On Long Drives and Late Nights - Madeline Hawthorne’s “Night Ride” Writes Love In the Landscape of Her American Heartland
Madeline Hawthorne calls home a meadow abundant in plum-purple lilacs and lavender and chartreuse-green pears, and all of the woodland creatures that fill their bellies with and build their homes from this wild flora. Fairy-folk and witches, alike, are the friends and muses of the nouveau pop-folk singer-songwriter and composer – Stevie Nicks’ starry pathways across the 1970s and Nashville’s songwriters’ Skyway, playing key roles in her largely and creatively DIY-projects. Tales From Late Nights and Long Drives, Madeline’s upcoming album, her debut album, speaks aloud the silence of a girl or a young woman’s map of their home country – the paths that could be, have been (perhaps even likely, tearfully) travelled, and the paths that could be. Paths whose secrets softly giggle, and whisper, faintly.
New England’s emerald-green- and wildflower-cradled hills and Montana’s plum-heather fields and honeycrisp apple orchards have moulded Hawthorne’s musical and lyrical realms, thus far; a yearning for praying golden-Apollo’s California and an era popular with finding and studying philosophy, and listening to Clio’s ambrosia-grasp of the acoustic guitar and what Artemis’ rock & roll could be. Hawthorne’s different grasp solves that she has been, since first writing lyrics and instrumental compositions, and then pursuing on the ground, her dream of becoming an artist, full-time and true-blue, giving a voice and musical expression to the classic folk-singer’s realm. Her first full-LP’s titular “Night Ride” is a scrapbook of northern-mountain classic folk – blessed with garnet-crimson sandstone and ambrosia-sweet, wool-thick nutmeg-honey. Each, witnessing the greats and the unspooling of generations. Of Pomona’s apples and pears, stone-fruits and ripening berries. Each, holding the promises and hopes of Bohemians, dreamers and poets since the first time, each paradise was discovered. Hawthorne’s fusing of folk, blues, rock and pop’s pure metals reminds this author of Persephone’s blessed meadow-nymph Hayley Whitters’ wielding of bluegrass, blues, folk and country.
Heartfelt dedication to authentic re-creation, and heartfelt pouring out of a writer’s, a singer’s, and a musician’s own pains, the artist’s 2024 late-spring single, “Night Ride” is Hawthorne and her band members’ domination with bronze-wheat knights. Knights that are bravely-swinging guitars (lead by Hawthorne’s queen’s strategy). The verses explode in hope and its gold-armoured protector, listening. The singer-songwriter’s guitar, laureled in Stevie Nicks’ forget-me-nots and grey swan-feathers and Anne and Nancy Wilsons’ carnelian-red lilies and yet-to-be-counted-petalled clovers and grabbing and raising up the baton, of Zeppelin’s electric guitars from loving maids to holy houses in each bar. A skirmish and an amendment between the guitars accompany each verse’s rise. And then during each chorus, Hawthorne’s guitar is at the fore, weaving a tapestry swirling, star-packed indigo-violet skies and mighty evergreens, soaring songbirds and galloping foals.
Daffodils and sun-headed dandelions, buttercream roses and lacey bluebells are resembled by Hawthorne’s vocals and the lighter gossamer strings that hold hands with the guitars on “Night Ride.” This mimicking reflecting the daylight twin of the night-time sealed inside of a bottle of the earlier Tales track number “Chasing The Moon” – miles of sapphire sky pierced with violet and jade jets, slumbering ferns and cattails by the riverside, and the gentle clickety-clacking of fireflies waltzing with the one they love. Breaking from rock & roll tradition, though, honey-gold ambrosia’s perfume replaces that of golden-amber liquor’s on the singer-songwriter’s aural, and these historical journeys. Threads of wool twine mapping the places that her cowboy’s boots have been, add rasp to Madeline’s spellbinding earth witch-singing voice. What has been less remarked upon, is the silvery-dripping production on her voice as “Night Ride’s” course runs. Each of these dime-sided added elements, glinting with moonlight and brought to the fore, by the folk-pop master and producer Ryan Hadlock (having made lanterns with country-pop’s Zach Bryan and nouveau folk’s The Lumineers).
