Maya Hawke

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin Pushkin. Learning to make it on your own without your parents can be tough for any kid, but especially if your mom and dad are superstars. Over the last three years, Maya Hawk has managed to escape the long shadow of her very famous parents with Irman and Ethan Hawk. She's made a name for herself, first as an actor in Stranger Things, Little Women in Tarantino's latest Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and now Mayah Hawk is breaking new ground as a singer songwriter. Maya's debut album, Blush is an invitation into her vivid inner life and her songs. She's figuring out who she is out in the world alone. The songs are clever, poetic, and raw. They touch on the dynamic emotional life of a young woman navigating her way through love, lust and disappointment. I spoke with Maya recently from her family's home on Long Island. She speaks candidly about how she honors all the various versions of herself and why she slipped into what she calls her sultry Cinderella character. During early live performances. You'll also hear Maya talk about going to Graceland with her dad and a song she wrote about their rocky relationship. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondton. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right, enjoyed the episode, Here's my conversation with Maya Hawk, But before we jump in, here's my and her producer, Jesse Harris on guitar performing the first single from Blush. It's called by Myself. I was thinking about talking to you yesterday, and I was thinking I first saw you first, even knew about you from seeing Quentin's movie last summer. Yeah, my wife watched The Stranger Things. I haven't really seen it, but she knew you from that. But I was thinking about how both of those things came out last summer. So last summer must have been a complete whirlwind, and what a difference like a year makes for me. The part that feels like a whirlwind is the making of the thing, Like the summer before, when I was filming Stranger Things and sneaking away to film Quentin's movie and like recording a bunch of music and like that summer felt like a whirlwind. And then last summer of twenty nineteen that was just a summer where things came out. Setting it for To the public part, it is sort of like, is that you know you want to hide under the covers a little bit? Got it? Got it? Obviously you're still young, but you've been acting for a few years. And I tend to think I guess people tend to think of actors as being just very free with themselves, you know, and it's hard to imagine that you aren't impervious to things like just feeling like, oh man, this thing's coming out finally, and how's it going to be perceived? And I mean, first of all, a lot of the actors that I know are some of the least free with themselves people I've ever met. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about that. But I also think there's a difference between being free with yourself in the space that you're in where you can look at every person in the room in the eye and exist in your whole self in that moment when you're recording the piece of work or on the stage and you can look at the audience, or even at a dinner party and you can look at everyone in the room. There's a difference between that level of being an extrovert and the level of being willing to take that extra version and share it with millions of people or hundreds of people. That's another level of bravery that I think you almost have to be psychopathic not to be afraid of. That's fair. I hadn't considered that, and I guess it's almost a difference between doing things like this in person and doing things like this over zoom. There's a bit of control you lose between, you know, Like I guess if you're doing something a stage production, even though there's an audience out there and you don't know exactly who they are, there's a bit of you feeling like you're in control of what's happening to them, and the reactions and things just go to air somewhere. You're like, You're like, I don't know, okay, yeah, right, the energy is different, you like, you know, and like also I probably present myself differently if we've done it in person, Like I just jumped out of the pool and throw on a feature and sat down to talk to you, you know, which is different than you know, if I'd come into your office, I would have like picked out the right pair of genes, you know, and like my hair probably right. Well, I like we're gett into a more real version. The more the more authentic, They're all equally real, you know. I mean, I think that the idea of authenticity is a very complicated idea, Like what is your authentic self? Is? It? Is it when you prepare to meet people or when you're unprepared, like when you're with your best friend or with a complete stranger. Sometimes we're more ourselves with strangers than we are with our family. And what does that even mean? To be yourself? It really just means how yourself are you being in that moment, right, Like any self that you are will change from moment to moment. I think for me, at least, it does. Absolutely. When I was listening to your album, it feels like the idea of identity comes up a bit totally. Yeah, I think that's true. You think that in those years when you leave the school system and you leave the family system and you enter your independent system, whether you're twenty six leaving grad school, or eighteen leaving high school, or like I was nineteen leaving a first year of drama school, and then you kind of hit the streets on your own and you're living by yourself, and I think it's a massive developmental moment for a person because you start to realize who are you on your own? You know, like it's the first one where you're really, for me, at least, faced with the mirror reflection of like, Okay, who have I become? And so? And this album was written in those first three years that I was working