Premiere & Interview:
Hannah Delynn Trusts Her Instincts On New Album, Song
“Leaf On a River”

Nashville-based vocalist/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Hannah Delynn loves all the songs on her debut album Trust Fall, which will be released September 5th. It’s a raw and poignant collection of songs that explore discovering one’s identity, trusting in themselves amidst life‘s hardships, and telling their truth. It’s also an album of finding healing and hope. However, she admits she’s especially fond of her song “Leaf on a River”, which she calls a “beautiful collaboration.” 

At SWT, we agree and are excited to premiere it for your listening pleasure today. You can listen to track below:

Delynn co-wrote the song with Maya de Vitry, the album’s producer. The idea for the song came to her after having productive conversations about what was going on in their lives. She came to the realization that she got into a habit of tensing up during particular difficult moments.

“It’s almost like when you’re clenching your jaw and you don’t realize you’re doing it and suddenly you’re like, ‘oh, I need to relax. I need to let go a little bit,’” says Delynn during a recent Zoom interview.

She says the image of a leaf falling onto the river and the idea of letting go inspired the song. It includes the following powerful and inspiring opening verse: “Leaf on a river/floating but free/If I can forgive her/I might reach the sea/As much as one can/As much as one can/I’m drawing a line in the sand.”

“Just being able to go with the flow of things and try to relinquish the illusion of control we think we have sometimes, but it’s so much easier said than done,” Delynn says. “It’s just wrestling with that mixture of emotions of just accepting where you are. It’s like a surrender song, I guess.”

“It’s about acceptance and grief, grace and forgiveness—of self and others. Especially when it’s hard to do,” she adds via the album’s press release. “It’s also about taking responsibility for our humanness—in its humility and the creative power we have in our lives.”

The song begins gently led by Delynn’s voice and steadily picks up more speed and sound, much like a raging river.

For Delynn, de Vitry is an “incredible songwriter and storyteller” and someone who has “become a really dear friend.” They first connected when Delynn toured with de Vitry’s band, the Infinite Band.

They found an instant connection during that time, forming a tight bond. Dimitri later invited her to sing a few songs in the middle of her sets. It went so well that, following the tour, Delynn asked her to produce and write songs for her debut, including “Leaf on a River”. She calls their writing process “really fluid” and productive.

“I feel like that song came out really beautifully and easily between the two of us just talking,” she says. “She kind of picked up the guitar and started strumming and then I was sort of thinking and writing as she was playing, and we were just pitching the ideas back and forth and it kind of just tumbled out. It was beautiful.”

That strong chemistry continued into the recording process, with each allowing the other to lean on their strengths. That ultimately proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Originally, they wanted to keep the recordings “really stripped down and raw” so Delynn could tour the songs solo or with others. The idea was to record the whole album in a cabin, just Delynn and her voice, and “super simple.” However, she came down with bronchitis and had to cancel those plans for a while. 

After she got better, she decided she wanted to go a different route. It would still be raw and intimate but with a fuller sound. While recording at Phantom Studio in Gallatin, Tennessee, they brought in Alex Wilder and Lizzy Ross to add additional backing harmonies. She was amazed with how their contributions gave new life to the sounds. 

“Basically, I was like, ‘Hey guys, just have fun with this. Let’s just throw some things against the wall. I want it to be an expression of freedom,’” she says. “We were like, ‘Wait, Maya needs to play the banjo on this song.’ And she laid down some really cool banjo on it.”

That productive sonic “exploration” inspired them to invite additional Nashville musicians to join them. 

Elsewhere on the album, Maya de Vitry also sings harmonies, Wilder contributes piano/Wurlitzer, Ethan Jodziewicz plays arco and ukulele bass, John Mailander plays fiddle and electronics, Jordan Tice plays guitar, and Annaliese Kowert plays violin.

SWT talked to Delynn recently about how her debut album chronicles her world-spanning and at times tumultuous journey.

Getting sick before recording the album changed the direction you ended up ultimately going in. Was there a point when you were sick that you reassessed the album that kind of led you to a different path?

