Interview Rewriting History: Lucy Dacus

It was in the wake of her second album ‘Historian’’s release that she found herself retracing her steps; looking back on the past in order to discover - or at least attempt to - more of a sense of her current self. “There were some things that were really easy to realise,” she explains. “I’ve always been a host. I’ve always wanted to create a space and invite people into it. I never wanted to be a musician so it makes more sense to me, in that context, than it did when it first started happening,” she laughs. “It did not make sense to me that I was doing music! But if I think, ‘Oh, I’ve always just wanted to create a space, be a host and make people feel warm and like they’re supposed to be there’. That’s, at best, what I think shows can be. It makes me think that I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Equally, much like any processing of life, there were bigger themes she found herself facing. “I feel like I kind of accidentally stopped believing in God, and I didn’t really notice it,” she offers up. From the bible camp that offers the backdrop to ‘VBS’ to the conflict that sits at the heart of ‘Double Dog Dare’, the imprint of her younger self’s faith feels very much present. “I’ve been thinking back to that time, and trying to relate to that person who had such a deep faith and excavate the lessons that are worth keeping, and actually say goodbye to the things I need to let go of.”

To pretend that ‘Home Video’ is a record that sees the past through rose-tinted glasses would be, however, to do it a great disservice. While, of course, Lucy believes the process of sifting through memories to have been largely productive in the long term, it doesn’t mean that the journey has been an entirely comfortable one.

“I feel it in my gut,” she says, when asked whether she’s at all anxious about the reactions of some of song’s subjects, who - unlike with some art - are very much real people. “There’s a couple of songs that I am expecting that someone’s probably gonna reach out and I’m just gonna have to deal with it. I got some advice from some friends recently and they said, ‘If they call, pick up if you can that day and don’t pick up if you can’t.’ That’s one thing about living in the moment; you get to know how you’re feeling in that moment. You don’t have to pre-plan how you’re gonna act. I think I often try to pre-plan my emotional state but I don’t think that’s very useful.”

On the other hand, some of the album’s players are already aware of their stories being told, and have found Lucy’s retellings to be positive. “‘Thumbs’, ‘Christine’ and ‘Please Stay’ have just strengthened my friendships,” she smiles, referencing three of ‘Home Video’’s most striking, personal tracks. “That has a lot to say about my specific friends. It’s a credit to the company I keep; they are generous and kind people, so I feel like I’m lucky.”

It’s not just the respect of her friends that Lucy feels grateful for right now. Even ahead of completing the record, Lucy would perform ‘Thumbs’ - a stark and disarming track about her feelings towards a friend’s awful father - at her live shows, politely requesting the audience didn’t film the track while she grew comfortable with its performance. They obliged. “I feel really lucky and listened to. Just the fact that I was playing ‘Thumbs’ for so long, and I asked people not to record it and people listened to me… When it came out, I realised how much restraint on a grand scale [that was]. I probably played it for, you know, tens of thousands of people and they didn’t cross me,” she laughs. It was this trust that granted her the freedom to be so personal here.

“I haven’t done it as much in the past,” she says of her earlier work. "I feel like I’ve been writing from my personal experience, but more generally, but these [songs] are so detail heavy, and it does feel scarier, but it feels like it makes sense that I’m doing it on my third record instead of my first, because I needed to trust people. I have a relationship with my listeners, and even though it’s an undefinable mass of people, I think that there’s a give and take.”

More than anything, through venturing back into her memories - positive, painful, confusing, or conflicting - has proven to be the powerful tool for self-growth she was first drawn to, and a reminder to appreciate just where we’ve come from.

“I think nostalgia is a really powerful thing. At a really basic level, nostalgia is about having good feelings about the past, right?” she reflects. “How lucky is that? I know a lot of people that don’t, and just hate the past, but I think that feeling connected to your past is such - at least for me - a way to know oneself and feel comfortable in the present, and be grounded enough to face the future.”

‘Home Video’ is out 25th June via Matador.

Tags: Lucy Dacus, From The Magazine, Features, Interviews