for the first time in the real business world and living by myself for the first time, and having adult relationships for the first time. And I think that, you know, maybe in a narcissistic way, maybe not, all of those experiences gave me moments to check in and look at myself and say, Okay, wow, this is how I handled X situation, This is how I handled why? Like interesting that I have become this person? What person do I want to be? How do I want to handle these differently? How do I like? Do I like myself? Do I like the way I handled that or not? And so this album for me tracks a lot of those experiences, So you're really taking account of you, of yourself, who you are, I think. So yeah, I mean, I guess I'm one of those kids who've been in therapy since they were well over something, you know, So I generally I'm self reflective to the point of it being a fault. Like I think that people say to me all the time where they go, well, I guess that sounds like a complicated problem, but like it's amazing that you're so self aware about it. And my response is I was like, yeah, I'm self aware. I know, I'm self aware. That doesn't mean I can change anything. Like just because I know why I'm doing the crazy thing that I'm doing, doesn't mean I'm gonna stop. Like I'm still gonna keep doing that crazy thing. Like I'm not in control. I just know what's out of control. That said, it's good to know it's good. It is not as good as you would think it is. It doesn't get you as far as even would want it to to. So you wrote this three three years ago. You started, So we started three years ago. I just turned nineteen about it, and then I kind of wasn't planning on making a whole record. I just sort of had gone to my friend Jesse, who is who I wrote this album with, and asked him for some advice on a song i'd written on my first job in that i'd done in Ireland, and he gave me some advice and I was like, hey, look like, if you ever want to write a song together, I would love to just let me know. And because he co writes with a lot of people and there's a lot of stuff, and he was like, great, cool, how do you want to do it? I was like, maybe I just I'll send you a poem, and so I send him a poem that I'd written and he put it to music and that ended up being to Love a Boy, which was the first single that we ever made together. And then we just kind of kept doing that without really, at least on my end, without there ever being a plan to make an album or really even to play a show, or like, I just was enjoying having a place to put my poems. So then we just sort of kept kept plugging along and collecting songs and eventually had enough to play a show, and we played a show, and then we put out those singles, and then we got some attention from a label who wanted to ask us we had enough for an album, and we were like, yes, we do. Here they are, and that's sort of how we ended up here. Now, what was your first show? My first show is at Rockwood Music Hall. I think I did like a twelve song set with the band that I still play with. How was that experience terrifying? I've only done probably twelve shows in my whole livelong life. It started out being really fun because I had so much adrenaline about performing and so much nerves that I was kind of almost totally unaware of what was happening around me. Like I just would kind of stumble on stage and be like, Okay, I'm gonna sing these songs now, and then by the time it was over, like I blinked and it was over. But then the more I did, the more I was able to actually relax on stage and become aware of the mistakes that I was making, the places I wasn't being myself. I'll return to using that phrase that we talked, like, the place that I wasn't being the version of me that I wanted to be. I often have a character that I can fall into. I've had it ever since I was in like ninth grade, which I call like sultry Disney princess, Like I've become like a slightly like drunk kind of like sexualized Cinderella or something, and it's like kind of bubbly and like, oh, like I'm gonna say something really inappropriate, but in a really sweet way so you don't even notice. And I hate her, like she's just my worst enemy. I hate her so much. And I was doing that character a lot on stage, and so the more shows I did, the more I realized how I could grow and get better. And only my last show I ever played before COVID happened, which was at Joe's Pub, was a show where I was like, Okay, cool, I can stand behind that performance, like I feel good about how I did that night. When did music become part of your life in a real way? Music was always a part of my life, primarily through my father, who was just like a big music fan, a big kind of old fashioned country music fan, like not pop country, but like the good old stuff, Johnny Cash and that kind of thing, and he that was sort of always on in our living room. And Willie Nelson and Neil Young and Bob Dylan and those sort of like great old folk guys Leonard Cohen. Um, that was kind of like the language of what was playing in the house. UM when I was a kid, and I really fell in love with that primarily still like through the poetry. Like what moved me the most about it was the was the language. Lines would get stuck in my head and I would focus on them, and even as a kid, like write poems based on those lines. Wow, any particular lines that you remembered. And still I loved this song, um, the song The Redheaded Stranger from from Blue Rock, Montana wrote into Town one day, Um, and he talks about in that song there's um he's wild in his sorrow. Um is one of the lines in the chorus, don't cross him, don't boss him, He's wildest sorrow. And I wrote a poem when I was a kid called wild in my Sorrow. No one writes like Willie, No one writes So that's just yeah, yeah, get goosebumps here in a line. Yeah, even over zoom. It's like and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's incredible. He's amazing and so and then my dad also