All this month we are talking to Americana and indie-folk band Wayward Vine. The band are from Boston and last month released their brand new album. I wanted to talk to the band to find out all about them and delve into their musical world. Today we talk about their debut album The Fall which was released in September of this year.

Hello! Tell us about your new album that came out in September?

Rachel: The songs on The Fall have been in the works for a number of years and it’s been incredible shaping them into something that we feel very proud of. For both Greg and me, music has been a passion for a very long time but between our various day jobs, kids, and families, it can be a struggle to find the space and time to really focus on our art as a priority. For me personally, it definitely feels like a personal goalpost getting to this point, because while I played violin and piano since early elementary school, I never felt like I was able to explore my musically creative side until around 2019. When I wrote my first song (which is not on The Fall but very well may make an appearance on the second album) it felt like more of an emotional experiment, something that felt far too personal to share widely, and it took me several months to even share my work with my family and friends.

It took several iterations of feeling completely exposed in sharing my songs with others before I felt comfortable putting out rougher and undeveloped songs to work on with Greg in the formation phase of Wayward Vine. When we started releasing our first several singles last year, I began to realize that it was worth every moment of effort and overcoming my apprehensions, as people started to reach out and tell us how much they could relate to our songs and lyrics.  When we released the title track of the album, “The Fall,” as a single, one of our listeners shared how this was exactly the kind of catharsis she needed to process some of the difficult events going on in the world, and that she was playing it on repeat to help ease her mind.  Another listener heard “Narcissist’s Disguise” and felt it reflected the conflicted emotions she had surrounding her fraught relationship with one of her parents. I think we’re most excited to release the album knowing that we have the ability to touch others with it and have them find their personal stories and voices reflected back in the songs. 

Lawrence: This has been a labor of love from the very beginning, all the way back to when Valerie and I started working together in 2021, when we brought just a few of our own originals into the partnership with a sense of wanting to bring them to life through collaboration. It’s really gratifying to bring a song from a basic idea (complete with a very rough demo recording on your iPhone!) to this beautiful, finished work of art that reflects the hard work, collaboration and sense of purpose among ourselves and our bandmates. And then putting the individual works of art (the songs) into a gallery (the album) provides its own kind of satisfaction as you get to think about how the individual songs flow together, along with the album’s artwork. If you do it all well, you’ve created something that is both beautiful and memorable. We hope that’s what we’ve done with The Fall. 

“…I hope is that our songs make people feel something deep inside when they listen…”

Lawrence

Where did the inspiration for the name come from?

Rachel: As we started to put songs together for the album we noticed a common theme of a change of seasons and being on the edge at a moment in time. Some of this is obvious on its face as two of the songs are “The Fall” and “End of May” and have actual nature themes embedded. But we also wanted to more broadly incorporate moments of change and evolution as they relate to the feeling of seasons changing. When you think about the moment when summer shifts to fall, for example, there is often the feeling of being at the edge of a moment when you don’t know what the next moment holds, and that’s often accompanied by melancholy, or sometimes an exciting anticipation.

For example, “Dancing on Your Basement Floor” explores a moment when a relationship is either going to move into something more serious or meet its end. “Narcissist’s Disguise” explores being on the precipice of cutting ties in a toxic relationship. And “Hannah” is about a moment of renewal after overcoming trauma, when it’s unclear if true healing can take place. In choosing The Fall for the title, more than just featuring one of the names of the tracks and a season of the year in which the album happens to be emerging, we thought this was a representation of everything the word can mean that occurs thematically in our songs. The Fall also references a loss of innocence and a shift in mental state, all in one title.  

Lawrence: I agree with all of what Val said. There are also more subtle references to seasonal themes, particularly the fall, such as in “Just Like That” — “With the trees on the hills, splattered in orange and gold / this feeling never gets old…”. We write a lot about relationships and what inevitably accompanies relationships as a theme is change, because relationships evolve and transition. “End of May” is about a breakup, set on the backdrop of a beautiful late spring day with the birds singing. The irony in that combo is palpable, to me. So I guess I would say that there’s a parallel in this album between the changing of the seasons (as a metaphor, perhaps) and the numerous stories about relationship transitions in our songwriting. 

How long did it take to write and record ?

Lawrence: Since it’s our debut album, and we each came into Wayward Vine with some of the songs already conceived and/or written, in that sense it took many years to complete! For example, the basic melody and lyrics for “Dancing On Your Basement Floor” were written in 2018, but the arrangement and specific parts added by everyone else in the band (including Val’s piano and vocal harmonies) were completed in 2022-23. I know a couple of Val’s songs originated before and during the pandemic as well. However, we entered the studio in January of 2024 and got the final masters completed for the last few songs that will appear on the album in May of this year (2025), so once we committed to the recording process it took a little under a year and a half. We could have probably done it much faster, but juggling our own and our other band members’ availability, studio availability and the financing side of the project, we paced it as we did. 

