In November 2023, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield poured her heart out—not only to her twin sister (and A&R), Allison, but also to a small crowd of music industry professionals, as they heard her wistful, alt-country album Tigers Blood for the first time. She was more settled in her life than ever—in a long-term relationship with musician Kevin Morby, sober, grounded—and yet she found herself confronting a series of crossroads. These, she discovered, were just part of the landscape of one’s 30s. “There’s a depth to being in your mid-30s that you don’t have in your 20s,” Crutchfield, who is now 35, says over Zoom (between calling for her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Ernie) from her home in Kansas City, Missouri. “It’s calmer, and it’s more subtle, but there’s still a lot going on. There’s still a lot of new problems.”
On Tigers Blood, Waxahatchee’s first release since the LP Saint Cloud in 2020, the singer-songwriter tackles the devastation of friend breakups and the beauty of the early stages of a long-term romance, all the while leaning into the creative confidence that comes with age and experience. Together with producer Brad Cook, Crutchfield “doubled down” on the country-folk ethos of her last record. “We felt pressure to follow up Saint Cloud and reinvent it a little bit.” They enlisted a handful of collaborators to help build out the new record’s sonic landscape, including Wednesday’s MJ Lenderman, Spencer Tweedy, and Megafaun’s Phil Cook.
In an interview with Vogue, Crutchfield opens up about the tough transitions that come with growing up and how her style has evolved since Saint Cloud.
Vogue: Tell me about cultivating the sound for Tiger’s Blood, because it feels like it’s a natural next step from your last album, Saint Cloud.
Katie Crutchfield: It was really organic. I think Brad [Cook] and I suffered a little bit after Saint Cloud came out. We were really nervous, because we didn t want people to think it was a fluke. We were like, We think we can make something great together again that we are really excited about and that people respond to. So I had songs and we were both really confident and excited [about them], but how we supported those songs and elevated them and built a sonic story around them, we didn’t have a plan. And that was scary for a little while. But then, Jake [MJ Lenderman] came into the mix really early, and once he entered the picture, the songs started to take a shape that I wasn’t really expecting, but I was responding to in real-time, as was Brad. We felt pressure to follow up Saint Cloud and reinvent it a little bit. And when Jake was there collaborating with us, right off the bat, it felt like a very normal, natural next step. We basically landed on [the idea that] the confident choice here is to double down on what we did with Saint Cloud, but put different people in the room. We just put really great musicians, including Jake, in the room, which is exactly how we did it on Saint Cloud—same studio, same engineer, same everything, and hoped it would become its own thing, and it did.
How did you come up with the title of the album?
Tigers Blood is a snow cone flavor that I ate a lot as a kid, and it’s strawberry and coconut mixed together. I was writing this part of the [title] song that was about childhood, innocence, and summertime, and that line fell out of my brain. Very quickly, I was like, “Well, that’ll definitely be the song title.” When I was trying to come up with a record title, I was thinking about all the song titles, and “Tigers Blood” just really stuck out, and I knew I wanted it to be the last song on the record. [The title] is this sweet, innocent thing that evokes something a little more dark, and I just thought it represented the vibe of the songs pretty well.
At your record listening session, you discussed this crossroads you came to in your 30s, where your friends are going in different directions in your life, and you’re sober and in a long-term relationship. How did you incorporate that into the record?
I think that sobriety on my last record was like a security blanket, in a way. It was really easy for me, because I think it is so much easier to talk about your songs and a big body of work when [it’s] like, “This record’s about this.” Obviously, this record doesn’t have that in the same way, and I like it as a challenge, as a songwriter, to continue to find more and more mundane, everyday things to make into songs that are compelling. Something that kept coming up on this record was the friend breakup. [It’s] really common when you reach a certain age, where you have friendships that have developed over a long period of time, and you naturally diverge into different paths. Those relationships can be frustrating, and as emotionally taxing as a breakup. So I wanted to incorporate that. The whole record is a snapshot. It’s like, What’s present for me right now? And that was one of the things that felt really present for me right now.
The 30s come with some weird shifts.
It’s definitely emo. And sometimes you’re the one that’s growing faster than a person in your life, and sometimes someone else is growing faster or in another direction, and it can be really sad. There can be emotional development and maturity that you’re experiencing that somebody else isn’t, and then that can create anger and tension. There’s different kinds of these microcosms that exist all the time in these relationships. It’s very nuanced and subtle, but it is really real. In my earlier records, I’m in my 20s, and everything’s so dramatic and chaotic, and I was drinking and messy. It was such gorgeous fodder for songwriting, and now I’m having to mine a little bit deeper. But it’s helping me get to know myself better, and in that is a lot of truth, which I think makes for better songs—hopefully.
The decision to collaborate with MJ Lenderman seems like such a natural fit. How did that happen?