like is kind of a novice guitar player, as am I UM and UM. We just kind of had like jams sessions in the living room and we would memorize songs together and sing them. We used to sing Hungry Heart and this song called Blue Wing, and like we just kind of had this sort of hoot nanny like like you know, would you're surprise there wasn't a harmonica in the mix, kind of guitar circle the two of us in the living room when I was a kid, So that was a big part of my upbringing. And then, you know, my parents are divorced, and when, especially when I was younger, when I'd have to spend a lot of time away from my dad he'd go away to work or something, he would give me these playlists. He made me this playlist that ended up being actually featured in a movie, to my great chagrin, which was like a Beatles Black album playlist where he took songs from every Beatle from after they had broken up and kind of reconstructed a final Beatles album by combining them. And he made me a playlist all of Dylan covers and he'd like he would sort of mix it up, and he made me all these great playlists to try to teach me about music and Elvis playlist. So we went on a road trip together to follow the life of Elvis from like the first church that he was born and where he got his first guitar. When was this, I guess I was thirteen and you were into it at thirteen, Like this wasn't like like you're forced along anytime I got to spend with my dad. I was into at thirteen. He mean, he's my hero. Um, A few have a daughter. It's all all good, all goodness coming up. She'll love you heart. And so we went on this. Yeah, we went to where Elvis bought his first guitar, and we went to the church that he was born, and we went to Memphis and Sun Studios in Nashville and then finally to Graceland. UM, so that kind of I don't know, It's just always a part of my life. I really considered myself, you know, a fan more than anything else. And I still do. Like I I'm not a great musician. I love to sing. I sang my whole life. I was always inquired at school and I love I love to sing, but I don't I don't really know how to play an instrument in any way that would impress anyone except like maybe like a boy at a party one night or something like I can vaguely that's useful. That's useful. Oh, trust me, I milk it. But I milk those twelve chords. I know to to heaven and back. But I love music and I love writing poetry. And so the collaboration with Jesse and getting to sort of like have access to his brain and his amazing melodic thinking and that incredibly sophisticated way in which he constructs melody, I feel like we come together in a way that I really like because it adds some roughness to his um sort of like elegance, and he adds some elegance to my roughness. We'll be right back with my Hawk. After a quick break, we're back. Here's Maya Hawk and Jesse Harris performing her song Generous Heart. Oftentimes you'll hear a song, a Neil Young song, and it will sound like deeply personal, and you'll find out, well, it was really about a character. You know, he wasn't writing about himself. He was thinking of someone else. I wasn't sure how much so that was going on, But it seems like you're kind of revealing yourself in this pretty public way with these songs. Yeah, Like, yes, it is revealing. They are all the songs. When I wrote them, at least felt extraordinarily personal. They now feel more like characters to me, because the mood that I was in when I wrote them doesn't feel like the mood I'm in now. You know, if it was about it was about a very powerful feeling or whatever that I was having, then it's not a feeling that is present in me. So in a lot of ways, when I go to sing those songs again, it does feel like a character I have to get back into the Like for example, when I wrote Menace, I was feeling tremendous shame over being an extrovert. I was feeling very embarrassed about basically being a flirt. Like I was feeling like I was in a relationship and like we were just getting these constant fights about the way that I would behave when I was out at a party or whatever, and I really would make an effort to like make everyone at the party feel good, and like I touch people's shoulders a lot, and like I shared a lot of myself with a lot of people, and I just mean socially right, and we get we get into a lot of fights about it because what he really wanted from me in those scenarios was to like be on his arm, and I was feeling really guilty about that. I was like, fuck, like I'm a bad person, Like I'm not being a good girlfriend. I'm I'm being a menace. Um. And then you know that relationship ended and I now sing that song and I'm like, what the frick was I thinking? Like like I was being fine, like like like like I don't need to spend all my energy devoting to like coddling and eat, Like I can be a social person and that's okay. How do you feel when you sing it? Then? I mean beyond that, you don't connect to the person, but in somewhere in your head you know that you were that person. Does it? Do you now feel almost ashamed to have been the person who was embarrassed to be just an open person? Yeah? I mean I usually, like before I sing that song in public, I usually tell some version of the story that I just told you, which then makes me kind of feel better about it. And I sort of sing it from the from the point of view of a person who's like kind of lying about not wanting to be a menace anymore, and like I focus more on the lyrics of the verses, do you mind singing a verse from it? Let's see first. The first lyrics of the verse are, turn my gaze away, relieve the impressions that I've made, like rain in my creeping hand. I want to behave. It's a small concession all my regressions I don't understand, but it's painful old news and pales in comparison to choosing you. So it's so like there's a certain kind of accurate statement of fact in the verses. In the chorus is I don't want to be a menace anymore. And that's what I feel