What is the main theme of the album?

Rachel: We always want a listener to find their own meaning and connection to some of the human moments expressed in our songs. Also, although our songs sometimes explore the darker side of human nature (e.g. “Hard Way to Live,” “Turn Yourself Around”), there is also a hopefulness for a better future that resonates. We hope the songs make our listeners feel that they are less alone and that their inner world matters. 

Lawrence: Yeah, what I hope is that our songs make people feel something deep inside when they listen. Our songwriting comes from an authentic place based on personal experiences and observations that are hopefully relatable and accessible to people. So even though a song like “Dancing On Your Basement Floor” is about the very personal experience of being hopelessly in love at a moment of inflection in a relationship, we hope the listener can relate to that experience in their own life in some way and find comfort and self-reflection in it. Maybe even nostalgia… 

What was the most tricky thing about recording the track?

Lawrence: We were all new to in-studio recording and wanted to play to a click-track to ensure we kept on an even, steady tempo throughout each song (a click track is like a metronome fed through your headphone monitor to pace the song evenly). I personally struggled to keep up with the click with my guitar playing during the first full day of recording (at Wooly Mammoth Studio in Waltham, MA), to the point where I got a timeout from the rest of the band [laughs]. What I realized after some reflection and analysis was that the sound level of the click track relative to the level of my guitar and the rest of the mix was too low, so I could barely hear the item I was trying to keep time to. Once I figured that out and adjusted for it, I got the hang of the click and had much fewer issues over the rest of the recording process. 

How do you feel on the release day of a new album?

Lawrence:  Excitement, anticipation and a deep sense of pride for what we’ve accomplished.

“The songs on The Fall have been in the works for a number of years and it’s been incredible shaping them into something that we feel very proud of.“

Rachel

Which song are you most looking forward to performing live?

Rachel: It’s hard to choose, but I really love performing “Implode” live because it gets to show off the amazing skills of our drummer and also I can’t help but jump and dance a bit while we play it. That song also has a fun buildup from a chill rock groove to a bit of an “explosion” of sound at the end, and I always enjoy that feeling.  

Lawrence: Do we really have to pick just one? I will always love playing “Dancing” as it’s such an emotional and personal song to me and it’s one of those that gets my adrenaline flowing, especially when we play it with our full band. And there are a few of Val’s songs I love to play – “End of May,” because it’s such a pretty (yet ironic) song and I love our harmonies on that one, and “Imperfect Beings,” because it has such a cataclysmic intensity to it, particularly in the final 90 seconds, before gently ending the song on Val’s voice and keys.  

How do you think your fans are going to react to the album?

Lawrence: I don’t know if predicting a reaction is something I want to do! I hope our fans will see the honesty in the music and lyrics, quality in our songwriting, and hopefully a sense of our musical range. Also, I know I’m biased but personally I don’t think there’s a weak song on the album and hope that as the listener moves from song to song, they are pleasantly surprised again and again. We also hope this album reaches and makes fans out of people who have never heard our music (or heard of us) before.

Rachel: Like Greg, I don’t think I can predict, but I would hope that people listening to our music will find their own stories and emotions within the songs. I would be thrilled if our listeners can take a fragment of a lyric and think, “that reminds me of…” or “I’ve felt that way too.” Or a melody gives them an emotional response that they were looking for in that moment, whether cathartic, painful, or soothing. 

What is your favourite lyric on the album?

Rachel: In “Turn Yourself Around,” I love the way “Oh beautiful lady, there you go again…” hangs on its own vocal line without a lot of instrumentation and on a minor chord that just pulls out all the melancholy in that song. Kudos to Greg for coming up with that ending.  

Lawrence: On “End of May,” in the final verse when the lead character is being broken up with against the backdrop of a beautiful spring day, Val sings: “It doesn’t matter that you told me I’m amazing and you can’t believe you’re saying these words / You say you couldn’t be more sorry as I focus on the solitary song of the birds / Around the end of May…” I get chills when I hear that phrasing. 

For those who are new to your music, where can they find you on social media?

Website: Waywardvine.com

Facebook: @waywardvine

Instagram: @waywardvineband

Finally three words why people should listen to your new album?

Rachel: Connection, warmth, humanity.

Lawrence: Relatable, emotional, elegant.

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