Walking Proof
“This go-round, I was thinking more about my friends than I was thinking about my issues,” Nashville-based singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt tells Apple Music. Equally steeped in alt-country and indie rock, she thinks this is the difference in theme, feeling, and tone between her 2017 breakthrough *Trinity Lane* and her new album *Walking Proof*. “I\'d had so many experiences with such creative, vivacious, and inspiring people that I wanted to talk about them a bit. I related to them and learned a lot about my capacity for love through them.” The daughter of American songwriting hero John Hiatt, she is practiced at capturing natural conversation and detail in her lyrics, but she’s also zeroed in on melody, adding a bit of spun sugar to the pensive hooks she delivers in her delicate timbre. “Part of the reason that I wanted to work with \[producer\] Lincoln Parish is that I knew he had been in a rock ’n’ roll band, but I also knew he made pop music,” she says. “I wasn\'t trying to make a pop record, but I know that he\'s refined in that way, making a really polished sound. Melody has always been my guiding light, and I wanted to take the time to acknowledge that a bit.” Here Hiatt walks through the tracks on *Walking Proof*. **Rae** “My sister is such a part of me, and we\'re so different yet so alike. I\'ve always felt a deep strength that I\'ve not found anywhere else in the same way with her. We\'ve been through a lot together and apart, and we\'re at this point in our lives where we\'re both in our thirties, we\'re both doing well. We got to do a little traveling together that year that I wrote this song, just celebrating her and all that I admire about her and have learned from her in my life.” **P-Town** “There\'s a sense of humor to that of ‘This is not going as we thought it would, but what can we do but just have a good time, and scream and shout and get through it?’ So, I can look back at that particular time with a smile. When I was writing about it, I had enough distance from the situation to find it funny really, because Portland is an incredible city, and to go there and have a crappy time with somebody is hilarious, almost.” **Little Believer** “That song shows the duality of the two people that are me, which is ‘home me’ and ‘road me.’ Sometimes they fight. ‘Little Believer’ just kind of popped out of my head. One day I just started singing, ‘I want to be your little believer,’ and it seemed to make sense. Something bright and not too self-important about that phrase, you know?” **Some Kind of Drug** “I had been riding with my sister. She had a job where she was working with homeless people and going to different camps, taking them stuff. We had picked up a guy named Corey, and he didn\'t know his age because he grew up on the streets. I had already been feeling a bit closed in on in the city, and just seeing my neighborhood completely changed in the last four years, and the positive and the negative that has come with that. The disregard for some sacred parts of the city and some of the community here has been heartbreaking, but there\'s been progress as well, and just trying to come to terms with that in a way where I don\'t walk around angry and jaded.” **Candy Lunch** “That was a fun song to write. It\'s meant to be gentle, but also a bit of a statement, like, ‘Hey, don\'t tell me what to do. I got this. I always have done my thing. And I\'m not about to change it for you, but I want you to do your thing, too.’ There\'s a lot of love in that song, too, just learning how to let the guard down and let things be what they are. That\'s definitely my style: It\'s lighthearted, but with attitude.” **Walking Proof** “I wrote that song at the end of a tour, right before I had to go the airport late at night. I have all these little beautiful children in my life, and that song is for my friend\'s daughter. I was thinking about her and I was like, ‘Man, she\'s in for a lot in life. That girl\'s going to just have so many experiences.’ And I want her to know she can call me. But also, I was thinking about my bandmates, and all we\'ve been through together. I was thinking about musicians I knew, and my family, and my people I love. I just knew that Amanda Shires was somebody that would understand that completely, because in ways I feel like we\'re cut from the same cloth, and we\'ve made a lot of sacrifice to do what we love to do. But it\'s painful sometimes to be away from your family and your people. I heard her on that, and I think she really took the song to another place and gave it this Appalachian sound almost with her fiddle and her voice.” **Drawl** “I love people so much that I see that are misfits, and that feel like they have to hide a little because they\'re awkward, and they don\'t know how to completely show themselves to the world. I find it so endearingly beautiful when people are unaware of just how vibey and awesome they are. I know a lot of people like that, and that\'s why I love them—because they\'re humble in that way. But self-defeating can come into that too. And I get that. I\'ve beaten myself up like that too before.” **Brightest Star** “That\'s a song straight-up for the underdog. My favorite artists, they\'re definitely underrated, but that\'s what makes them great. And that\'s just how it goes for some of them. Some of them, it\'s like, ‘You\'re too smart for the masses to even get it. So, do your thing.’ When I was writing that song, I thought, ‘This is a little more singsongy than I usually do.’ I\'ve written a lot of sad songs, you know? And I was like, ‘No, just let it be bright and catchy. Let it be what it is.’” **Never Play Guitar** “When I get really down, I remember that it doesn\'t matter how my work is perceived or who hears it ultimately, although I want so many people to hear it, because it\'s one of my greatest missions to spread my music through the world. But one of the deepest, most peaceful feelings I get comes from just writing a song with my guitar. And I remember that nothing can stop that, and it doesn\'t have to even be for anything. I can always do it. I wrote that song at a time when I was really busy and I was being told, ‘Hey, things are going good, so keep it up,’ but I couldn\'t get away from anyone for any time. So I was like, ‘If I\'m going to write, I got to shut the door for a second and shut it off.’ And that\'s enough for me, honestly, just writing songs quietly by myself. That brings me a joy that nobody could really take.” **Move** “That\'s the troubadour’s tune, I think. Even though I\'m talking to somebody else, there\'s a lot of me in that song, and I\'m looking at a lot of that in that song. It\'s like that adage ‘Spot it, you\'ve got it,’ which is something I\'ve heard in AA meetings and stuff. When you\'re looking at some other idiosyncrasies about somebody else and fixated on them, a lot of the time it\'s like, ‘Yeah, you have those too. That\'s why they\'re eating at you.’ That’s a real thing, learning how to love through that.” **Scream** “I thought, ‘Wow, this is a dark ending to a bright album.’ But such is life, and it ebbs and flows in these eras of highs and lows for me. I wanted that to be a \'to be continued,\' because I think there\'s a comfort in the unsettling uncertainty of life. And that song, to me, is a bit unsettling. But it also makes one of the most bold statements on the record, in my opinion, by saying, ‘I\'m done being quiet for that guy.’ I wanted to end on that note.”
On her fourth album, the Nashville singer-songwriter moves beyond the unadorned Americana of previous albums to arrive at new sounds, moods, and emotions.
On her first two albums, 2012's Let Down and 2015's Royal Blue, Lilly Hiatt showed she was a talented singer/songwriter with a good eye for a story, a knack for roots-friendly guitar rock, and an expressive voice.
The singer melds influences as disparate as backwoods country and garage punk into a cohesive signature sound.