detached from right like now I feel like, no, I do want to be a menace. Actually I'm fine with that. But in the verses, those are more sort of statements of fact and feeling and things that happened and so that I can kind of more attach to as a memory, versus this claim of how I want to change is what feels more alien to me. It almost makes a song cooler in no way, because it's now the course is ironic, Yes, yes, exactly that's so I feel when I sing it now, I'm like, this is an ironic chorus. But okay, I like that a lot, because you know, you do sound very sincere when you sing. It's like there's a certain feeling I get listening to music that I get when I listened to like a group, particularly like like The Mamas and the Papa's Right. Oh yeah, I love that when you listen to that music, there's they're really sincere. They really pour themselves into the music, you know, And listening to your album felt a lot like that same experience for me. There are jokes all over the album, but from like at least as a listener. I love it when I'm listening to a song and I hear the joke, but I feel like I'm the only one who gets it, like if the maybe I take this from acting a little bit, like when some actors will wink at you while they're acting and they're like, this is acting. You know, They're like they're like that was a joke, this is acting, and they're like, I'm actually a movie star, and you know, like there's a kind of like a kind of like wink about it. Yeah, And so I like it to hide the jokes and hide the irony in total sincerity, so that if there is that one person who listens to it twenty times, they're like, oh my god, she doesn't mean that line, or like that line is actually a slam of that person, Like she's singing it like it's a compliment, but it's actually as total disc like cool. Do you either a couple of jokes or winks you can? You can let us in on it. There are let me see if I can think of them. They're all over um the last song Mirth. The middle verse of Mirth is, um, I've got a problem I think he could fix. He seems to undo all my usual tricks, But the marks on his belly and the lines on his face shadow his softness and romantic grace. That whole song is sort of secretly about there's two songs on the record that this is an adult podcast. Yes, yes, okay, so the two songs on the record that are kind of secretly about not being able to orgasm and um, and I never would have guessed that it's the first and last song m like the last lines of Generous Heart, I know it's my fault. I need to lie dead to find a cascade towards something but dread. And that's secretly about that. But I wouldn't want anyone to know or find out. But to me, that's what it's about. And so inside I'm winking and laughing. Well, only people are listening to this. Yeah, I never would have got it. That's your inside scool. Yeah, there we go, running with it. Let's talk about so long a little bit. Um. I love this sort of dissonant sound of this cool song. I guess where does this song come from? I really like this one a lot. This song is basically about the idea that, like, if you have like a crush that you've met a couple times or whatever, you can start to think about them so much that they become a character in your life that is different than the person that they are. I mean, it's also happen. This thing also happened a million different relationships. It can happen in a professional relationship, whatever. But if you focus on somebody, anyone really in your life, and you spend a lot of your time alone thinking about them, they become this other person, this sort of ghost character in your life that is totally separate from the person that they actually are my favorite lyrics in the song are all in those pre choruses, and the first one is I'm not a coward. I'm just afraid of all of the things that I am, or of how quickly tomorrow coutunity yesterday? And I know that doesn't you said these were written long before this year, but I think those blinds stuck out to me, particularly the pre course, because I think I feel that way so much about our future moving. You know, like and I know has nothing to do with society or politics, or I mean, I mean like everything has to do with society and politics. I mean all of our interpersonal relationships, all of our are all interacting with the world. I mean, if you think that you can exist outside of society and politics, or outside of the world even in your interpersonal relationships and feelings, you're sort of delusional. I think, for Co would definitely agree with you. Yeah, but how our tomorrow concerned you yesterday? I think what I meant when I initially wrote that line was that, you know, the idea of something is so much is often so much shinier than the reality. Sometimes it isn't, and that is amazing when that happens, When the reality of something is even bigger and brighter and more beautiful than the idea of it, but so often it isn't, and the fantasy is so much kind of more alive in you than the reality would be. Right. But I think that that kind of can connect to now in two ways, which is one like we're also afraid of what's going to happen and that it will be terrible, and like probably and maybe it won't be so terrible, like maybe things will end up okay. I don't know, or we end up putting away all our fears and just being blindly optimistic and being like everything's going to be okay, and that fantasy is so much brighter than what will really happen. Probably. Yeah, I was realizing too, the line I cannot hide my cards, can't even keep them close that struck me, And then two songs later coverage, Here's where I put my trust. If you tell a lie enough, you can't pick it from the truth. It's been of tremendous use. Yes, as you's almost saying two different things about if they're in fact about you. It's like there's these two different versions of you. There's you you cannot help but show you can you can't expose yourself, and then there's a party that's