Photo by Evan Benally Atwood
To Oregon songwriter Haley Heynderickx, a seed represents incubation and the process of navigating the darkest, deepest parts of ourselves before becoming realized. It is a process of turning inward, listening and noticing, and trusting one can create something honest and true despite all the constant noise around us—whether that’s the news, social media, or our own self-doubt.
Where Heynderickx’s debut album I Need to Start a Garden was about self-actualization and the excavation of the soul, her new album Seed of a Seed is now about protecting it. Heynderickx’s answer is by going inwards, requiring a brave solitude, while also acknowledging that it’s not done alone. This album nods to the necessary helpers along the way—from flowers (“Gemini”) and daydreams (“Foxglove”) to forests (“Redwoods (Anxious God)”) and friends (“Jerry's Song”). Seed of a Seed is an album that honors these helpers – and the self – and the process of fighting upward toward the light.
The album’s opening track “Gemini” thrums like a warning that every excuse you might make—to not stay with a feeling, to not make room for it—will not hold. It tears through vignettes of the often exhausting dual-life of a heavily touring artist, while her former self chases her, and shames her, for ignoring her. The past confronts the present, two cowboys ready to duel. Finally, the woman takes control, and forces Heynderickx to stop and pull over “just to stare at purple clover off the highway / And see the clover as a gift / A gift I almost missed / You know I finally begin to feel better.” And with that, the drums kick in, the album gives way—or rather—gives into itself, and everything rushes in.
On Seed of a Seed, Heynderickx’s signature intricate finger-picking is hemmed into a lush, living tapestry created with producer Andrew Stonestreet and what she calls her “core jazz boy band”: Daniel Rossi on drums, Denzel Mendoza on trombone, and Matthew Holmes on electric and upright bass. It’s a group she first worked in hopes of exploring her songs with a wider freedom of expression. Later, they added electric guitarist William Seiji Marsh and cellist Caleigh Drane to lift the melodies even higher. The result is a complex forest of sound, and if you imagine all the instruments as the layered leaves, Heynderickx’s voice is the light filtering through them—gentle, tender, and clear.
Seed of a Seed also explores how distant we can feel from nature and ourselves in a world of technology, overconsumption, and consumerism. In “Mouth of a Flower”, Heynderickx sings about the fish-eat-fish world we live in and the human tendency to “take, take, take.” In “Redwoods (Anxious God)”, she longs to hear the Redwoods and to sing with the birds, but “now the only man here’s cellphone ring ring rings.” We are not just drowning out our own voices, but the important voices of those around us. And even if we were to sing for ourselves, how do we find room and space for it? In “Jerry’s Song”, Heynderickx wonders, “Were we troubadours / Stuck in traffic?”, while the album asks, “How do we create in a congested, noisy world?”.
This album doesn’t give you easy answers. Heynderickx’s journey is not a linear one. A theme that persists across both albums is that Heynderickx is still building herself. She is still growing and changing, and her songs invite us to notice that in ourselves, as well. She admits, "The irony is I'll still be asking these questions; I'm not on the other side of it." Seed of a Seed is almost like a note-to-self to move on her timeline, at her own pace, and to surface only when she’s ready and rested. That is, it’s both a reminder and a permission slip to go away in order to return.
In album closer “Swoop”, Heynderickx repeats twice, “There’s an artistry to going away.” Where the record began with a pulsing urgency, “Swoop” finds Heynderickx in a more steady landscape—having finally found her voice again—where her former and present selves are more at peace. It is the peace of sunlight warming her hands, the vibrating air of a hummingbird flitting just out of sight. It is a seed—a purple clover—sprouting out of the loamy soil, not in a garden, but from within a whole forest.
Seed of a Seed will be released November 1st (digital) and December 6th (LP, CD, cassette) on Mama Bird Recording Co.