“I’m not in the business of twisting arms, whether it’s my own or someone else’s,” said Carolina Chauffe. Open, warm, and highly communicative, Chauffe, who performs as Hemlock, has made a name for herself around the country by embracing a free-spirited and loose approach to her music and her everyday life. Chauffe has been on tour for nearly a year and a half while the rest of her bandmates are still based in and living in the city.
From the deep South to the upper Plains, Chauffe has found community and support for her music. And life on the road hasn’t stopped her from creating and releasing new music. Some of this work can be heard on “444,” a best-of compilation of re-recorded cuts from Chauffe’s ongoing song-a-day project. Audiences can catch another brief Hemlock return on April 10 at Empty Bottle.
“It has been miraculous and exhausting,” she said of her “routine migratory patterns” of life on the road. Chauffe described herself as a follower of open doors. And so, as opportunities kept presenting themselves, her time on the road kept stretching onward. Since embarking on her tour, she has traveled to Colorado, Utah, Idaho and throughout the Pacific Northwest, among other parts of the country.
Chauffe stays grounded through the support of her community. A willingness to rely on other people means that she must know how to ask for what she needs. Most nights, she sleeps in someone else’s home, but there have been a handful of times when she’s been in her car. It’s not a glamorous life, but it’s a satisfying one for Chauffe, who says this wide-reaching community of mutual reliance and dependability helps keep the whole experience enjoyable and motivating, rather than daunting.
“It’s kind of an ongoing free fall with an infinite safety net from people that I care about in all corners of the country and beyond,” she said.
Yet, she still encounters challenges, at least when it comes to her songwriting process. A solitary writer, Chauffe said it’s difficult to find solo time to work on new music when surrounded by other people.
“It’s one of those things where my well of inspiration is overflowing and I’ve got lots of notes in my phone’s Notes app of little phrases, lyrics, potential songs, but not a lot of time to flesh them out until I settle down again,” she said.
To work around this situation, she creates hard deadlines for herself (“gentle pressures,” she explained), like last November’s song-a-day project. First launched in 2019, this yearly, month-long creative exercise gives her an extended opportunity to gain relative stillness during the chaos of life on the road by focusing on her songwriting. Chauffe relied on a practice of “first thought, best thought” to craft her songs. Since first launching the project, Chauffe has chosen a different month each year, with the goal of creating a whole, long-form calendar of her music and songwriting journey over the course of 12 years.
Some of her past song-a-day works were eventually fleshed out to their full potential for “444,” a 12-track compilation of Hemlock’s past music. The result is a quietly compelling body of folk that is evocative and poignant. “Day One,” the first song she created in February 2019 after launching the project, softly opens the compilation. “Hyde Park,” first crafted in December 2021, is a bright, bouncy number that is given a rumbling injection of life from the propulsive instrumentation from her band. “Hazards,” from May 2023, is given a more guttural edge that will remind the listener of early PJ Harvey. In its original form, the music was solid. On “444,” Hemlock sounds vital. For listeners interested in diving into her rich and comprehensive body of work (she’s released 10 albums since 2018), “444” is a great place to start.
Outside of music, Chauffe has plans to find a bedroom again that she can call her own. “I think doing (touring) indefinitely is not the truest way to honor my own boundaries and energy and bandwidth,” she acknowledged. “But I’m not willing to compromise or settle on what feels like the right spot for me. I really trust the cosmic, serendipitous presentation of what that will be.”
Ideally, it’ll happen around the summertime. But that’s still a few months off. In the meantime, she’ll continue this journey of traveling, reciprocity and performing her music for old fans and new communities.
“I feel really confident, more than I ever have before,” she said. “I feel like my feet are underneath me in this practice, and any kind of impostor syndrome that I may have had when I was younger doesn’t feel like it’s with me anymore.”
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.
Hemlock performs 9 p.m. April 10 at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.; tickets are $18 (21+) at emptybottle.com