like, well, I'm not really given too much of myself. I mean, I think that's a wonderful observation, and I think that that's really true. And that kind of plays into what I was talking about about how each song, though there were all pretty much written very personally, are different characters because of the different moods and changes that I went through while I was writing them. In life, like if I'm at a dinner or whatever, everyone would know what I'm thinking about when anyone is saying, Like all my thoughts are written right across my face. Like if I think someone saying anything stupid, it'll I'll make like I just I can't control my face. So that's kind of what I cannot have my cards dear, can't even give them close sort of means is that if you get me in the moment, I'm a terrible liar and I'm totally responsive to whatever is happening. The scenario that line and coverage is sort of about like how I do like with memory and stuff. I have constructed memories for myself that are totally false based on just repeating them in my head and picturing them, like my parents got divorced when I was pretty young, and when I was a kid, I spent so much time sort of trying to remember and hold on to the moments in which they were together, that I have fully invented visual memories of times that we're together that didn't happen. And I believe in somewhat in the way that I believe in acting, I believe that that is possible. I believe that like reality is totally fragmented and exist in your head, and you can create alternate realities for yourself, alternate consciousnesses for yourself if you lie to yourself enough, and that as a tool that can be used to tremendous good and tremendous harm. And so I think both things like it's a good catch. Those are very contrasting forces in my life. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Maya Hawk, but before we break, let's hear her play an acoustic version of her song So Long. We're back with Maya Hawk. Before we hear the rest of our conversation, let's listen to the gorgeous song she wrote about her relationship with her dad, Ethan Hawk. Here's Goodbye rocket Ship from Maya's album Blush. There's moments of the album that are more quiet and it's just you in a guitar, and then there's moments where there's much more going into the song. You know, there's there's the fault, you have a full band behind you. You know. Yeah, it sounds like you could have gone and kept the whole album acoustic. Was there a reason? Did certain songs feel like they needed something more to you? Or what did you? What did you and Jesse decide on that? Like? How did that come for me? It was again, like more about play and experimentation than it was about the intention of making an album, Like if I do this again, I think I will Corey your graph much more sort of like what I'm trying to do with the album sonically. Most of the songs were recorded individually on this record, and like also it was like we wrote we did Animal Enough after we'd played a couple of shows and I left this when I was like, I wish there was a moment in our set where we could sing a song that like would make people feel excited about the fact that they have to stand, you know, like all these songs I feel like you'd want to sit and listen to these songs, and I want a song to play in the middle of the show that makes everyone want to stand up? Can we make one like that? And as it was like sure, So it seems like it's something you're really more and more getting into and evolving yourself in. Does it feel like something you want? I mean, is there a goal now? Yeah? I think I definitely, like learned so much about music production and music through this process, and I'm really excited to sort of like take that information and go into another situation and make something else. I'm excited to, like, rather than doing an album kind of piecemeal the most as find usual experience as I've had to have been like rehearsing a set a bunch of times and then performing it for people. And I would love to treat an album like that. I would love to get a band together and rehearse a set and then record the set. And that doesn't necessarily mean like live like happy to do overdubs and add things in, but to have this feeling like, oh, we were constructing a whole experience from beginning to end, and that was a part of it. In its performance and in its creation rather than sort of a piecemeal collection. In the beginning, there was a moment where I sort of really tried to simplify the way that I write, to kind of make kind of simpler songs. I was sort of pairing myself back, like not in a bad way, and like I was just I was really looking for the most essential words, most essential feelings and really trying to pair down. And then the stuff that I'm working on now, I'm kind of letting myself pair back up, like now that my information, like now that I'm thinking about things in a different way and I know more, I'm letting myself be sillier and like write songs other people's perspectives and use sort of more poetically ambitious language and add more jokes and be more silly. As you're writing now, and I know you're saying you can feel you can be more free, for you to do more, for you to do less. What is your writing looking like? Now? Do the songs feel any different? Yeah, they feel really different to me. A lot of these songs on this first album feel very developmental to me. And there are also a lot of love songs on this album and a lot of the stuff I've been writing now is less that I wrote a song about about reputation and acting in celebrity I've written I wrote a song about one of my favorite authors. So I've kind of started to do more to play more in the material that is interesting to me. And I think that just makes a lot of sense. I mean, like the ages between nineteen and twenty one are very love focused years, and even like using different tools to really write about the same thing, Like yes, the song I