebrating for any artist. Why, then, did it feel like someone had died?
“I think the grief that happens when you actually let go of something is even more painful than holding on to it,” she says. “Once I actually released the album, it felt like I had nothing to hold on to, and I think that brought up more grief.”
As it turns out, Frances was holding on to a lot more than a record. The time spent making her latest self-released LP Bedrock also marked the rupture of a relationship that had offered something like stability for the self-described “nomadic” DIY musician. While the journey of her new album was just beginning, Frances couldn’t shake the sense that something big was over.
“It felt like releasing a chapter of my life. It had a lot to do with that partnership, but I also just felt like I needed to close something and continue on my path,” she says. “I think holding on was inhibiting me from feeling the deeper loss of all that. But once you let something go, you’re not necessarily freed of it.”
The result of that letting go is a dizzyingly beautiful collection of songs about longing and belonging that represent a high watermark for the multidisciplinary artist, herbalist and astrologer. Moving like a river through turns of aching folk tenderness, ambient blooms and field recordings of nature, Bedrock underscores Frances’ virtuosic guitar playing and opera-trained vocal prowess in pursuit of a sense of place.
“I’m roaming, you know / looking for a home amongst the willows,” she sings on “Pilgrim,” the album’s sparkling and sprawling centerpiece that slips sweetly into birdsong. “To be alone / anywhere but here.”
Roam (if you want to)
While Frances welcomes life’s serendipity, it’s no accident that she spent much of 2020 making a record about movement. There are places that feel something like home to the young musician, who was raised in Philadelphia and lived most recently in Chicago, but a sense of searching colors the empty space in Bedrock — recorded over a period of restless wandering from rural Maine to the Midwest and points in between.
“I felt very uprooted, and a lot of that has to do with place. I was really seeking a feeling of home and a sense of stability in myself, and stability with another person,” she says. “I felt like I was on a pilgrimage of some kind. That was a huge part of the record: ‘Where am I going? Where do I belong?’”
The answer to that question is a knot Frances is still untwisting. But while her odyssey of belonging may not unfold along a straight line, her path to the stage followed a more linear tack. Raised by a professional pianist and educator, Frances’ creative drive is partly the result of being steeped in music from a young age — including a post-senior year tour with the international after-school music education program School of Rock, whose stop at Lollapalooza served her first real taste of the limelight.
“I was constantly on stage,” she says. “My upbringing was deeply creative, and I’m really grateful for that.”
The stage is still a welcoming place for Frances, who has since sharpened her own voice in her own songs — like the 11 tracks on Bedrock, and those populating the new unreleased full length she’s currently shopping to labels. She may not have a fixed address, but Frances has found a home in her music, and in the act of bringing it to towns like Boulder. When it comes to the prospect of one day putting solid ground beneath her feet, she draws energy from a time-honored maxim: The destination is the journey.
“I feel belonging in a lot of different landscapes … I love being on the road,” she says. “There are so many different aspects that are challenging, but I think overall it feels really directional and alive for me right now. I think this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
ON THE BILL: Damien Jurado with Hannah Frances. 7 p.m. Friday, April 14, eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder. Tickets here.