Hadlock’s Bear Creek Studios, amidst the guardian maples and redwoods and ambrosia-apple and plum orchards of Washington state, is the setting of Tales’ recording, and “Night Ride’s” orchestra of dark- and light-brasses, a bass, and rhythmic drums that finish out the single’s lightly, gently multifarious compositions. What the author believes to be one part, a product of Hawthorne’s wandering soul, and the second part, inspiration from the singer-songwriter’s participation in festivals, from Tennessee’s “Americanafest” to Idaho’s “Treefort Music Festival,” Colorado’s “Winter WonderGrass” to Utah’s “City Song.” Songwriting plays the largest role in the instrumental and all other aural choices made on Tales – a signature of Hawthorne’s country-blues and folk perspective as an artist. Joining daydreams, dreams and true experiences, Madeline’s first album Boots weaves together homey butter-yellow daffodils, buttery, flaky grandmother’s pie crust, and rich, buttery fingers on cello and other large-string-boards, and fairytales. From a Tennessee-kingdom of whom she is the reigning queen, to being granted the ability to rearrange the constellations to spell out messages to her beloved. To wrapping the world up in arms, to bless where is deserving, and to spring to fix each of the places where evil is lurking. And likewise on Tales – this time, “immersing” herself in memories, dreams and more expansively the writing process by practicing journal-writing, connecting with nature in body, mind and spirit, and her inner child, as well as with musicians that inspired her. Holistically, poetically, and musically. “Breathe me in like the air / And hold me, hold me,” and “Drink me, drink me in like the sky / And feel me,” Madeline wines and dines, smooth as clementine- and clover-honeys and as spellbinding as a love potion on “Night Ride’s” first verse.
Of the June 2024 single’s writing, Hawthorne cites her and her husband’s eternity by one another’s side during the pandemic. The molasses warmth, and soul and skin interweaving that would be asked of two beloveds under these closed quarters, in the singer’s voice. The silver-moonlight-bejewelled tour nights travelling across America’s western heartland shining on “Chasing The Moon,” “Cold Shoulder” and “Neon Wasteland” and rootsy traces of the quiet yearning coming out of its hearth-warmed home-shell on “Where Did I Go Wrong” and “Pittsburgh,” trickle in to the fabrics of Tales’ second track, and final single prior to its June 14 release. This being testimony to how intimately sharing and connected the album’s songs are. Over crushed-velvet and golden-heather-spurred choruses, Madeline croons with Dolly Partonesque angelic jouissance, “I just want to hide away tonight / Grab your keys, and take me for a ride.” To close out the velvety, ambrosia-honeyed love-song and path taken across years of a lucky-ones’ real love story, Madeline delivers a soaring brown sugar warm and sweet final pre-chorus, “Touch me, touch me, like I can taste you / Baby you feel alive.”
The golden-corn yellow-string longing and nostalgia for home, where a mother’s warmth, father’s protection and (whether blood, or chosen) siblings or cousins’ dreams blossom like wild daisies, is truly Hawthorne’s home on “Night Ride,” and greater on Tales. Finding home, is frankly an issue that we all face: whether wandering is in our DNA, wandering has given us a reason to need a home or needing a home is the reason behind our wandering, or you are preparing for your own trip – the spiritual place – in any sense that such a title finds meaning to you – that Hawthorne recommends that you take on for your health. Madeline Hawthorne’s Tales From Late Nights & Long Drives was released on June 14th, 2024 and Hawthorne will be touring the U.S., playing both, festivals and headlining shows, from mid-June to late-September, beginning in San Luis Obispo, California, and ending in Redmond, Oregon.
