An Interview with Grace Gardner: A deep dive into Gardner's creative process.

With the new release of Gardner's EP 'Recovery Mile', I had the pleasure of talking with Gardner about all things 'Recovery Mile', production and touring.

Image from @gracegardnermusic on Instagram

Grace Gardner brings a new level of authenticity to the music sphere with the release of her new EP Recovery Mile, Gardner experiments with new production techniques and co-writing experiences, with each track on the EP telling a distinct and unique story. Gardner has a special way with words, her lyrics immersing you in the topic of whatever the song is talking about. With no formal music training, Gardners’ production and songwriting skills surpass expectations, bringing something new to the current stream of music being released.

Gardner has had many professional successes such as Gardner’s song ‘Deny Me’ going viral on TikTok and opening for touring artists such as Ella Jane, Tiny Habits and Adam Melchior. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Gardner about all of these experiences and their journey in the music industry, continue reading to hear all about it.

S: Firstly, I’d love to congratulate you on your new EP, it’s amazing, I’ve been listening to it non-stop! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, and why you decided to go into music?

G: Thank you! Music was the first thing that I connected with when I was a kid, I think my first instrument was a drum set when I was three. We had a grand piano in my house, my dad and my mom are both huge music nerds, but no one in my family did music professionally, we all just enjoyed it. I picked up several instruments when I was six or seven, and I play ten now. I don’t think I’m good at all ten now, but at one point that was my number. That was my special interest, my whole existence really revolved around creating music, listening to music, writing my own, and writing about other people’s music. I wasn’t really aware that music was something that could be done professionally as it wasn’t something that was encouraged by the people around me, so I studied neuroscience in college, and I clearly don’t do that anymore (laughs). I went to college in New Orleans which is a very jazz music-centric city and being around so many people who encouraged music as a profession and a livelihood was the game-changer for me. It was kind of everything I did in my free time, and it still is everything I do in my free time (laughs).

S: Who would you say are your biggest artistic influences?

G: My creative process has revolved more around having songwriting influences rather than production inspirations, especially since I started with my last project in Summer 2022. But I really started connecting with Olivia Barton, Adam Melchor and Madison Cunningham around this time last year when I was doing the bulk of the writing for Recovery Mile. I really connected with their fresh perspectives on things, their vulnerability and their honesty. I think I learned a lot just listening to their music. 

S: Speaking of Recovery Mile, tell me about how that came to life. What was the process behind it like?

G: It kind of started out very disjointed, I ended up going through these phases where I was writing like five songs a day for a month straight and then just nothing for a while, so I ended up with a hundred pretty good songs to choose from and so I had a sort of choice paralysis. These songs were all written at different times, spanning from June 20222 to July 2023, It wasn’t intentional that they all connected in this way, like the relief and catharsis of closing those chapters and also the relief of being able to open new ones but I think I went back to the pool of songs that I had and pulled out these as ones that represented that year of my life best, and best encapsulated my songwriting abilities. I kind of like that it feels chronological even if it isn’t necessarily ordered chronologically. The way they all connected felt very correct. It felt very true.

S: Was there a song on the EP that was harder to write/produce than the others? And what is your favourite song on the EP

G: I think Lubbock was pretty new for me because I had to really reach back to being seventeen and going through the break-up I think of when I think of the loser that Lubbock describes (laughs). I had just gotten back from a trip with my girlfriend, I was slaying, but then I came over to Caroline’s (Carter) place, and she was not in as good of a place. I hadn’t ever felt so comfortable putting myself in another person’s shoes in the songwriting process, but Caroline and I just have always had this sort of intrinsic understanding of each other. We were kind of coaxing the lyrics out of each other. That was a new thing, but it was a good challenge! I think writing-wise though, sleepwalk was probably the most challenging one. 

I also think Lubbock is my favourite. I think I was so stressed about making it so perfect because a very big part of me wanted it to feel like it avenged Caroline, we had written this song when she was in such a tough place dealing with those emotions, so it meant a lot to me to make it feel like it tied the bow and closed that chapter for her. From the get-go, I had such a good feeling about the song, and it was the first release that I stopped caring about streaming numbers, I just thought: “This song is great! I’m so happy it’s out!”

S: Lubbock is my favourite too!

G: Thank you!

S: What do you hope people take away from your EP?

G: The goal of all of it was to be cathartic, it represents a lot of different emotions, there’s joy in it but there’s also deep pain and uncertainty tucked in there. It gets better, is the first thing I want to say, I have heard some gut-wrenching stories from people about when they found my music and I always feel so deeply privileged to be some sort of lighthouse to people when they’re going through things like that.

But the takeaway for me as an artist is that I care so much about production. I have no technical knowledge when it comes to production, everything I know is from YouTube, TikTok and watching my friends. The takeaway not only should be to find artists that have authenticity in their production but also that production is accessible! This is something that anyone can do, I want to emphasise to people that you can make cheap sound fantastic if it means something to you, anyone can be an artist. I think a lot of people are weaponizing that and using it as derogatory because things were feeling oversaturated, but art is whatever. If it means something to you then express! I think it’s important for people to see that production can be accessible and doesn’t have to cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

S: One of your songs Deny Me went viral on TikTok a while ago, how did you react to that? And what do you think about using TikTok as an artist?

