With You is not the first album I’ve ever listened to gushing about the magic of becoming a parent.“Tracing my finger on the soft of your ear/your breath relaxing into mine/you arrived, now I sing, a broken harmony/how slow, how fast do these days go by?” Courtney Hartman sings about her daughter Temple on “Honey, Honey.” The deep imprint such a simple action left on her is clear and well put.
I’m not trying to downplay the impact of such themes; just because many women (and some men) have expressed them to music before doesn’t make them any less heartwarming or worthy. But what makes With You so interesting and relatable is the quality and quantity of the questions Hartman has about the whole process, and the insecurities she’s unafraid to address. She is somehow able to acknowledge that there are things she knows, things she can’t know, and that sometimes they can be the same thing at the same time. “I’ll know you then like I know you now/it’s all a mystery still to me/we’re growing,” she sings on “Growing,” a song set when Temple was still in her womb. In harbouring and then nurturing a child, there’s an innate familiarity. Yet as time goes on, both mother and child change, child especially. She will grow, learn to walk, talk, make friends, start absorbing ideas from the outside world. The change and mystery will be constant, just as the knowing will.
Hartman’s focus on the unknown proves compelling throughout. “To Carry You,” toward the end of the album, is a breathtaking expression of insecurity on the same subject. Hartman repeatedly asks if she’ll ever know what it truly means to be a mother.
“It’s not really a question you can ask, so you wonder. That song more than any other has made me cry while singing it, just because that question can sometimes feel challenging and th love feels really deep,” said Hartman. “More often than not, I don’t really feel adequate. That’s a thin place in me.”
It was a sentence that I simultaneously completely understood and yet made me want to jump in and defend Hartman, even though she’s the one who said it.
Hartman is an intelligent person with the strength and tenderness to put her heart on display for anyone who listens and the tenacity to tour multiple continents playing music. Of course she can raise a child. And yet, parenthood seems so daunting. A child is a piece of your heart that’s walking around outside you, my parents explained to me growing up, and that can be stressful. You can’t possibly be there to protect them from everything. It’s also a tremendous expenditure of energy both before and after pregnancy. First your body transforms, then your life.
“We’re often told we can take it all on, but the reality is that we’re humans which means that we’re limited,” said Hartman. “But what I’ve sensed is a clarity of what is important and what I can shed.”
A career of touring is one of those things being shed, at least for the foreseeable future. Hartman, a guitar player regularly named as one of the most accomplished in bluegrass when she came on the scene, is now focused on local functions. She’s raising her daughter and has another child on the way. Still, she certainly has things she’d like to achieve.
“I feel really good when I’m doing things and checking lists off. So there are a lot of things about me personally that grates up against the presence and pace of a small child,” said Hartman. “Even now watching my daughter, who is almost three, try to put her shoes on, my instinct is to rush it along. But the practice of continuing to do that work of staying present and slow down, it’s a struggle for me. But it’s an important thing for me to struggle with, I think.”
Not being on the road is a challenge for a musician, but she’s still managing to write and create.
“I think the music industry wants us to think that the only way we can continue creating is if we’re on the road all the time. So I’ve had some reckoning to do with my own desires,” said Hartman. “It’s actually impossible with the way that social media works in our minds to not compare our lives to other people. Learning contentment is a superpower, not one I’ve fully tapped into.”
Hartman repeatedly put her insecurities and perceived weaknesses out there. When discussing performing on piano and fiddle in her community, she said she was nervous.
“The tiniest new thing and all of a sudden I have my own little freak outs,” said Hartman. “But it’s good. Then you do it and you feel good and it’s important.”
Hartman noted and appreciated her growth throughout our discussion, so I asked if she had come any closer to knowing what it means to be a mother.
“Slightly,” she said. “But the question grows. It balloons and changing. Because we’re always changing.”
Elsewhere on the album, Hartman notably takes the time to thank the women in her life who assisted her in the months described.
Didn’t you give the soothing of a mother?/How did you know just what to say?, Hartman sings of her midwife in “Companion.” “No one needs mothering/like a woman in the summer days of mothering,” she sings in “Like A Woman,” referencing her own mother as a special source of advice. It’s an aspect of new parenthood that’s rarely explored on these concept albums, let alone on multiple tracks.
“Motherhood is an experience of womanhood, but it’s only one facet of womanhood. I wanted this song to speak even more broadly to how we as a sisterhood support one another and show up for one another,” said Hartman. “I was almost startled for the desire that I had for mothering as I became a mother. That feeling is familiar. Maybe it happens to both parents, that sense of ‘golly I need guidance.’ But I think there is an innate need for that extra care.”
She expressed gratitude and awe at her own mother.
“My mom’s pretty amazing. I have nine siblings and so she’s experienced birth and all that comes with it ten times, which totally blows my mind,” said Hartman. “There’s a lot that I can talk to my own mom about, which is such a gift. I don’t take that lightly.”
Our discussion was interrupted, quite appropriately given the subject matter, by Temple walking in asking to watch Mr. Rogers. She’s an imaginative child who wanted to pretend to ski. And she’s certainly Hartman’s child, taking interest in the mandolin at a music event.
“Ultimately I want her to love what she is curious about and nurture her in that direction,” said Hartman, who is admittedly helping to foster Temple’s interest in music. “Mostly I’ll sing to her. Some of them are little songs I’ve written or songs my mom used to sing to us. Music is good. I want this to be part of her life.”
It was that desire that helped Hartman grow past an insecurity I never would’ve guessed the Grammy nominee felt.
“My husband and I didn’t used to play music around each other. There was this little insecurity and ego thing,” said Hartman “I didn’t just sing around the house. When Temple was born, it hit me: Am I going to let my own pride and insecurities keep me from sharing music from her in just an every day way?”
Before our conversation ended, I could hear Temple playing some kind of small piano in the background. It would seem as though the strategy is working.
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Courtney Hartman and the songs we discussed, starting with “Like A Woman,” which gives special thanks to the sisterhood supporting new mothers. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.courtneyhartman.com for more.
Country Pocket 