Hannah Hannah — 14 February 2024 on Rocket Shop Radio Hour
Monochrome photo by Ross Mickel
Hannah Hannah joined guest hosts Keagan Lafferty and Ella S on ‘Rocket Shop,’ Big Heavy World’s weekly local Vermont music radio hour on 105.9 FM The Radiator. Catch up with them at instagram.com/hanns.haus
Text by Keagan Lafferty
Valentine’s Day is a designated annual celebration of love; relationships, friendships, self-love, and love for any aspect of the universe. This Valentine’s day, I find myself pondering these ideas, and when Hannah Hannah sings her first note on Rocket Shop, the whole room seems to fill with a feeling deeper than any unconditional love. One I can’t quite put into words, but it’s a feeling I know I could ever forget. If there was a piece of my heart missing, there’s no doubt that Hannah Hannah just made it beat stronger and louder than ever before.
Hannah was raised in an extremely musical family, among a Jewish community where singing and music were valuable pieces of everyday life. Every Friday night, they would have dinner together and pass around songbooks, singing in harmony with one another. Hannah’s first musical memory took place at just three years old; “I remember wanting a pet so bad, and putting my hand to the glass window and making up a song about how I wanted a pet,” said Hannah. “I feel like it's so in our nature as humans to make up songs about every little thing.”
Growing up, Hannah was rejected from several choirs and acapella groups, so she began writing her own music and playing guitar during her sophomore year of high school. When she heard “Blackbird” by the Beatles, she knew that guitar was in her future. At her second guitar lesson, she asked to learn the song, and her teacher wrote the notes for her before she spent over five hours one night learning “Blackbird.”. “I learned it,” said Hannah. “And then I was like, well, I've reached my peak, I will quit now.” However, Hannah stuck with the instrument, learning it in college and beyond as she honed in on her songwriting skills.
Hannah enjoys writing songs on instruments she doesn’t know how to play because simple music helps fuel her creative process. “It can help get into more of a trance or a non-thinking state, which is where I pull songs out of,” said Hannah. “I'm not thinking about what should sound good. I'm feeling into what sounds good. It lends to a less critical thought space so I can be more open and creative.”
Hannah draws inspiration from a variety of musical artists, visual artists, and life itself. “[It’s an] artist lens, where you're just in awe of the world and using everything as a source of inspiration to reflect on.” Hannah’s musical inspirations include early jazz and blues icons like Ella Fitgerald, Etta James, and Billie Holiday, as well artists from the folk lineage like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and Fleetwood Mac. She is also inspired by contemporary music like Waxahachie and Big Thief, and groups who employ three part harmonies like Mountain Men. “Every now and then there's an album that scratches a very particular itch,” said Hannah. “And then I feel its tendrils go deep into my brain and impact me when I'm writing songs.”
Hannah is also influenced by visual artists, including local artist Lydia Kern. Six years ago, Hannah went to Kearne’s open studio at Burlington’s art hop, where she had a sculpture installation of lungs and a butterfly with a golden threat interwoven between the two. Hannah later wrote the lyric; “I pulled upon my lungs like a golden colored thread;” a direct reflection on the art installation.
“Artists do the same thing, just with different media,” said Hannah. “I can touch into what someone's feeling and then feel what I'm feeling. We're all doing the work of giving people stuff to help them feel things. I'm no different in the way that I receive other people's stuff that they're giving me.”
Hannah’s most recent release, an EP called Songs in Open E, is a reflection on the concept of love, with the title serving a double meaning; the songs themselves are played on guitar with open E tuning, and Hannah emphasized the value of being open and vulnerable in her songwriting. The songs flow into one another as a progression.
The EP, produced by Jeremy Mendicino at Lane Gibson Studio in Charlotte, includes little production because she wanted it to reflect her live sound. Aside from light percussion and steel guitar, the EP is grounded and raw.
The first song on the EP, “New Years Day,” was written on New Year's Day one year before the EP was released on January 1st of 2024, giving a full circle moment in what she describes as a “time capsule of the past year.” The song’s lyrics reflect on working through internal blocks in a romantic relationship. “It's about being activated or past hurts coming up and trying to differentiate reality and the past.”
The second song on the EP, “The Realness,” is the first song Hannah performed on Rocket Shop. “It's like the first real love song I've ever written,” said Hannah. “I've written a lot of unrequited love songs, and I've written a lot of crush songs, but this feels different. It feels like a dedication to love itself and the way that [love] liberates me and frees me. It's [about] being in awe of love and how I can change, how love can change me, and how love is change.”
