The Erin Durant Interview
Born and raised in the rare air of New Orleans, where majestic melodies and the vibrancies of voodoo culture seep from the spiritual soil, LA-based singer-songwriter Erin Durant has been conjuring a style and overall approach to their craft for over a decade since the release of 2016’s “Blueberry Mountain”. After an eager exploration, the Southern California songstress has released two full-length LPs, “Islands” and “Firetrail,” and shows no signs of holding back their poetic prowess.
Photo: Maximilla Lukacs
Tell me about growing up in New Orleans before eventually relocating to LA. What was your experience like being from such a historically rich and culturally captivating place? I imagine the “Big Easy” impacted your life in several different ways. Unlike Buffett, who relocated here to Nashville during that period, you went the opposite direction and embraced (the East Coast before eventually moving to) the West Coast. What ultimately motivated those decisions, and how have these cities influenced your songwriting and approach to music over the years?
Photo: Sarah Danziger
I feel lucky to have grown up in New Orleans, as it’s a part of me. It’s a complicated and beautiful place, and I really felt that growing up. A healer there once told me, ‘Honey, we’re below sea level; the vibrations are so slow’. It feels like a mystical elder family member to me, and any time someone has that cosmic connection to the city, it makes me happy. I have a lot of memories connected to the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and Bayou Barataria. Lots of water! My family worked in the shipyard business when I was growing up, located on the Industrial Canal. I spent a lot of time there, climbing up little, mountain-sized piles of shells. My dad and I would sit on the barges and fish for speckled trout that moved from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain. It was around this time that my parents separated, so we moved neighborhoods a few times. One of the upsides was getting to know different parts of the city pretty well. We lived in Metairie, then Algiers—which is on the Westbank, and I took the ferry a lot to cross the Mississippi back and forth. Then we lived uptown near the Carrollton River bend. And then my mom settled around Bayou St. John in Mid-City. That house was a few blocks away from the Jazz Fest. The neighborhood would come alive so much during that time, and you could hear the music even sitting on our front porch swing. It was special to grow up in a place where music is such a natural part of everything. New Orleans has given me a sense of playfulness and whimsy that seeps into my music. I moved to New York when I was 22, so I grew up as an adult there. In New York, there’s a level of art, weirdness, grit, and complexity that I find to be inspiring. I love playing shows there with different kinds of musicians, and I think the city has always been a place that fosters that type of exchange. It works because there’s an energy and excitement about what everyone is doing, and you can feel the history of all the different music and art that’s been there. And that it’s been a home to a lot of people who left where they are from to be there, part of that confluence. That’s always been exciting to me. After a decade and a half in New York, I realized I needed to be closer to nature when I stumbled upon Topanga Canyon on a West Coast tour. I just loved it immediately. The quietness and getting in touch with learning to listen more and observe differently. I was inspired by having the frogs, bugs, and birds nearby. I can be a bit of a homebody, so this year I’ve been traveling more out of the canyon into LA for music and community, which also brings me lots of inspiration.
Photo: Maximilla Lukacs
With the obvious nature and creative core of LA over the decades, I’m curious to know what you find in particular romantic and personal about the city and its iconic influence on your craft? Tell me about some of your early works like “Blueberry Mountain”, your Keeled Scales debut “Islands”, and 2025’s “Firetrail”.
The community of songwriters out here keeps amazing me—past and present. I’ve loved meeting people, sharing songs, and meeting up with friends to sing harmonies. Everyone seems open to these types of things. There’s also been some fun poker games with fellow musicians, but I always then go back to the stillness and nature part. I’ve been living in a cabin, and there’s a great horned owl that sleeps in the oak trees nearby during the day. I’ve gotten to observe his routines for a few seasons now. I get excited to wake up at dawn and see if he’s on one of his favorite branches. There was also this big classic toad who showed up at my front door two years in a row around the same time. I wondered if it was the same toad. There are so many magical things like that which seem to happen out here, or maybe it's because this place helps me be more open to it. I fall into the camp of ‘those who prefer not to explain too much about their work’. And it’s funny to me because I feel like my music is very personal and that it’s all in there. And I wouldn’t want the explanations to impact the listener from having their own experience with the music. With that being said, I would like to share a little bit about where I was while making these records and some of the process. These three records, with titles that could be a place and a metaphor, have become a sort of trilogy. “Blueberry Mountain” was written in New York at a time when I was flying back and forth to New Orleans to be with my mom after she was diagnosed with cancer. I think the simplicity of the recordings was partly owed to this fact, and at the time, it felt necessary for me to play solo.