Yeah, definitely. Literally couldn’t. The plan was to get it all done within a week and essentially, I mean, it was a deep chest thing. My voice didn’t really feel like it fully came back for months and months, and so it ended up being this year long process, but it allowed for more. I’m grateful for it, honestly. I think it really allowed for the space that was necessary. And as you can hear in the record, it’s still very raw and stripped down, but being able to add those specific and sweet layers with particular characters and players that we were able to sit back and be like, “what’s right for this?” and not rush it. I think it made it what it is, for sure.

It sounds like the collaborators on the album were pretty essential in helping you shape the album.

Definitely. 

Can you talk a little bit more about how they enhance the album and songs in general?

Yeah. I think with anything, when you have people bringing their essence into the creative process, it just naturally affects what ends up happening. It’s like cooking, you throw in a new spice and it’s like everything kind of changes, whether it’s subtle or extreme. But there was still a core team. So again, that core team was Maya and Ethan Jodziewicz and me, and that was three quarters of that band, the Infinite Band that we had all been touring together. And the fourth member was Joel Timmons. 

So, we had all been collaborating in these various contexts with each other and just I think that the sort of root system was there in the three of us in the sense that we had grown so comfortable, and it allowed for such vulnerability and rawness and freedom. For me, it is my first full length record, and I just really appreciated that sort of built-in ease with them. 

And then when I thought about who else, when we thought about who else to bring in, it was so easy because Alex Wilder, for example, played on quite a few of the songs, and he’s also a really, really dear friend, and that’s true of everyone that played on the record. It’s just a group of friends. And that’s kind of my thing. Opening up in the recording process in that way is a vulnerable thing to do. So having those particular people made it really fun. They’re excellent players and people, and it just made it feel so great. 

With this being your debut album, what were your biggest goals that you wanted to achieve with the release?

Truthfully, the first thing was that it’s just an honest record. The handful of years leading up to this record were truly some of the most difficult in my life. I lost my mom in 2021, had just some real COVID, obviously we all know what that was like, and just some deeply difficult relationship working, kind of finding myself through these various things that were happening in my life. 

So, to make something that felt truly reflective of that process just felt really vulnerable. And so really, I’m hoping that through the deep dive and finding my own expression of these things, I’m hoping that people will be able to connect with that within themselves. And of course, I hope it does well, and I hope people like it and share it and all those things. Seeing my debut record, yes, I would love to be able to do some fun tours and all those types of things, but yeah, I’m just hoping it connects.

It sounds like the album title is very indicative of all the corners of your life. Why did you feel it was such a fitting phrase to use?

Good question. I had been referring to my life as a trust fall. It’s difficult to fully encapsulate how much I felt that in my life at the time because I was, even with coming out of COVID and different jobs, my job was literally taken out by the tornado that happened here in 2020, and I felt like I had this moment to, it was this combination of leaning into trusting, again, the flow of life, and then where do I take action? What is my responsibility to create the life that I want to create? So, in that process of “what am I doing on autopilot? What am I going to do?” I grew up in a restaurant family, so I’d be like, “okay, I could go get a restaurant job.” And I was like, “I don’t want to do that anymore. What can I do differently? Maybe it’s uncomfortable for a minute. Maybe I do things that I don’t necessarily like but ultimately take me in the direction I want to go in my life.”

The image of a trust fall is you put your arms over your chest, and you’ve got to decide to fall. It’s the autonomy in that decision, but then once you fall, you’ve got to trust that people are going to catch you or the universe or God or whatever you feel you relate to in that way. And for me, it was kind of all of the above. So yeah, I think that when it came time to name the record, I was like, “man, I think I’m just going to use that because that’s what I’ve been trying to do in my life.”

You lived in quite a few unique locations around the world. How has living in different places like that inspired you individually and musically?

