Q&A: Grace Gardner Masterfully Blends Genres With Debut EP ‘Peach’
☆ BY Alicia Casey ☆
Photo courtesy of Kalista Tamez
TEACHER TURNED TOURING MUSICIAN — Grace Gardner brings her deep understanding of love and relationships to a global audience. Raised on Stevie Nicks, ’70s rock, southern folk, and New Orleans jazz, Gardner is no stranger to putting on a mesmerizing vocal and instrumental performance. In her debut EP, Peach, out today, Gardner is introducing her eclectic sound with an orchestral bang.
A musical hobbyist like her family before her, Gardner’s 10 instruments make long-awaited appearances throughout the tracklist. From brass to software-based elements, Peach has something for everyone. That's the magic of her singer-songwriter dynamic — while it seems as if a whole band is playing behind her at all times, it’s really just Gardner telling her story with the sounds she grew up on.
In this fresh EP, Gardner dives deep into what drew her to music in the first place. She recalls the turbulent moments of her young adulthood and uses the release of her notepad and pen to get them out. She shares an intimate look into what it’s like being surrounded by so many influences and how that factors into the way Gardner processes her complex emotions.
And usually, that experience of going through the motions has everything to do with music. It’s the first thing Gardner does in the morning and the last thing on her mind before bed. It goes wherever she is and accompanies her like a trusted childhood imaginary friend. For Garnder, music is a healing energy, and she’s looking forward to exploring it more with her songwriting to come — maybe even with an album to be released later in the year, if we’re lucky.
Listen to Gardner’s songs wherever you get your music and stream Peach, out today. Luna had the pleasure of participating in 1824’s interview with the singer-songwriter as she talked music as a processing tool, Texas origins, and the process of creating Peach. Read the interview down below.
1824: Congrats on your upcoming EP, Peach! What are you most proud of in it?
GARDNER: Oh, absolutely. I think for the second one, I was really stubborn in the production. Honestly, in a way where I didn’t trust anyone else to channel what I was thinking in my brain into logic. So I spent hours and hours on Logic and learned it myself, which was fine for a while, but it's also grueling work. So I learned to delegate responsibilities. I started to get to a point with my career where I'm welcoming people to my team and having a tour manager or a day-to-day manager. There’s these new components of things I didn't know even existed because I'm just a girl from a small town in Texas. I’m not really familiar with this world at all, so learning how to delegate was the biggest thing, and relinquishing some responsibilities helped a lot.
1824: What did you learn through the process of making [Peach]? What do you think you'll carry with you?
GARDNER: It was fun to collaborate with a lot of my friends on it. I live pretty far from a lot of my collaborators since a lot of my musician friends lived in New Orleans — and I guess I can touch on later like why I chose to move to Austin — but all my collaborators lived there. Some of them were up in Canada, out in LA, or out in London. Learning how to coordinate all of that was great, but a little stressful.
1824: And I read in a previous interview … you mentioned that your song “Deny Me” feels more like you because you were more secure in yourself as a musician. While working on this EP, has that process continued to feel more like you were coming into your own sound?
GARDNER: Yeah, I think every song I release continues to … give that feeling that “Deny Me” did. That track was important to my healing from that heartbreak at that point. And then I released “Scorpions” as a part of a project, but it also came at the perfect time in my self-love journey. From there I released “Parcel,” and that was kind of a final moment of anger. Like, just one final “screw you” to the universe type of thing, until I can let it go close to the box type of stitch. So everything has really come at a good time, and I feel more in touch with my artistry with every release. I really loved “Parcel” — I loved Sleeping With Sirens in middle school. I’m a big fan of guitars and loud stuff. I want to go more in that alternative direction, like the Madison Cunningham zone. “Parcel” was really in touch with them.
1824: Speaking of “Parcel,” what was the final version of the track like? How did it compare to the preconceived notion of what you wanted it to sound like?
GARDNER: A little similar. I was looking back in my text messages, actually, because I felt like I was probably going to be asked about this. I'd written it in August, and I [had] just moved to Austin from New Orleans and the person that it’s about was mailing me the rest of my stuff. So it started out as really sad and acoustic, and my music director — who also lives in New Orleans — was like, “Dude, you got a pep it up a little.” And in New Orleans, it made me much more inclined to have more percussive guitar and instrumentals, so it ended up not at all being acoustic and being much more angry, but I love it so much more.
1824: Do you feel like songwriting helps you better understand a situation that you're writing about or even change the way you view whatever you're writing about?