G: Deny Me went viral quite literally overnight and that was the first time something like that had ever happened to me, I think that navigating the aftermath of that is really confusing because suddenly there is everyone under the sun in your DMS and it is the busiest two weeks ever, and you have people nipping at your feet asking you when are you going to release this? Crazy unfathomable things were happening and I used that to take note of what people liked from small artists and how best they were connecting with them and using all my fanbase knowledge from when I was a One Direction, 5SOS fan in middle school (cringes), I was like I know how to build a freaking community! So that was really fun to connect with people in a really meaningful and unified way. I use TikTok as a tool of connection, to reach people. When I was like 13/14 and figuring out that I was not a straight, cis person, I would have really benefitted from hearing perspectives from queer people, people of colour or any other marginalised identity that wasn’t present in the media. 

S: I totally agree!

S: So I want to talk to you now a little bit about performing! You’ve opened for artists such as Ella Jane, Tiny Habits and Adam Melchor, what were those experiences like?

G: I have really loved opening for other artists, I think that it’s been really interesting seeing who everyone’s demographics are, like Adam Melchor, who I opened for last year, has a very college-based audience, and I was 22 at the time, so I was like these are my people this is good! Ella Jane’s folks were a little younger, but they were the types to pride themselves on small artists, and everyone looked really cute at the show. Tiny Habits had absorbed a lot of their fans from Gracie Abrams by the time I opened for them so witnessing the culture of the audience was kind of interesting, like some audience members cared very deeply about getting noticed by the artist on stage instead of experiencing the live music. So I think that learning about where everyone’s people came from was really interesting and getting to bring together the fractions of all of those people into my community has been interesting too! I loved getting to interact with so many different people, Adam Melchor’s fans were very queer and very weird and I am also very queer and very weird so I loved that! Also interacting with the artists themselves, Adam and Ella went out of their way to sit down with me and come into my green room and ask me: “How did you get into music? What has your experience been like as a touring artist so far?” And they also made themselves available for me to ask questions because they had more experience than I had, and they’re both people that I still communicate with. I really admired that. I’ve had some fantastic experiences, and I’m excited to see what this year brings. I’m really excited to open for Haley Blais, she’s so cool!! I’m playing some cool venues and I have a hometown show!

S: Do you have any plans for a headline tour at some point?

G: Yes! I finally have a booking agent, so I’m excited to get to places I haven’t been to yet. Like hopefully come to the UK, Ireland and Europe. I’m so excited. I finally got over my stage fright last year so definitely want to do more shows. There’s currently nothing solid but a lot of dreams! I know that I’m going to be opening for another person in North America for a couple of weeks in July so that’s cool! I’m also trying to get a brief little headline stint in the north-east, and mid-west and take a little band with me!

S: Who is your dream artist to open for?

G: I think Olivia Barton. Madison Cunningham would be a dream too. Adam Melchor was actually one of my dream artists to open for so the fact I got to do that was crazy and I would love to do that again. That would be a consistent dream! I think that some of my dream spots have already been checked off so that’s really sick!

S: Do you have any other music-related plans for this year that you can talk about?

G: Yes! Absolutely! I have a couple of side projects coming this year that I’m excited about but I’m not sure how they’re going to fit within the timeline of things because I’m also working on my debut album. I’m really hoping that will be done by Summer. Everything is already written so I’m just working on recording and producing it all.  So I’m really excited.

S:  Do you feel like the process of creating your debut album has been different to creating Recovery Mile?

G: Absolutely. Recovery Mile was a very isolated process because I did it all alone in my studio apartment. I now live with four other musicians which has been helpful and really cool, and I think I would like for the album to be a little more collaborative and I’d like to learn more about the engineering process. I live in Philadelphia and people are constantly honking so it is hard to get it all done where we live, so I’ve been co-engineering and co-producing it with my friend Lonnie who did the drums for Lubbock, we’ve just been hammering out the whole album together. It’s the first time that I've done a whole slew of things with somebody and he’s someone who is so masterful about his mics and mic techniques, he went to music school and is just extremely educated about music. I am not. I took music courses for a total of 9 months in my life and learnt everything else through YouTube, so I do not have the degree of technical knowledge that he has, so learning from him has been so cool. I’m excited for the rest of the process.

S: So I have one last question, thank you so much for being here, this has been so great! Where do you hope to see yourself within the next couple of years?

G: I’ve been really inspired by this person who was in Jacob Collier’s band, she’s from my hometown and she was his guitarist for the last several years and now she’s playing in Leon Bridges’ band which I also really love. But she was on guitar, doing background vocals and she also has her solo projects and does production and all that. I would love to be that. I used to say I would love to be the Jack Antonoff of that but I feel like he’s an oversaturated name, I need to move on to somebody else (laughs). I want to be someone who’s playing in other people’s bands, producing for people, songwriting with people, I don’t know -  experiencing the magic of live music that might not always be mine. I would love to do that. I love being able to bring people’s songs to live in a production way so getting to do that in a live way would be so cool. But at the same being able to work on my solo stuff, I would love to be able to head in that direction in the next few years. Be a band member, an artist, a songwriter, like seven or eight different things because I can’t pick one.

S: Yes! Why not?

G: Exactly why not! If I have time why not! And if I don’t know how to do something I can just learn! I’ll just keep adding things until I feel like I’m too full of skills (laughs). It’s always something that I knew I would want to be doing, I’ve always been a multi-tasker so I’m excited.

S: Amazing! That’s all the questions I have for you, Thank you so much!

G: Dude, Thank you!

Grace Gardner is an incredibly authentic artist and if you’re someone who loves being a fan of small upcoming artists, or just likes good music in general, then go listen to Gardner’s EP Recovery Mile!