Indie pop singer-songwriter Grace Womack sat down recently with @skopemag to talk about her music around the release of her new EP, “Yellow Cowboy Hat” (out now).
@skopemag: Your new EP is amazing. We really love one of the singles, “Pity the Fool.” What is the story behind it?
Grace: Thanks! “Pity the Fool” is my personal favorite song on the EP, so I love to talk about it as much as I can. I wrote the song after coming out of a long-term relationship that started when I was very young, and I realized for the first time that it was now just a part of the storybook that made up my life. Even at 17 or 18, I had so many little stories to tell, and even though I had obviously believed that relationship would go on to be more than that, it was just another story, and for the first time I was okay with that.
@skopemag: You’re from Texas. Do you feel your music has a Texas sensibility to it?
Grace: I don’t consciously try to let my Texan upbringing influence my sound, but being raised somewhere for twenty years, it tends to find its way in regardless. I’ve always associated songs with place. “Pity the Fool,” “Oblivion,” and “Friendship” feel very much like Houston to me, “Miss Tennessee” feels like the little rinky-dink piano practice room I wrote it in in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and “How We Met” and “Yellow Cowboy Hat” are very much Nashville. I guess we’ll have to see what comes out of my Austin era.
@skopemag: How would you describe your music? Who are your biggest influences?
Grace: My favorite way to describe my music is the way my dad describes it: “hippy R&B.” I think that encompasses the vibe pretty well.
My biggest influences are Lake Street Dive and Sara Barielles. Lake Street Dive does an incredible job bridging the gap between older, retro-feeling music and modern influences. Sara Barielles’s songwriting is impeccable and every arrangement is better than the one before it. Plus she wrote a whole, perfect musical.