GARDNER: Honestly, I feel like I use it in both ways. It’s been a processing tool since I was young to gain some kind of understanding that helps me feel things that are too big for me to comprehend. I also like to write from other people's perspectives towards me. Like, I've tried to write from my ex's perspective. I use songwriting really as a tool to gain an understanding of the things around me.
1824: We were told that you play 10 instruments, which is very impressive. How much are you involved in the production process of your music?
GARDNER: I produced my entire EP, which I'm immensely proud of. It took a super freaking long time to do, but I really would not have it any other way. I love being able to learn so much about Logic and … I developed back problems … hunching over my computer. But being able to produce all my own work, because I did not produce my first song, is liberating. I love the process of being involved in everything, to be as involved as Jack Antonoff is everything to me. Man is literally Jack of all trades, and I'm very inspired about that.
1824: Does Peach have a theme or delve into a certain period of your life? What were you feeling or going through?
GARDNER: Yeah, it’s a processing project. For me at least, unrequited love is a big part of it. It shows up in the album romantically- and platonically-speaking, because I do have another song coming out on the EP that's called “Designated Driver.” That's a friend breakup song, which honestly hurt me more than any real breakup, I'll say that for sure. And it generally just represents big feelings. I'm a teacher of children and so I use the term “big feelings” a lot, but it was really just me trying to gain some understanding over the things that I was letting happen to me.
1824: You're touring soon with Adam Melchor and Hans William in March. What songs are you most excited to perform?
GARDNER: “Parcel” is so fun to play live. I'm really excited to play that one with the band because it's just going to bring it to life. But I had this cover of “Jessie's Girl” on my setlist that was an acoustic gay, like yawning version, and a lot of people liked it, and I really loved it. So I'm really excited to do that.
1824: Could you tell us how you came up with the music video idea for “Deny Me?”
GARDNER: I've always been about creating experiences and universes and production. Not to be all, like, Kenny Beats about it, but I love creating these full experiences. And all my friends in Austin are creative — they all happen to be film people and … they came out of the woodwork and we made something really great, and I can't wait to share it.
1824: What was the process of creating your new EP, and do you have any kind of a favorite memory of the process?
GARDNER: I think the process honestly was pretty solitary. I'm going to say because I was producing it all from my desk. I had friends send in some instruments, but it was [remote] most of the time… Actually, all the time. If I had anyone doing guest instruments, it was from where they lived in another city and they’d e-mail it. It was hard to do it alone, mostly because the feelings that were contained in it were just tough to process alone without other collaborators to work through them with. And so I'm looking forward to having some more in-person collaborations for my album. But my favorite part of creating Peach… There was a last-minute inclusion called “Acrobatics,” and me and my friend were messing around with no inspiration and started ranting about something I was feeling, about not having closure with somebody and the whole situationship thing. You know, the mental gymnastics of kind of but not really being with someone. And it was, like, three days before my EP was due, and we just hammered it out. We wrote, mixed everything, in, like, eight hours and dropped that.
1824: Do you have any tips for aspiring artists?
GARDNER: Man, absolutely I freaking do. When I was still at a place where I didn't feel like I had a lot of traction, I didn’t feel like I was achieving my definition of success. So I made music my 9–5. I was a teacher at school for a really long time and I made my main money through there. I also studied music in school before I left school. I was gigging all the time, I was practicing all the time. I made it my whole life until I knew I felt comfortable with it and I wasn't going to burn out. That was really reassuring. But yeah, I literally just did nothing but music. I will say there was sometimes I did that to a fault, so I don't recommend doing it to such an extreme where you're … ignoring your family, friends, loved ones, etc. Even so, I never stopped practicing — I was always writing, I was always playing, always doing really everything.
1824: Where do you find inspiration for songwriting?
GARDNER: My biggest thing I tell people about songwriting is that I get inspiration from everywhere and I force myself to even if I don't. When I was taking songwriting classes, we had to do object writing every single day, so we would have to go somewhere for, like, 20 minutes and write [for] that amount of time straight, and sometimes I would get poetic stuff. And after a while, if you're doing that every single day, you start to see results.
1824: You said that you’ve known this EP title for more than a year, but what made you choose it?
GARDNER: So I grew up in rural Texas, a few hours away [from] Fredericksburg, which is this town outside of Austin and San Antonio — they're famous for peaches. I was raised to think these peaches were like the pods and nectar from God. They're amazing, and so peaches were always my favorite fruit. I would wait every spring and summer and we would go down there, and they were a central part of my childhood. Then later on, they started showing up in movies as a symbol that some bad stuff was about to go down. There was stuff that happened with my ex and, yeah, I wanted to name it that.
Photo courtesy of Kalista Tamez
1824: If you could choose, what TV show or movie would you want this EP to be featured on?