“After a decade and a half in New York, I realized I needed to be closer to nature when I stumbled upon Topanga Canyon on a West Coast tour. I just loved it immediately. The quietness and getting in touch with learning to listen more and observe differently. I was inspired by having the frogs, bugs, and birds nearby. I can be a bit of a homebody, so this year I’ve been traveling more out of the canyon into LA for music and community, which also brings me lots of inspiration.”
Photo: Todd Weaver
I think somewhere in my mind my favorite records at the time were all solo, or at least even if they weren’t, they felt like it by the arrangements and production. I had Springsteen’s album “Nebraska” as my compass. My friend Colin Langenus lent me his 4-track Tascam tape player. He came over, showed me how to use it, and then I was able to record myself in my living room. I would say this record taught me how to get the take I wanted. I would record each song about three times all the way through, and there was always one that had the magic when I listened back. I recorded these in the colder months, and the heater steam pipe would go off at different intervals, so I would wait until I knew I had the moment to record a full song. My album “Islands” is kind of a letter to New Orleans at the time after my mom passed away. With this record, I had Gram Parsons “Song for You” in the back of my mind. This was the first full record I recorded in a studio. I worked with my friend Kyp Malone, who produced it. I was apprehensive about recording with other musicians because at that point I was writing and mostly performing solo, and I didn’t want to lose the essence of the songs. Thankfully, that did not happen, and I got to work with amazing and sensitive musicians who I continue to collaborate with today. We recorded live to tape, and it was exciting to expand on what I had already done. “Firetrail” was a maximalist record for me, which was what I needed to make at the time because I had a lot creatively and personally to express in a new chapter, and I wanted to really chase the sounds more than I was hinting at within each song. Musicals, medieval imagery, and decadence inspired me. In these songs, I explored different characters and personas who were all circling love. I worked with Kyp Malone again, and we built on our collaboration after “Islands”. We also recorded the core of this album live to tape.
Photo: Maximilla Lukacs
I know you’ve spoken about this in great detail since the release last May, so I’ll ask: how much has changed for you both professionally and personally over the last year? Sharing bills with the wonderful Shannon Lay and TV on the Radio, to name a few, what has been most enjoyable and fantastic since the release of “Firetrail”? Anything in the works for the summer, and beyond?
I love performing. It’s such an immediate experience, the direct connection with the space and the audience, and all the ins and outs. For “Firetrail,” I’ve had a few opportunities to perform the full arrangements from the record. And I loved the TV on the Radio shows I played, which were solo performances, and that was special too because it brings me back to the core of the songs. Back in May, with Shannon Lay and two of our friends, Shelley Burgon and Nicole Lawrence, we put on a show at Zebulon where we each played on each other’s songs, essentially forming a quartet for the night. It was inspiring to explore each other’s songs and hope to do another one at some point. I just got back from Colorado, where I was playing mountain dulcimer with a friend for a week. I’m excited to be exploring different instruments. I’m also learning the harp. And this past winter I took a month-long Lee Strasberg-style acting class. I think the theatricality and expressiveness of what was created on “Firetrail” inspired me to do this and go deeper into that, and the class was helpful with that. This fall, I’ll be releasing the first vinyl pressing of “Blueberry Mountain” that will be out on Keeled Scales in November. It was originally released just on cassette. And I’m working on putting together performances for that time that I’m excited about. Thank you for all your questions.
