Hannah Crofts from Baby Velvet
Hannah Crofts from Baby Velvet
Restarting a music career after almost a decade building your band into an international phenomena might sound crazy but for Hannah Crofts the experience has been exhilarating.
Most people would recognise Hannah as one of the members of Australian folk group, All Our Exes Live In Texas. After forming All Our Exes Live In Texas Hannah and her fellow band members spent years growing the band into a global force which has toured alongside the likes of Midnight Oil, The Backstreet Boys, Passenger, Megan Washington & Kate Miller-Heidke. Despite the immense success of All Our Exes Live In Texas each of the band members held onto their solo ambitions, so when the pandemic forced an immediate halt in touring the ladies seized the opportunity to work on their individual side projects.
Out of this forced isolation period Hannah was able to breath life into her new endeavour, Baby Velvet. Speaking to Pario ahead of Baby Velvet's first official show at The Vanguard in Sydney at the end of July Hannah reflected on her journey so far.
"All Our Exes has our 10 year anniversary as a band next year, which feels crazy," explained Hannah. "We spent seven of those 10 years touring & in the last full year before COVID hit we did something like 250 shows in that year."
While the ladies of All Our Exes were submitting themselves to a gruelling tour schedule Hannah said she "loved" ever minute of it because she is a self-professed "tour dog". So although they didn't want to stop touring Hannah realised the forced down could prove to be a wonderful opportunity to pursue solo interests & experiment more than ever before.
Under the Baby Velvet banner Hannah says she has "definitely tried to experiment" because for the first ever she was able take music she had written herself and arrange how she saw fit. A process which she described as "very different, weird, and scary" but one which was inspired by the thought, "if you have one chance to make one record in your life what do want it to sound like?"
Although the pandemic afforded Hannah the opportunity to create Baby Velvet's debut album, Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else, it also placed some extra hurdles in her path. The biggest hurdle being the inability to travel to Los Angeles to work in the studio alongside her producer Kevin Ratterman. However, not one to ever be brought down by situations Hannah told Pario there were both positives and negatives to the entire pandemic creation process.
"It was really good in that I was able to buy all of the recording gear to set up my bedroom as a recording booth. Just to have the time to sit down & learn how to use all of these tools was amazing because I had never recorded myself before, but now I could make an album by myself if I wanted to. In another sense it was also good because it allowed me the time to sit there & do vocal take after vocal take, whereas in studio I might be stressed about time & money. Conversely, that was also really negative because I could keep working on it & nit-picking everything to the point where I drove myself a little bit crazy in the process."
Ultimately Hannah is proud of the record she was able to produce remotely and is incredibly excited to finally be taking to the stage in Sydney to show it off to fans in a live setting. Although returning to the live stage is exhilarating for Hannah she explained that this is also the time where the transition to a solo act is most the most daunting.
"Obviously I have a good starting off platform with Exes but this project is a baby... I always think about how in Exes I am successful but in Baby Velvet I'm a baby band who has only just started... I feel like I'm 21 starting my journey all over again... Just because people like me in a band will they like me on my own? I still don't really know the answer to that because I haven't been out to tour yet."
Perhaps something which will calm Hannah's nerves though is a small perilous of serendipity with debut shows. When All Our Exes Live In Texas made their Sydney debut they did so at The Vanguard, which is where Hannah will now debut Baby Velvet.
"When I was booking the tour my first Sydney Baby Velvet show it was really exciting to get to do it at The Vanguard."
Looking beyond the Baby Velvet tour Hannah reassured fans of All Our Exes Live In Texas that the band will return in the near future.
"At some point Exes will do a second record - after 10 years we really should do a second record," Hannah said with a giggle before closing our conversation. "Ideally the dream would be that we all release our solo records, go on tours independently then come back together for some time as a band and then tour independently again. Hopefully we can keep doing both until we are 90 years old on stage unable to hold our instruments anymore."
July 21. The Vanguard, 42 King St, Newtown. $17.33+b.f. Tickets & Info: wwwthevanguard.com.au
Follow Hannah's Creative Journey on Social Media @BabyVelvetMusic
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