Oh man. I mean, how has it not, really. I just love what travel and experiencing different people and cultures does for our minds and our hearts. So, I moved to New Zealand when I was 18 and I was like, “I’m going to Middle Earth.” So, I lived there for a year and a half. My childhood best friend had lived there. We didn’t actually live together when we were over there, but she was like, “we’re going to go back. You should come.” And I was like, “okay.” So, I quit varsity soccer. I worked my senior year of high school, and it was just like I’m gone. And I cannot express how grateful I am for that because I mean, I grew up in a pretty small town, raised Christian kind of in a bit of a bubble in my life and went to a private Christian school, and suddenly I was on the other side of the world in a 97% secular country, but with beautiful people. And it just created all kinds of conversations and juxtapositions of how I was raised and what I thought and all these things.

So yeah, especially that trip really changed me in how I viewed the world, just busting out of a previous life, I guess. And then of course, I’m going on adventures and gathering stories and meeting all kinds of people and listening to music I wouldn’t have listened to or been introduced to. I mean, New Zealand’s an island, so there’s all sorts of Pacific Islander influence, and that’s true of everywhere like British Columbia and Australia. I think that’s the nutshell though, is when you come into contact with people who are really different from you and were raised really differently, I think that those conversations for me just naturally spurred on change and asking questions of myself and my life. I feel like that all filters down into the music.

I actually went on a tour to New Zealand earlier this year and had a great time. If it was closer, I’d definitely want to go back.

Me too. I’m scheming to go back. That childhood friend that I mentioned earlier, she actually married a Kiwi and stayed there. She almost didn’t come home, and she just had a child, and I really want to go visit. And our other dear friend that I met down there, who’s now back in the States, but we want to go visit. So, if you go and you have a heart connection with the place in some ways, I love that it’s so far away. I wanted to stay special and people, well, I would love for everyone to be able to visit it, but that’s part of its charm. It’s literally just way out there. But anyways, I hope you get to go back.

Was it a challenging process to become a citizen?

Oh, I wasn’t a citizen. I wish I was.

So, you lived there unofficially?

I got a working holiday visa. So that was how I made that happen over there and fell in love, had my first love and was on a partnership visa for a while, that kind of thing. 

What led you to move to Nashville?

Pursuing music. I mean, it felt at that stage. So, I had kind of lived, came back from New Zealand, was living in British Columbia, then ended up in Australia, and I actually flew back directly to Nashville to move there from Australia. And it had been this sort of, I called it a haunting. It was like music was kind of haunting me a little bit. And I know that sounds sinister, but I mean, in a good way. It was like I was really coming to terms with this. I want to do this, and I want to give it my all and really go for it. And it just seemed like it made sense as a town to be in.

I heard it was a big city with a small town feel and nothing too crazy. But also, I really love the community here, and again, collaboration. So, it just seemed like the right place for me. And my dad actually had moved here. We had a bunch of music in our family on his side of the family, and he had this sort of personal desire to go there because some of our family members wish they had moved to Nashville and that kind of thing. And so, he wanted to go and check it out. So, I would get these calls from him being like, “I think you’d really like it.”

I was like, “okay.” Yeah, I’m really glad to call Nashville home now. It’s a beautiful, beautiful community.

So, you moved back from New Zealand to Nashville, or was there a place in between that?

There were a couple of places. I came back from New Zealand when I was approaching 20. I was 19 and I was home. I’m from Florida. I was home for about a year and was doing some study. And from there went to British Columbia for two years, and gosh, also such an epically beautiful place and sweet people had such a wonderful time there. Actually, I met an Australian that I was in a relationship with and that sort of precipitated going to Australia. And I lived there for about eight months, almost a year. And so, I actually flew straight to Nashville from Australia. The visa world was quite tricky in Australia, and I think that was December of 2013. So, 18 to 25, 26, was a lot of travel and living overseas.

Wow, that’s impressive. It must have been interesting moving back to the States after a bit of time away.

Yeah, definitely. If I had moved to India or Nepal or somewhere that was like, I’m aware that I lived in these first world English speaking countries, but it still felt like a culture shock coming back. There are these mentalities and ways of life that are still so different from the American sort of psyche. Even just, I’ll use Kiwis as New Zealanders are called as an example. 

