What relationship do you see between “death” and “the fool”?

Both my dad and my partner’s mom died after the pandemic, so the album is very much about death. Mourning involves exploring shared histories. Going through ephemera, I kept wondering, “Who do I tell these stories to?” I don’t have kids. With my dad especially, I wanted to engage with his life and ideas through my art—not just sit crying on the floor with old papers.

Humour shows up too—it’s weird how grief opens the door for silliness. There’s absurdity in confronting mortality. You wonder how you ended up where you are, how much time you have left. That can spark urgency: why do we wait to do what matters?

When someone’s dying, you’re completely in the moment. That’s actually beautiful. Some tracks on the album are improvised, to show how being present—whether improvising or building metaphor—is all part of my artistic process. There’s no one right way.

I wanted to ask about the song based on your grandmother’s poem that you’d found.

I’ve done archival work, and I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to family stuff. Going through my dad’s things—letters from the ’60s, old photos—I stumbled on my grandmother’s poem. She had a degree in drama and loved the arts, but never really published. I wanted to honour her and her son, my uncle Martin, who was a birdwatcher.

The poem’s original title was long, something like “For the Occasion of the Death of a Dying Young Adult.” But the line “the birds never left” stood out—it was perfect for the song title and connected beautifully to who he was.

Photo by Heather Saitz

You mention aging in your artist bio — can you speak more to that?

It’s strange how unforgiving the industry is around aging, especially for women. Statistically, people improve with age—you gain experience and depth. I’ve never focused on love songs in the conventional sense. My love songs are for family, for stories I want to preserve.

I recorded a full album at 19, but had no idea how to release it. Since then, the process has changed every time. With social media, there’s pressure to seem young and current. But many cultures value older women as knowledge-keepers. I didn’t want to deny aging—I wanted to embrace it, to present myself as someone still vital, still creating.

I’ve seen the harmful effects of the cult of youth up close through my work in the Hollywood-adjacent world. I wanted to bring a different icon to the table. I’ve got years more of music to make.

You named your project Hermitess. Do you feel the need to isolate to create?

I like to hyperfocus and immerse myself in world-building. That cloud of ideas over my head needs space and time to condense into something tangible. I’ve had good funding lately, which helped realize bigger ideas—videos, production, etc.

I named the project Hermitess after leaving bands where things didn’t quite align. And as a woman, you often end up in supportive roles. A friend once joked I was scared to be alone with my own work. That really stuck with me. So I decided to do it.

You’ve done a number of residencies—do they feel like “magic cave” moments?

Definitely. There’s this myth that songs come when they come, but with all the distractions now, that’s rare. Residencies give me space to work like a job. I just commit to writing a song each day, even if I don’t keep it. Just staying in that practice is productive.

I usually have fragments—poems, ideas—but you still have to sit down and build the thing. Residencies let me do that without daily distractions. I can finally stack the blocks.

You’ve said this album is in conversation with your ancestors. What do you think they’d say after hearing it?

I think they’d just be grateful to be remembered and have their stories told right. I think their ears would be ringing on the other side. More specifically with my dad, I think he would really appreciate me telling the stories that he used to tell where I would roll my eyes. I think he’d think, “Oh, she did actually hear the things that I cared about and wanted to share with the world. And now she’s doing that herself, like taking up the mantle of some of those stories.”

And also, why wouldn’t you? Good stories—they kind of ask to be told, right?