Tigers Blood
One of the hardest-working singer-songwriters in the game is named Katie Crutchfield. She was born in Alabama, grew up near Waxahatchee Creek. Skipped town and struck out on her own as Waxahatchee. That was over a decade ago. Crutchfield says she never knew the road would lead her here, but after six critically acclaimed albums, she’s never felt more confident in herself as an artist. While her sound has evolved from lo-f I folk to lush alt-tinged country, her voice has always remained the same. honest and close, poetic with southern lilting. much like Carson McCullers’s Mick Kelly, determined in her desires and convictions, ready to tell whoever will listen.
And after years of being sober and stable in Kansas City–after years of sacrificing herself to her work and the road–Crutchfield has arrived at her most potent songwriting yet. On her new album, ‘Tigers Blood’, Crutchfield emerges as a powerhouse–an ethnologist of the self–forever dedicated to revisiting her wins and losses. But now she’s arriving at revelations and she ain’t holding them back.
Crutchfield says that she wrote most of the songs on ‘Tigers Blood’ during a “hot hand spell,” while on tour in the end of 2022. and when it came time to record, Crutchfield returned to her trusted producer Brad Cook, who brought her sound to a groundbreaking turning point on 2020’s ‘Saint Cloud.’ ‘Tigers Blood’ also finds Crutchfield folding new collaborators into her world, with performances on the album by MJ Lenderman, Spencer Tweedy and Phil and Brad Cook.
Plains - I Walked With You A Ways
Released October 14, 2022
Hitting play on the debut album from Plains, the duo composed of Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson, we’re immediately teleported into a world of Southern sunsets, wide open spaces, and the unapologetic nature of Country music.
Plains began out of Crutchfield's and Williamson’s mutual love for each other’s music and after trading albums (Saint Cloud and Sorceress, respectively) in early 2020. Feeling that it was time to have a separate project that could reflect a different side of her creative inspirations, Katie felt that Jess was the perfect fit for a collaboration, and they set off to create I Walked With You A Ways.
Written between Kansas City, Los Angeles, and Marfa, the album was recorded in Durham, NC with collaborator and producer Brad Cook. The creative magic of only a few vocal takes, tracking with a band comprised of Spencer Tweedy and Phil Cook, gives the album a feel of fresh, on-the-spot conception. The trust and history of Crutchfield and Cook’s collaborations (Saint Cloud, Great Thunder EP) set the tone for this new container of spontaneity and experimentation.
With both being from the South, we hear the history of place and story in each song: Texas meteor showers, family ties, and the lineage of songwriters who have come before.
As solo practitioners of the craft of song, Williamson and Crutchfield bring a creative permission slip to both the process of songwriting itself but also to the listener. In both of their solo projects you hear a specificity of experience that is so sharp and intimate that it brings the listener into a personal side of the experience of life. With Plains, we are invited into this spaciousness of story, to a shared narrative spanning the beginning of the album to the end.
Saint Cloud
released march 27, 2020
Written immediately in the period following her decision to get sober, ‘Saint Cloud’ is an unflinching self-examination. From a moment of reckoning in Barcelona to a tourist trap in Tennessee to a painful confrontation on Arkadelphia Road, from a nostalgic jaunt down 7th street in New York City to the Mississippi Gulf, Crutchfield creates a sense of place for her soul-baring tales, a longtime staple of her storytelling.
Over the course of Saint Cloud’s 11 songs, which were recorded in the summer of 2019 at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX, and Long Pond in Stuyvesant, NY, and produced by Brad Cook, Crutchfield peels back the distortion of electric guitars to create a wider sonic palette than on any previous Waxahatchee album. It is a record filled with nods to classic country, folk-inspired tones, and distinctly modern touches.
To bolster her vision, Crutchfield enlisted Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox, both of the Detroit-based band Bonny Doon, to serve as her backing band on the record, along with Josh Kaufman on guitar and keyboards and Nick Kinsey on drums and percussion.
Great Thunder EP
Released SEptember 7, 2018
On the heels of ‘Out In The Storm,’ Crutchfield found herself looking to take a sharp turn away from the more rock-oriented influences of her recent records towards her more folk and country roots. “ I would say that it is a complete 180 from the last record: super stripped-down, quiet, and with me performing solo, it’s a throwback to how I started,” wrote Crutchfield.
Out In The Storm
Released July 14, 2017
‘Out In The Storm,’ Katie Crutchfield’s fourth album as Waxahatchee and the follow-up to ‘Ivy Tripp,’ is the blazing result of a woman reawakened. Her most autobiographical and honest album to date, ‘Out In The Storm’ is a self-reflective anchor in the story of both her songwriting and her life.
