Big Harp

Ten years after their last album. Big Harp is back with their fourth. In that time, Chris Senseney and Stefanie Drootin-Senseney raised kids, buried a parent, started a side project, and changed jobs. All the while, they kept moving through the world the way lifers do, with the work still humming steadily underneath.

Runs to Blue (out March 27 via Saddle Creek) coalesced in the most healthy way—sideways, without pressure, and almost by accident. A friend wanted to hear some songs. A studio was available. The songs went down live—acoustic guitar, bass, two voices—in a matter of hours across a few casual sessions. Senseney had been writing songs all along, without a care for who might hear them, and that freedom shows in every track.

Big Harp’s album is anchored by the kind of hard-won clarity that takes decades to earn. And it’s all the more beautiful for it.

Analogue: When I listen to this album, it feels like it could only have been made at this point in your lives.

Chris Senseney: Definitely. Writing songs feels a little different now. I don't know if it's just where I'm at or if it's part of getting older, it's hard to say. When I was younger, it was harder to write songs that were this honest or this simple. There was more of trying on different personas—maybe I could be this kind of writer, maybe that one.

For this batch of songs, they're just exactly what they are. I feel more settled, more able to be direct without worrying about masking vulnerabilities or playing a character. Not that there's anything wrong with playing a character. But when I was younger, that was basically the only way I could do it.

Stefanie Drootin-Senseney: And when he was writing these songs, I hadn't even heard them yet. There was no intention of putting them out. We didn't know a record was going to happen. Our friend Pierre just said come record those songs, which made us actually work on them, which was so fun. Kids and work and life bogs you down. These were just songs Chris had written, honest songs that were really for him first. There was no pressure, no thought about anyone hearing them.

Senseney: It feels good to put out songs where the whole point is to communicate. I want them to be easy for people to understand. When I was 25, I was more interested in making things complicated—can I do that? After a while, you think, yeah, I could make this more complicated, but why?

Drootin-Senseney: We were really messing with time signatures before, just to make things a little artier. This is different.

Analogue: Songwriting as catharsis rather than platform-building—is that how it's always felt for you?

Senseney: Yeah, I think so. Sometimes songs just happen. There'll be stretches where a bunch arrive at once, and then times where I might not write one for six months and not even think about it.

Drootin-Senseney: He used to work about an hour away, and he would come home and just say: finished a song. I've worked with a lot of songwriters, and his brain is different from anyone else I've worked with. He'll have a complete song—melody, lyrics, chords—already worked out in his head. Not my parts, but the whole shape of the thing.

Senseney: I try to do it as fast as I possibly can because I don't like editing. Whatever my first idea is, that's what stays. If it's not that good, I'll just write another song. If I start second-guessing, I'm going to get sick of it and put it away forever.

Drootin-Senseney: We have beaten songs to a bloody pulp and then looked at each other like, okay, we ruined that one. We both have too many ideas. It works so much better when we go fast.

Senseney: And it goes back to the directness thing—whatever I wanted to say, I'm just going to say it. I like to think of being creative like sledding downhill. You can steer a little bit, but you can't go backwards. You're locked into a direction. I'm not trying to figure out the route in advance. I'm just trying to steer when a tree gets too close.

Analogue: Take me to the Pierre moment, the backyard show where this all started.

Drootin-Senseney: Pierre recorded our first record, White Hat, and he's always been one of Big Harp's biggest supporters. He was putting together a casual backyard show—more of a party, really—and asked a few people to come play two or three songs. I was on tour with The Good Life, so I said, maybe Chris will want to do it.

Senseney: I played two songs. "Hello, Honey" and "Kill It, Kill It, Kill It." That was it.

Drootin-Senseney: Then after Chris got laid off from his job, Pierre said, why don't you guys come in and record some more songs—we'll call it the layoff special. The idea was just to document them, not make a record. What I only recently put together is that Pierre's wife was at that backyard show too, and she recorded the songs on her phone and listened to them over and over. She was such a fan that the two of them together were pushing for it—we have to get these songs on a record. It was a real team effort.