GARDNER: This is such a thought-provoking question. I feel like I have not been in touch with movies and TV shows in the longest time. It would have to be part of the queer narrative. So that narrows it down even more since there's not a lot to pick from. But I feel like I resonated a lot with the turmoil of Casey and Izzy's relationship in Atypical. I resonate a lot with Casey because I'm the older sister of an autistic brother and my parents don't get along, just like [in] the show. It always hit very close to home. I've actually seen a couple of Casey and Izzy edits to my songs too, which is cool.
1824: As a multi-instrumentalist and someone who utilizes a lot of orchestra in your songs, how do you feel your classical music background influences your music now?
GARDNER: Honestly, I was in choir and all that, but growing up, we couldn't really afford to have private guitar lessons and other stuff like that. So I would just kind of steal somebody's instrument and learn it. And I'm lucky that a lot of my family members are … music hobbyists, but I started getting a lot more [out of] being surrounded by a lot more intentional approaches to music.
When I got to New Orleans, there were jazz bars on the right corner — there was one literally at the bottom floor of my apartment. So I would just like to hang out there all the time, just chill in the corner. And watching those performers play their instruments with so much intention, and [with] their eyes are closed, but they know exactly what they're doing. It's so beautiful to watch. I like being exposed to that so much. I was so inspired by that intentionality.
1824: What artists do you look up to?
GARDNER: My favorite artist of all time is Fleetwood Mac. I was raised on ’70s and ’80s music. My parents are all about that. My dad was also really into 2000s singer-songwriters for some reason — he really liked KT Tunstall, [who did] “Suddenly I See” [and] “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” [and he] really loves her. I’m really into Lucy Dacus. I obviously am a Swifty, and I would be remiss to not mention that I love the way that Lizzy McAlpine and Jensen McRae write. And I love Allison Ponthier because she and I are from neighboring small towns between Dallas and Fort Worth. But gosh, there's so many people to be inspired by, so many sounds that people are fusing together … [that] I love being surrounded by so much.
1824: I'm curious, does TikTok have any impact on your songwriting or how you're presenting yourself as a creative?
GARDNER: Yeah, I mean, I try to view it in a kind of cultivating community type of way. The fans are really the powerhouses of the industry. But there’s also a lot about the downsides to social media in general — like I have gone through eating disorder recovery — and at the same time it can be very meaningful, especially when you're writing about such vulnerable things. And when you’re writing from such an emotional place, cultivating that community can be beautiful, but it's also like being at the mercy of the algorithm.
LUNA: How would you say being surrounded by New Orleans jazz during your early adulthood affected your overall sound?
GARDNER: I moved there when I was 18 and I left when I was 22, so I lived there for just four years. I went to school for two of those years and then dropped out and [was] just kind of living there, but experiencing Mardi Gras, where there's so much big-band music, it really led me to value expanding my songs past being just one-track vocal, one-track guitar, because I love music that is like that.
I think some of my songs do end up staying that way, and I started developing an ear — like, horns can be present here, strings could be present here, and loud percussion makes sense here. It helped me be able to kind of anatomically identify things that I can add to my songs. And I found so much joy in that way of making music. It made me want to create forever and ever.
LUNA: My next question is inspired by your Spotify profile. Say you were able to record a video message for your wired earbud–listening middle school self. What would you say to her from where you're sitting now?
GARDNER: That is actually really funny because y'all know, like, the bug collector trend? Where it's like ... the videos are little kids. Yeah, I heard about my 6th grade YouTube channel, and it was really hard to watch. I had dreams of being a famous guitar player and it made me cry. So I’d be like, “Girl, you wouldn't believe it, but we're gonna do this thing.” I loved music all through elementary school, middle school, high school, college. It was always my biggest passion, and nobody was surprised that I left pre-med and started pursuing it. I had grown up with it and somehow convinced myself to do something else, so I would tell her to stick to music and not get distracted because it brings you joy. And the alternative, not doing music, sucks. And holding back to try to suppress that passion will only take you farther away from yourself. So practice hard every day and keep going.
1824: Finally, what can fans expect from your music in the future beyond the EP or with the EP?
GARDNER: Of course. So the EP is four songs, two of which have been released. And after the EP comes out, we are hoping to make more music videos, which is exciting. But we haven't decided which songs. We'll see. If y'all have any input, let me know — hit my DMs — but we’ve been working really hard already on my album. I have, like, 50 songs written ready to go. I just need to get them produced and do all of that stuff. It can be a really time-consuming process when I'm just doing it from my little Mac laptop. But I was really hoping to get an album out around this summer and fall.
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