“The Realness” is played on acoustic guitar with soothing chord changes that sound like a light summer breeze. The lyrics are visual and abstract, describing the patterns of the sunrise, expanding upon that image, and using it as a metaphor for Hannah’s relationship with love as a form of change. The song has dynamic shifts in energy, using loud strumming with belting vocals as well as soft chords and quiet singing. Hannah is strategic with her internal rhymes, giving the song a catchy flow as she repeats the lines “illuminating; liberating; it’s magnetic the way I’m changing.”
The third and final song on the EP, “The Way Home,” was the second song that Hannah performed on Rocket Shop. The song reflects on growing and changing but also maintaining a grounded balance in one’s sense of self. “Taking all that big energy and finding so much stillness and reflecting forward this question of, ‘what's the potential here?’” said Hannah. “Feeling like [you’re] in a cocoon, but you don't know what color wings you're gonna have.”
“The Way Home” starts with slow and dissonant single note fingerpicking, using harmonics as it slowly develops into a quicker fingerpicking pattern. Hannah takes deep breaths as she strums before the vocals begin, giving the song an authentically vulnerable feeling. The lyrics detail the relationship between a bird and a flower, functioning as a metaphor for the relationship between Hannah and her mind, heart, and body. They serve as a prayer to herself as she faces the unknown. “May I remember I’m transparent and the light can shine through,” sings Hannah. “May we rise and fall with the tide.”
Hannah is expanding her musical experimentation through an electro-soul collaboration with Guthrie Galileo, a local artist who makes R&B and electronic music. They released one song called “Will You Hold Me In A Burning World,” and are recording an album called “Dance Music For The Apocalypse.”
The album’s lyrics reflect on the current state of the world, and the value of music as medicine. “With the climate and with culture, and all of the things always happening in the world that feel so defeating at times, [we’re giving] music that connects us all back to love, and that we can and connect with our bodies and dance to,” said Hannah.
Hannah plays in a local band called Honey & Soul, a Burlington-based soul-folk trio defined by gentle harmonies and powerful songwriting. The group is currently on break from performing as they deconstruct and find new band members, but have been together for the past five years. They recently released a single called “Pleasure,” which Hannah wrote to reflect on her value. “[‘Pleasure’ is about] trying to step into feeling my own worth; being worthy of experiencing pleasure and love and abundance and connection,” said Hannah. “I have that blessing for everyone.”
Hannah also hosts songwriting workshops in Burlington, where she meets with a group of songwriters for two hours once a week. The workshops include group writing exercises, songwriting prompts, song shares, and discussion about writing blocks and one’s relationship to songwriting. “We're connecting with each other, being in community together, and feeling less alone in the ways that we struggle with writing,” said Hannah.
One prominent struggle that Hannah faces in her own songwriting is feeling too critical, and writing for the appeal of others rather than for herself. “It pulls me out of this connection that I have to songwriting, so I have to practice self awareness in those moments and kindly ask that part of me to wait in the other room while I write the song,” said Hannah. The process of writing for herself is a vulnerable process, which can pose a challenge. “I recognize that ultimately, the song may be something for someone else. But realistically, the only way it ever could be something for someone else is if it is something for me right now.”
Hannah’s live performance experience exists around Burlington, across the state, and includes regional tours with Honey & Soul. Hannah also did a solo tour across the country, playing random venues, many of which had no audio engineer, and one with no audience. “I love to travel, and I love to play. So having a purpose for traveling felt really good,” said Hannah. Her favorite show took place in Los Angeles, and her favorite place to visit was the deserts in West Texas and Utah. “I've never experienced that type of expansiveness and the physical nature setting around me. I'm always reflecting on the landscape around me, so it did some wild things to the expansiveness in my mind and my body.”
Regardless of Hannah’s live performances taking place all over the United States, the Burlington music scene is extremely special to her. “I like traveling and playing other places, but this feels like such a home to me at this point,” said Hannah. “I feel really supported by this community. It's been a really nice place to launch a career.”
Hannah’s last two songs performed on Rocket Shop were new and unreleased. “Sugar Water” was written last month while Hannah was in New York, with a chorus melody that stays on the same note with fast-paced diction as she plays a soft fingerpicking melody that emphasizes low bass notes.
Hannah closed her set on Rocket Shop with “There’s Enough Love,” a song using open D tuning with chords that flow into one another in a unique way, complementing her ethereal vocals. The chorus utilizes impressive vocal runs against whole note strums, putting the listener’s focus on the lyrics, which serve as a reminder that there’s enough love when Hannah is feeling scarcity around connection; “when I’m reaching for a lover cause I’m grieving for another I say there’s enough love,” sings Hannah. “When I’m fussing with the silence, I’m shifting my reliance, I know there’s enough love.”
Hannah successfully gave us a fitting Valentine’s Day celebration as she reminds us that there is in fact enough love in this life and the next.