One thing I really love about them as a whole, generalizing, they have this ingenuity and this can-do attitude, which is similar to the American way, but I feel like someone actually told me once before I went that they thought of New Zealand as America in the fifties, which obviously I didn’t experience, but it was intriguing. Because they’re an island, if something breaks, you can’t just go to Walmart and get a new thing. They don’t have as much access to things. How do we fix it? How do we use what we have? That way of being I really respect, and it kind of slows you down.

And I feel like even something like that, coming back to the States where we’re just so blessed and lucky to have so much around us at all times, that even that small shift in thinking can have you seeing the world differently from your peers a little bit. I know I’m making broad sweeping, I’m not trying to [demean] America in that way, but I do think that it changed how I related. And I will say too, a lot of my peers had used those years to get degrees and do other important things with their life, but I felt like I kind of had an education, a very different education, but a very important one. And yeah, hard to talk about because not many people had done anything similar.

Who would you say some of your biggest sonic influences,

How deep do you want to go? How far back do I want to go? I think I’ll try to keep this as concise as I can. At my mom’s house I was obsessed with Mariah Carey. As a young person, I would lock myself in my room and just sing, which a friend of mine actually was like, “I think that’s probably where you learned how to sing.” I can still do Mariah Carey runs just from memory from old songs. So it was like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, these powerful female singers.

And then many different things. But I went through many phases of musical genres I love to listen to. But then in my dad’s house, he was thoroughly a Beatles kid growing up. So, it was the Beatles constantly, being in church with him singing hymns. The Beatles and my dad were a large part of how I learned to harmonize how I embodied harmony. 

There are so many. I could name so many, but the artist that I particularly really gravitated towards as a young adult, I would say in my teens and older was Feist, Leslie Feist. I really love her music and her way with words and her connection to the natural world. I really love that. It really influenced me, and her melodic sense is so cool. And similarly, Matt Corby, who’s an Australian artist, I found his music when I was about 18, finally got to see him a few years ago. He came to Nashville. No one comes to Nashville from over there. And it was really cool to see him. He’s just an insane writer, musical mind, and voice. Gosh, he’s got an amazing voice. Yeah, I would say those core things. And then…yeah, I’m going to stop myself. I could just keep rambling about that.

What were some of the biggest surprises and lessons you learned from making the album?

I mean, the music, the writing is the fun part. It can be difficult. It’s certainly a craft and a skill that we hone and making the record was so fun, but it’s all the details that go into the planning. I think my record is the third Maya’s produced. She produced Joel Timmons and Shelby Means before mine, but she’s a new producer. She’s incredibly good at it and natural I’d say. But I was sort of able to watch also what she was doing to make this happen from a producer standpoint.

The amount of the combination of detail and structure of “Who do we want? Who is going to fit into this and bring what we need to the project? As well as how do we schedule everybody? How do we get all these details happening and are our guitars in good shape?” So many things go into it. 

And then after the music is made, I think to put it simply, it’s such collaborative effort and that’s on theme for me with this album, Trust Falls, how different team members are so necessary to bring their skills to actually make this thing happen, whether it’s production or press or the actual recording, the engineers and the musicians that come in the writing, the trying to plan tours, all this stuff. It’s like it was an education to realize why these things take so much time and energy and resources of all kinds. And I mean, records are expensive to make. It was just all of it was this major education, but also a reaffirming of why it’s so beautiful and important to do it.

What are you most looking forward to in the months ahead?

I am really looking forward to the official release on the 5th of September, and I have a little show in the works. I think the very next day is the date we’ve decided on here in town. And then Maya invited me to do a little weekend run with her where I’ll just sit in for a couple of songs at the end of September. 

And I’m in the process of working on booking some shows for the fall and the spring and maybe some in between. I’m just really looking forward to being out there. All this morning, for example, I printed out all my one sheets to ship things off to radio and press. After all the preparation, sharing my music and playing live for people again is really exciting.

You can follow and listen to Hannah Delynn at the following links: 

Joshua M. Miller

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Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.