It was a sort of, “We have to collaborate” at first sight with him. I was at SXSW in early 2022, and Brad and Allison [Crutchfield] texted me at the same time, and they were like, “We’re going to go see this guy, MJ Lenderman.” I had never heard his name before, but they were both so excited, and they were like, “You need to come. He’s not playing very many shows here. You would love it.” And so, of course, when anyone says that, you’re just like, How good could this be? I showed up and there were 10 people on stage, and they had a steel player, and they had a bunch of guitars on stage, and I was blown away. I was like, What is this ’90s, loud, indie-rock band that’s also a country band, that’s also this voice that’s the most beautiful, unique, singular kind of sounding voice I’ve ever heard? I met him really briefly that night, and then someone sent me his record right after that—Boat Songs—and I just listened to it over and over. I love sports, and he talks about sports a lot. I was like, This literally was made for me. We had become friendly and hung out a couple of times, and I mentioned it in passing to Brad, “Oh, maybe we could invite Jake.” On my last record, we had the band Bonny Doon play with me, and they were good, old friends of mine. But with MJ, I didn’t know him that well. Brad invited him to the very first session [and] I’m so glad that he did, because, very quickly, it was such a good fit. It helped put us on the path.
What were you listening to when you were making the record?
When Jake entered the picture, a lot of his influences, which are a lot of my foundational influences that I haven’t looked at in a little while, were kind of coming into the picture—a lot of Southern alternative rock from the ’80s and ’90s, like Drive-By Truckers, Sparklehorse, bands like that. Through that, it helped me reconnect with my love of R.E.M., which is one of my favorite bands ever. So I think R.E.M. is a big influence, specifically Michael Stipe’s singing. But then we were talking a lot about Tom Petty, who’s one of my heroes, and talking a lot about Lucinda, who’s another one of my heroes. And Brad was talking a lot about Gillian Welch, who I also really love, and that was when we first did the demo of “Right Back to It.” That’s kind of the reference that Brad made, of, “This feels super, super simple and straightforward and just a good melody, kind of like Gillian.” So those were the main influences.
You’ve been in a relationship for many years. How do you continue to write fresh songs about love and find inspiration when you’ve been with someone for so long?
On one hand, it pushes me to write about other stuff, which is good. It pushes me to write about relationships that aren’t that relationship, and write about them in such a way that it could be a romantic relationship. I’m writing about five different relationships on the record, but I think when you hear them, any of them could be about the push and pull of a romantic relationship. So I think there’s that, but I do think that it’s pushing me to write about this phase of my relationship. Kevin [Morby] and I have been together for almost seven years. It’s a really interesting, new thing for me that I’ve never experienced. So [with] “Right Back to It,” I wanted to write a song that was [a] super romantic, no-frills love song about how we keep landing back in the same place in a way that’s so beautiful and profound—and even when things are hard, we find a way to make them beautiful again. “Burns Out at Midnight” is sort of similar. That song’s more about when things are hard, and both of those songs are inspired by Lucinda songs. “Side of the Road” was really on my mind. She really talks about the spaciousness you have to have in a long-term relationship to make it work. It’s just pushing me to hone my craft even more.
How did you land on “Right Back to It” as the lead single?
I always, in my gut, was like, That’s the first single, because from my position, that was the song that started the whole thing. I had a bunch written already when I wrote “Right Back to It,” but when it came to demo-ing and getting on a path to what the record was going to be, that song just started it all. It lit the fuse. When we played the record for the label, or when I played it for almost anybody, everyone would pause on that song and say, “This is my favorite one,” or, “This is one of my favorite ones.” Everyone gave that song special attention, but people were like, “I don’t think it s the first single.” I fought for it, and I’m so glad that we got our way because it was the right way to introduce the record.
You’re obviously in a new era. Did your personal style shift with this album?
Majorly. I feel like I was doing big looks with Saint Cloud, and it was very feminine. On the cover, I’m in that Dôen dress—it [was] a lot of Dôen. And then I was wearing a lot of big, poofy dresses on the tour, and I loved it. I did that so much that I’m like, How do I shift this and carry that into the stage show? which I’m still figuring out. But I kept saying I wanted the look of this record to be a high-femme version of a dude in a bar band. I’m still figuring out what that means to me, but that’s where the record cover look comes from. I think I’m going to keep it more casual on stage this time around, and I’m looking forward to that.
What do you want people to get out of this record?
It’s funny, I feel like a few people have asked me that. Truly, when I was younger, I was a very selfish songwriter. I didn’t care what anyone took from it, and I just wanted to write something true to my experience. If people got it, great, and if they didn’t get it, then who cares? But as I’ve gotten older, I’m really writing songs with a listener in mind. I try and write songs that are just really rooted in some kind of emotional truth, and if people can take something away from that, it doesn’t really matter to me what it is.
This conversation has been edited and condensed. Tigers Blood is out on March 22.