Senseney: We went in twice for about three hours each and then once more for a couple of hours. That was it.

Analogue: At what point did it actually become a record?

Drootin-Senseney: Rob from Saddle Creek came to one of the shows we started playing—we weren't seeking shows out, friends just asked us. He was really positive about the set and said, keep me in the loop. Pierre kept pushing—you just have the songs, just do it. So we sent it to Saddle Creek and they said let's do it. I thought: okay, I guess we made a record.

Senseney: It's funny because Stefanie and I have always been the only two permanent members of Big Harp, but we'd never really done it as a duo on a record. And when we started playing these songs in front of people, it just felt really good—especially in smaller rooms. It felt like it was connecting, and people felt good to be there. We talked briefly about whether we should add a drummer at some point. But no—let's just do it like this.

Analogue: Did it feel strange to put this out as Big Harp, after a decade away?

Drootin-Senseney: Honestly, it felt less strange than some of the later records we released as Big Harp. We did a pretty thrashy rock record and actually tried to change the name—management at the time convinced us we had to keep calling it Big Harp. That one didn't feel the same. But Runs to Blue really feels like a return to something closer to White Hat. It feels like Big Harp, whereas some things in between maybe didn't quite as much.

Analogue: What was it like reconnecting with Saddle Creek after all this time?

Drootin-Senseney: They're family. The thrashy record—which we loved making, by the way—we basically self-released that. Part of it was knowing it didn't quite fit with the rest of the catalog. We even worked with Fat Possum on one single from that period. But Saddle Creek is our label, and I think they were genuinely excited to have us back. I'm sure it helped that this record is a little closer to what they fell in love with about us in the first place.

Analogue: How does it feel to have a release date and a press cycle and all the machinery of putting out a record?

Drootin-Senseney: It feels pretty easy, honestly. It's just me and Chris. Nobody's putting pressure on us to do anything we're not comfortable with. You're basically just at our house, talking. But I think Chris has more feelings about what it actually means to put it out into the world.

Senseney: I have a lot less anxiety than I used to. It used to feel like: what's happening, does anybody like it? I just don't have as many of those feelings anymore. I'm happy for it to get out. If it finds people who like it, that's great. And if nobody likes it, that's fine too.

Drootin-Senseney: We're genuinely happy to share it—and I know that sounds like something you're supposed to say, but there's really no pressure attached to it. No what if nothing happens. It's just not there.

Senseney: I think being a little older helps. I feel a little less neurotic every year—not down to zero, but getting there. As you get older, actual serious things happen every once in a while. And then the small stuff—is anybody going to like me?—it's just harder to get worked up about. That's not my biggest problem, actually.

Analogue: Tell me about the title track. There's something really striking in that image of all colors running to blue.

Senseney: It's hard for me to actually remember writing any of these songs. Most of them I just start singing in the car, one line leads to the next, and twenty or thirty minutes later I've got a couple of verses and a chorus. That one's older, I think.

Drootin-Senseney: It is older.

Senseney: I wish I had a good story about coming up with it. I really don't.

Analogue: The process you're describing—writing fast, trusting the first idea—is that something you figured out or something you arrived at?

Senseney: I started writing songs when I was 13 or 14, and I wrote a lot of really bad ones using approaches that didn't work. It probably took at least ten years before it started to get a little easier. Some of it is just muscle memory—it gets easier the more you do it. But it's not that it's easy, because I can't make myself do it. It just has to start happening.

Drootin-Senseney: He does that—just lets the gravity take it—and then writes these beautiful, perfect, profound things. So, he wouldn't say that.

Senseney: If you try to think of something to write about, it's so much harder. It's easier to roll a boulder downhill than up. Just let your brain go where the gravity is pulling it. You can steer a little, but you can't go backwards. There's got to be some clouds in the sky first.

VISIT: Big Harp

Photo: Nicole Busch