wrote recently about my favorite author is about my third author, but it is also not like it's also sort of using that as a device to talk about this person in the way that they behave and how they remind me of each other, you know. And I love how self aware you are of like you know, particularly your age. You know, I don't know that I was that self aware at that time. Listening to your music, listening to your album, I had a lot of the same feelings with surface that I felt like I had ten years ago when I was twenty twenty one. I think that's a really great thing about music, is that music can make you do that. And I think it's a really cool thing that you did to be self aware enough to sort of not try to write beyond where you are, sort of, yeah, you just gotta be where you are. And that's still what I'm trying to do now, is just sort of be where I am. It's like where I am happens to be, like in quarantine, spending a lot of time online with the news, and a lot of time reading books, and a lot of time like talking to my friends on the phone, and and so I think it's just all about being president in your current circumstance, writing as honestly as you possibly can from the most potent version of the feeling that you're having now, with an understanding that feeling will fade and change, and not trying to like encapsulate your entire person in one song, and also not trying to run away from who you are in the songs either. So much of your early musical development was attached to family events, going on these road trips with your family and just your dad making you these great mixtapes. Was it fun to finally share any of your music with your with your parents, with your dad or your mom? It was? It's really fun, I mean in the simplest way, like as a kid, I'm incredibly proud to have done something and finished it, like you know, I mean it's as simple as that, like to have started a project and completed it and get to be like, look, I made the thing. You can have it now like here, Like uh, you know, it's like bringing your homework in from school or you know, there's almost something dorky and simple about that too, you know, just to sort of be proud of having accomplished something and get to share that with your family, and that's really special. And I mean there's one song on the record that was that's about my dad, the second to last song, and that was an incredibly powerful experience to get to share that song with him, because he and I had been sort of fighting a lot and having a lot of different conversations where you know, when you end up kind of in the same fight with people and you keep you say sort of like more and more horrible things that you don't mean, just to sort of like try to get to the core of whatever the feeling is that keeps not going away, and you're like, well, if the feeling still isn't going away, I guess him to like do the worst, yea, Yeah, And so we're kind of having the same fight over and over again. And then I wrote this song and I've played it for him, and and it was like I finally had said the thing that I was trying to say a million times in the kindest way and in like the truest way, and in a way that because my father is an artist and a writer, like a way he could really hear. Like And that's what music has sort of always been for me, is actually a way to present feelings to people in a way that they can really hear. And I think people often can listen better to art than they can listen to words coming out of the mouth of someone they love. So that experience of getting to use music as a tool for communication in that way and share it with my dad, who sort of created my relationship to music, was a very powerful and positive one. Did you preface to sharing that song with him as this is sort of about you, or this is I've tried to work out sort of how I'm feeling, or did you just let him? I was sort of like, I just let him. It's so obvious. I mean, within our relationship, he would know from the fifth line. I don't think I prefaced it there. Even there's a line in the song that I stole from a song I wrote when I was fourteen to him when I was like, when I was fourteen, I wrote a song. I'd gotten in trouble for lying, and I wrote a song to sort of trying to get out of trouble. And the chorus of the song was, you don't know how to raise me anymore than I know how to grow up. And that's a that's an indictment. My god, that's an indictment. I know. So I took that line and I put it into this new song. So he knew pretty quickly, and it was the reaction. Did it feel like a positive reaction? Yeah, I think it was very cathartic for both of us. You know that's great. Cool. Do you mind? Do you mind just singing like a line or two of that song? Yeah? I do. You tell me like, it's my idea. I came down to find you, pretend that you're here, and I never could replace you. It's too dark to try. But I look for our memories and their clothing and their eyes. You didn't know, And that's the first verse. It's beautiful. Thank you well, thanks for taking the time to get out of the pool and talk with them. Of course, any time. I always happy to get out of the pool. Thank you for being so kind, Thank you for listening to the record. Is incredibly respectful and kind to do such a thing, and I really don't take it lightly, that sort of time and energy, and I appreciate you spending it on my record, and I thank you for wanting to talk to me. Thanks to my hot for aring so much of her life and inspiration with us. You can hear Mayahawk's album Blush by checking out our playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. We can find extended cuts of past episodes and also new ones. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler and his executive produced by Neil LaBelle. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries, and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review our show on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond, Peace