The album was tracked at Miner Street Recordings in Philadelphia with John Agnello, a producer, recording engineer, and mixer known for working with some of the most iconic musicians of the last 25 years, including Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Agnello and Crutchfield worked together for most of December 2016, along with the band: sister Allison Crutchfield on keyboards and percussion, Katherine Simonetti on bass, and Ashley Arnwine on drums; Katie Harkin, touring guitarist with Sleater-Kinney, also contributed lead guitar. At Agnello’s suggestion, the group recorded most of the music live to enhance their unity in a way that gives the album a fuller sound compared to past releases, resulting in one of Waxahatchee’s most guitar-driven releases to date.
Early Recordings
Released June 17, 2016
Featuring artwork by Chelsea Dirck, this release includes the first songs Crutchfield wrote and recorded as Waxahatchee. Crutchfield shared the impetus behind the release: “They came out five years ago as a super limited split cassette that was mostly for friends and family, and truth be told, I had largely forgotten about them until this spring while on a solo tour of the west coast. At first, I was tentative about re-listening to these recordings, but the nostalgia I felt when re-hearing them was warm, and I thought it might be nice to make them available again.”
Ivy Tripp
Released April 7, 2015
‘Ivy Tripp’ drifts confidently from its predecessors and brings forth a more informed and powerful recognition of where Crutchfield had currently found herself. The lament and grieving for her youth seemed to have been replaced with control and sheer self-honesty. “A running theme [of ‘Ivy Tripp’] is steadying yourself on shaky ground and reminding yourself that you have control in situations that seem overwhelming, or just being cognizant in moments of deep confusion or sadness, and learning to really feel emotions and to grow from that,” said Crutchfield. Recorded and engineered by Kyle Gilbride of Wherever Audio at Crutchfield’s home on New York’s Long Island—with drums recorded in the gym of a local elementary school.
Cerulean Salt
Released February 16, 2018
On her second full-length record as Waxahatchee, former P.. Eliot singer Katie Crutchfield’s compelling hyper-personal poetry is continuously crushing. ‘Cerulean Salt’ follows ‘American Weekend’—a collection of minimal acoustic-guitar pop written and recorded in a week at her family’s Birmingham home.
On this record, Crutchfield’s songs continue to be marked by her sharp, hooky songwriting; her striking voice and lyrics that simultaneously seem hyper-personal yet relentlessly relatable, teetering between endearingly nostalgic and depressingly dark. But whereas before, the thematic focus of her songcraft was on break-ups and passive-aggressive crushing, this record reflects on her family and Alabama upbringing. And whereas ‘American Weekend’ was mostly just Crutchfield and her guitar, Cerulean Salt is occasionally amped up, with a full band and higher-fi production.
At times, ‘Cerulean Salt’ creeps closer to the sound of P.S. Eliot: moody, ’90s-inspired rock backed by Keith Spencer and Swearin’ guitarist Kyle Gilbride on drums and bass. The full band means fleshed-out fuzzy lead guitars on “Coast To Coast,” its poppy hook almost masking its dark lyrics. Big distorted guitars and deep steady drums mark songs like “Misery Over Dispute” and “Waiting.”
There’s plenty of ‘American Weekend’s’ introspection and minimalism to be found, though. “Blue, Pt. 2” is stripped down, Crutchfield and her sister Allison (of Swearin’) singing in harmony with deadpan vox. She’s still an open book, musing on self-doubt versus self-reliance, transience versus permanence. “Peace and Quiet” ebbs and flows from moody, minimal verses to a sing-song chorus. “Swan Dive” tackles nostalgia, transience, indifference, regret—over the minimal strum of an electric guitar, the picking at a chirpy riff, and the double-time tapping of a muted drum.
American Weekend
Released January 12, 2012
Katie Crutchfield, under the name Waxahatchee, made an album during a snowstorm in winter 2011. She dedicated it “to anyone who had woke up and realized their identity is blurry, has had to clumsily get to know themselves, has hit a bottom, has felt self-deprecating and vagrant, and to anyone who has ridden out a shitstorm.”
She called it ‘American Weekend’. She means “American Weekend” in the same wide way that Kurt Cobain means “Teen Spirit,” less social construct than natural phenomenon. This is a lo-fi masterpiece in the league of Lou Barlow and The Softies. We should consider it a descendent of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska,’ or else temper it no lower than essential listening.