Our second Treefort interview/artist profile belongs to Nashville-based singer-songwriter Olivia Barton! We got a chance to sit down with Barton after her solo acoustic set on The Hideout. Through the intermittent rain from both the Boise sky and the eyes of the crowd, Barton connected to the Treefort crowd fully. But how does she write songs to be so universally powerful? It’s simple: she stays true to herself and her voice.
O.B.: Post-performance, I’m feeling like the luckiest person on the planet. I had no idea this was going to be as fun as it was, so I just feel extremely good. Yeah.
A.G.: It’s definitely one of those things, with regards to Nashville’s house show scene, when it is just a songwriter and their acoustic guitar, that’s more where you expect to see that kind of performance. But it also works here.
O.B.: Yeah! I didn’t know what to expect playing solo, if it was gonna be easy to be talked over or just not heard, but I felt like everybody was so in tune, and… I mean, they were just so respectful, quiet, and lovely.
A.G.: It’s one of the few times I’ve seen that many people openly weeping at a festival.
O.B.: Right??? … I couldn’t believe how many people were crying, and I wanna keep it humble, so I try not to pay too much attention to that, but… the truth is, everybody has a dad. And so that song just… you don’t have to do much to make people cry if you just talk about your fraught relationship with your father. [laughs] But I was shocked at the response, yeah.
From her Floridian roots to her quick stint in New York to her current Nashville experience, Olivia Barton has always written what feels best to her. Even when growing up, she felt more comfortable in the isolated songwriting process. In her own words: “I would say that I didn’t know very many people that were writing their own music and performing their own music, so I think, though I had a lot of musical education and I did choir and stuff that was really important for my musical growth, I felt fairly isolated in terms of my own music. So I think that affected what I was willing to say and do, because I just had nothing to refer it to. It’s not like I didn’t listen to music, but it just felt like such a solitary experience.”
A.G.: What inspired you to really pursue your own style of songwriting when you were younger?
O.B.: Well, I think that was happening subconsciously. I’m sure it still is. But I was listening to Sara Bareilles, mostly –
A.G.: I know you mentioned Colbie Caillat as the first guitar song you learned.
O.B.: Colbie Caillat, yes. Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat had a chokehold on me in 8th grade, 9th grade. So that’s when I was learning to play guitar. Oh, Taylor Swift, obviously. So between those three artists being what I was listening to on my own, and then the artists that my parents always played for me, which were a lot of solo singer-songwriters. James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Patty Griffin. … I mean, between the artists my parents played for me and the ones that I gravitated towards, I just always have been so compelled by how much a person can do with just lyrics and melody and a guitar. I find it endlessly fascinating how much you can do with such limited resources. I feel like I’ll never get bored of it, you know? So that’s probably what shaped my writing the most.
Barton does, however, also acknowledge the struggle to juggle the innate desire to compare herself to her peers with her desire to keep her artistic voice her own. In an unfortunately fiercely competitive and sometimes homogenous songwriting landscape, a writer’s voice needs to maintain its integrity even when drawing influence from other sources. Barton, to her credit, is honest with herself about what she wants in her songs, and she is finding collaborators who can keep her on her own path, even during their collaborative sessions.
O.B.: I don’t know that I have that down. I think I feel fairly new to that comparative nature of things. I’m new to cowriting, I’m new to listening to genres that are different than my own, so… I think I’m a little bit – how do I want to say this? – I think I’m still figuring out how to retain my inner voice. I think that something that helps is working with people who understand who I am and encourage me towards myself and not just encourage me towards what they think is good, so that can really help me do both, where I’m getting this inspiration from the person that I’m working with, because they have their own inherent taste, but they know me and can help me sort of find what’s most me.
A.G.: They know you enough to know, for instance, “I really like this certain thing about this record, it might not necessarily work for you, but there’s something else in this nebulous third artist’s work that” –
O.B.: Yes, exactly! I recently had a cowrite with a friend who said to me – we were having trouble with a certain lyric, and just sort of going over and over about what it should be, and she took a step back and said, “Wait a second. How would you actually say that?” The feeling we were talking about, she said, “How would you actually say that to me? If we were just having a conversation? Because I know that’s the way you like to write.” And I was like, oh ****, she really reminded me of myself. And I really value that in a lyric, so she reminded me of that in the moment, and I think it actually, strangely, could have been easier for me to get lost and forget myself if I were alone. You know what I mean? So it’s still a really tricky balance for me.
During her Treefort set, Barton had mentioned working on a new album. When we asked her about the writing process for that album, she mentioned the importance of truthfulness and honesty when approaching more difficult topics. She also mentioned the importance of experimentation in the recording and writing process, attempting to maintain the intimacy of the solo performance while writing with and arranging for a full band.
O.B.: That makes me want to talk about the title, which, to me, the best titles point to “the spine,” so the spine of this – the title of this new album is For Myself and For You, and what that means to me is what the spine of this is, which is… The line that comes before that in the title song is, “Every day I wake up and I turn and face the truth/And I do it for myself and I do it for you.” So, to me, that means all the hard work that I do in therapy and with my family and with my friends to… Gosh, how do I summarize this? [laughs] I think it’s just how to be a better person and enjoy myself more and show up fully and wholly in my relationships, and I mean wholly like “W-H,” not “H-O.” [laughs]
A.G.: I do appreciate the clarification. [laughs]
O.B.: That would’ve been a sticky mixup.
A.G.: Yeah.
O.B.: So… the work that I do to look at myself in a truthful way, to look at the world in a truthful way, to look at the people in my life in a truthful way, to really see the reality of things and not be making stories about everything in my mind based off of my past, essentially. All of that that I do is for myself… and it’s also for the people in my life, and it is for the world. I really believe that personal healing, at its best, turns into collective healing, and so all of that is sort of wrapped up in the phrase, “for myself and for you.” … This record we’re doing almost entirely with a live band. We’re recording the whole thing in one room, full takes all the way through, and it’s feeling so good. So I think it’s less about how it’s performed and more about how it’s written. I actually don’t think I’ve ever made that distinction in my own mind. Like, Carole King’s albums weren’t solo, but you can feel that [just her and a piano] are the bones of it, and so that’s what I’m going for, like… Can I maintain that sense of intimacy with a larger arrangement? It’s a hard thing to do. I think that’s probably what I’m going to be seeking my entire musical career, how to maintain intimacy with a band. And I mean, there are so many people who do it so well, it’s not like it’s a new concept, but we all approach it different ways, and depending on the songs, they all ask for different things, so… I’m really excited by the way that we’re approaching that right now with this album.
Olivia Barton had one of our favorite Treefort performances this year, and we can’t wait to see what this new album holds! Until then, check out her 2022 album, This is a Good Sign, below! Be sure to follow her on Instagram and keep an eye out for updates on her upcoming album!