5 Q&A With Pisgah
What was the creative process like for this particular song?
I was grappling with the breakdown of a relationship with someone close to me in the middle of the first Covid lockdown in the UK, and I remember the line ‘falling out of favor’ popping into my head randomly one morning. Everything felt so emotionally pressurized, and weirdly that line felt like it encapsulated the feeling of spiralling. I already had the basic chords for it, and when I started singing ‘falling out of favor’ over them it clicked into place. It’s one of the rare examples where I’ve written a chorus before anything else in the song!
Were there any challenges or breakthrough moments during the songwriting process for "Favor?"
Once the chorus fell into place, I really didn’t know how I wanted to get there from the verses. What precedes the fall out of favor? And how does it happen? It took me a few more months, but one night just before bed I sat down with my guitar and started playing the chords, and suddenly the lyrics for the verses poured out fully formed. I think I finished writing them in about 15 minutes once they started coming! Initially I almost removed the ‘And’ that opens the song, but I’m really glad I didn’t - I love how that word drops you straight into a narrative that’s already moving faster than you can control!
How does "Favor" fit into your overall artistic vision and what can listeners expect from you in the future?
It showcases the grungier, rock side of Pisgah and that’s really important to me. I’m often told that I write pretty melodies, which I appreciate and take a lot of pride in because I am a singer-songwriter at my core, but I’m also very aware of the societal pressure to write and sing ‘pretty songs’ as a woman. My songs have teeth and are about darker subjects - familial breakdown, anxiety and depression, trauma, and expulsion from a place you once thought of as home - and it’s important to me that the brutal honesty in them comes through. This song, and all the songs on my new album that will be out in November, are coming from a deeper, more honest place than my first record, so this almost feels like a debut for me. Now that I’ve found my sound and my voice listeners can expect a continued evolution of this sound going forward!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started in music?
I’m from the US and grew up in central North Carolina in a region called the Piedmont. Coming from the South is core to who I am still, even though I’ve lived in the U.K. for over a decade now. I started singing in the Southern Baptist church my family attended when I was four, later took piano lessons and then eventually started playing the clarinet in middle school so I could join our high school marching band hilariously enough. By the time I started college, I was singing in a few bands and was out at local gigs in Carrboro most nights of the week, but I still wasn’t writing my own music. That didn’t start until 2016, after I taught myself to play guitar in my early 20s. Now guitar is my primary instrument and I love it so much. I only wish I had started playing sooner!
What role do you feel emotions play in your music, and how do you channel them into your performances?
At the risk of sounding too woo-woo, I’m a Pisces, an INFJ and an Enneagram 4, which means I’m emotion-led and feelings-guided as my default. So emotions, and particularly darker, harder emotions, are the driving force of my songwriting. Writing songs is a way for me to articulate deeper truths that I haven’t been able to say out loud, and I’m so grateful to have songwriting as my outlet. Honestly, I don’t know how people survive without a creative outlet, especially these days! When I perform, I try to shed the need to sound note perfect in favor of the raw expression, because the raw expression is what makes me feel connected to something bigger than myself. I’m a recovering perfectionist so that’s not always easy for me, but I’m working on it.
