Quality Americana

“Leaf on a River” is a soft and heartfelt offering, bringing us back to those soulful Americana ballads of the past with a hint of bluegrass and indie folk.

Trust Fall

Trust Fall is the first full length record from Hannah Delynn, who grew up just outside of Tampa, Florida. 

“I grew up riding horses,” Delynn said. “I kind of popped out of the womb basically wanting to be a horse. I was a real outdoors kid, so it was a great place for that.”

Delynn’s family worked in the restaurant business, and she grew up around much of her extended family. Her fathers side of the family has a long lineage of music history in the Texas Swing circuit.

“My great grandfather had a country-swing band called Pop Johnson and his family of Range Riders,” Delynn said, “and they went up to the Chicago barn dances and they were doing a lot of cool things.”

Many of the family joined in the band, and Delynn recalled a time they hung out with legendary troubadour Hank Williams, who “was one of the boys and apparently wanted to marry my great aunt Ethel.”

Delynn’s grandfather had issues with his hearing, and the family eventually shifted from barn dances to running a small business. 

“I grew up kind of skipping that immediate relationship with all of that music, but my Dad fully soaked it up,” Delynn said. 

She remembered harmonizing with her father in church and listening to the Beatles together, and spending time listening to Mariah Carey with her mother. As Delynn learned more about the family history, and spent time traveling abroad in New Zealand, she collected the stories to pen her own songs. 

Delynn started taking guitar lessons at the suggestion from her father, and within weeks she was writing her own works alongside her instructor. Some of the poems came from the heartbreak experienced on her journey abroad. 

“We wrote like twenty songs in three weeks,” Delynn said. “I’m grateful to my Dad for kind of taking all these things I loved and serendipitously moving me in that direction.”

Delynn soon found herself on another journey to Canada, and lived in British Columbia for two years. There she was introduced to music like the Pixies and Nick Cave, and found influences from the world travelers and local folk artists that filled the town in ski season. Delynn next moved off to Australia. 

“I actually didn’t go home at all,” Delynn said. “I moved directly from Australia to Nashville.”

Since moving to Tennessee, Delynn has honed her songwriting craft and released two EPs before the full-length Trust Fall. She first started working at Five Points Pizza, continuing the family tradition.

“That was one of the, I feel like, the core things in my early days in Nashville because it was a real hot spot,” Delynn said. “It was a pizza joint that people loved going to and I met so many people I didn’t even really realize I was meeting. It ended up becoming this really cool touch point for meeting other musicians and developing my community here.” 

Delynn started hosting “Friends of Mine,” a monthly showcase that connected local writers and artists from different genres that later became a radio broadcast. She’s planning a release show supporting Maya de Vitry next month, an artist she collaborates with on writing and performing.

Leaf on a River

“Leaf is a song I wrote with Maya,” Delynn said. “It’s sort of a reckoning to me. It was like reckoning with myself of like ‘OK here’s where I am in life, here’s sort of the decisions that I’ve made up until this point, and for better or worse this is where I find myself.’” 

Delynn recalled recording the song without a click track, and the intensity of her rhythm on the guitar as the moment took over.

“Instead of holding on to past things or kind of fighting the flow of life because maybe you wanted a relationship to go a different way, or maybe I wish I had done more up to this point, or whatever it is, it’s about having grace with yourself, and be grateful for all of the things that have led you to that point,” Delynn said.

The album was recorded with her friends in a remote cabin that was turned into a makeshift studio. Delynn was coming off of bronchitis just before the recordings, and she laughed recalling the low notes she could register for the background hums in “The Rooster’s Dead.”

“I think too there’s an element of taking responsibility,” Delynn said. “The drawing a line in the sand is like ‘OK, I am co-creating this life, you know?’ So I have a say in this. I’m going to stop dwelling, or I’m going to stop this and try to realize I still have power.”

Support the Artist

More information about Hannah Delynn can be found here.

Photo by Adios Alexander.

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