WITF Music: Autumn Sky Hall

Folk singer Autumn Sky Hall talks inspiration and music as her safe space.

• Joe Ulrich
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joe has been interested in audio and music since he was a kid. What started as a fascination with his parents’ vinyl records and cassette tapes turned into a love of both performing and recording. He grew up in Elizabethtown, Pa. and moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 where he majored in Photography at the University of Pittsburgh.
  
  In 2004, he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. He returned to Pittsburgh to work at a recording studio.
  
  In 2008, Joe arrived at WITF, where his skills have found a good home as an on-air host, audio engineer and producer of WITF Music. In 2016, Joe earned a National Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Sound.

Autumn Sky Hall performs in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long - WITF)

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Harrisburg folk singer Autumn Sky Hall stopped by our studio with fellow musicians Kasey Shell and Amelia Chick.

Autumn Sky Hall will be performing at the Women of Folk Fest on September 10th a Moon Dancer Winery in Wrightsville.

Autumn Sky Hall performs in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long – WITF)

Joe: Tell me about your musical history.

Autumn: When I was real small I grew up in a homeschooled family and we were unschooled, hippie a little. It does not mean no school. I was definitely learning things. But my parents just would pay attention to what we loved and tried to give us opportunities to do that and explore that as much as possible.

I was writing songs when I was in elementary school. I started playing guitar and then writing songs and playing them for friends and, like 14, 15. And I started playing shows when I was 16 in high school. Which is embarrassing, but also it’s equal parts embarrassing and heartwarming. It’s as if all the weird cringey diary entries that you had from your childhood are like still on the internet.

Joe: Do you ever listen to that stuff still?

Autumn: Yeah. Actually lately a lot more because there’s been so much distance and time that I can look back and be like, that was actually pretty good.

Joe: I was just gonna say, are you ever surprised when you look back?

Autumn: Yeah. I think that songwriting is so interesting, that I look back and I’m like, how is that in my brain?

Joe: So tell me about the songs that you played today.

Autumn: “Wouldn’t Do That To My Girl” is more recent. I wrote that the first month I was here in Pennsylvania. I was sitting with my sister. I was having a hard time approaching writing about the queer experience in a way that felt realistic and like myself. I could go and write something in somebody else’s style, but it wouldn’t necessarily feel like me.

So I was just like, what do I think about it? What are the words that I would use specifically? And it was a breakthrough moment. I kept throwing verses and she kept going, that’s great. And I was like, oh my gosh, I’m so excited. It was like a little laboratory.

Joe: And what is that experience for you? What does that song elucidate about the queer experience for you?

Autumn: For me, it’s very realistic in that it talks about coming from maybe experiences that weren’t that great and having to unlearn a lot of harmful stuff. And finally being able to be in a place where you’re like, I know how to be a responsible person. I know how to be a loving person. I know what boundaries are. All that stuff. It’s definitely a song I could not have written 10 years ago and could write this year.

Autumn Sky Hall performs in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long – WITF)

Joe: And “LA”.

Autumn:  So “LA” is supposed to represent musician heaven. It’s supposed to be when people are like, oh, I’m so excited I get to go play in LA next month. And everyone’s like, oh my gosh, tell me how it goes.

So I wanted to use like that idea as people all working together to be finally at a place where everybody is trying to be altogether as a way to feel the happy.

And the rest of it’s a song I wrote after long series of therapy sessions. It was unlearning a lot of stuff and learning about a lot of things. But it’s one of the most positive things that I’ve gotten out of that experience, so I’m so happy it exists. It’s really fun to play. Everybody’s so cute and happy when we do.

Joe: Do you feel there’s an overarching theme in your music?

Autumn: Most of them are long process songs. I’ll be overcoming something personally. And as I’m working through that thing, I’ll be thinking about the themes of it. And usually when I have an aha moment, then I write the song about it. The idea will be cooking for a long time. I have songs that are half finished from years ago. That still have yet to get to that point. But when they do then I just sit down. I’m just like, oh yeah. Finally.

Kasey Shell, Autumn Sky Hall and Amelia Chick perform in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long – WITF)

Joe: Do you ever have that experience where you’re writing something and it just comes out so quick?

Autumn: Yes. And then other things take six months.

Joe: Do you have anything that you ascribe that to?

Autumn: I think it happens more in spaces where you’re allowing yourself to have the rest you need. Taking care of yourself mentally, giving yourself enough space. For me, I take whole days by myself and nobody else is there.

Amelia: I have theories about this. I think sometimes when it comes out all at once, it’s like a product of you’ve internalized so much music in your life that it’s like your body knows what to do rather than your head. It’s like muscle memory type of music, like being possessed by music.

[Music] opens a cool, healthy, reciprocal space where I can feel my emotions and people are like, yay, we love it when you feel your emotions. It’s like being held by folks around you.

Joe: What are the biggest struggles that you all deal with?

Autumn:  I’m about to turn 35 in October, so the way that I approach shows is completely different. How I used to [need] no sleep whatsoever. I could wake up after having a half an hour nap after a 12 hour shift and go play an all day show and be completely fine and be awesome. And that is not at all the case.

Joe: The thirties are a time of reckoning.

Autumn:  I wanna play music when I’m very old. I love playing music. I don’t really care how I do it or where I do it, I just want to do it. So I’m just trying to take care of my body as much as I can.

Autumn Sky Hall performs in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long – WITF)

Joe: What do you get out of playing music?

Autumn: It is one of the safe spaces that I have in my life. I feel very much myself. I feel really comfortable. And I feel like it opens a cool, healthy, reciprocal space where I can feel my emotions and people are like, yay, we love it when you feel your emotions. It’s like being held by folks around you.

Joe: So you’ve been in Pennsylvania for about a year? I see you’re taking lots of pictures of nature [which] seems to be a big theme in a lot of your photos.

Autumn: I used to have a really hard time finding a good routine and I’d get sad and stuck and burnt out a lot when I was really young. And I read this book about these authors and how they all used to go on walks as a way to get their brain thinking and get them in a healthy head space. And I have been going on walks literally ever since. It’s really nice. It’s quiet. Sometimes if I go by myself then I can sing loudly and nobody will know.

Joe: What other local artists around here are really interesting to you?

Amelia: I was in a band for a few years called Spider Glass that was a local band.

Autumn: Public Disco Porch is great.

Amelia: I played with the After Hours. And I played when it was a similar project called Hot Jam Factory. Weird Year.

Autumn: I really love @bthefolksinger (Brittany Ann Tranbaugh). Sug Daniels.

Amelia: And The Wild Hymns.

Autumn Sky Hall performs in the WITF Music studio on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 (Jeremy Long – WITF)

Joe: When you think about either people or organizations in the area that are supportive of local music are there places that come to mind?

Autumn: The New Cumberland Collective has been putting on a bunch of amazing stuff. The Susquehanna Folk Music Society runs things out of the Westshore Theatre and they’ve been putting the most amazing events ever, super consistently.

Amelia: There used to be some really cool little DIY spots. Back in the day, the MakeSpace in Midtown in Harrisburg was a huge thing for me. We have Little Amps on State Street.

Autumn: We just played at Record Smith [Mechanicsburg], which just started doing shows.

Joe: Do you have any favorite local shops?

Amelia: Found Collab is cool. It’s like a couple different vintage clothing places working together.

Autumn: Love Little Amps and Elementary Coffee.

Joe: What was the first concert you attended?

Kasey: I think my first one was George Strait and I think I fell asleep before he came on because I was a child. I was like five or six.

Joe: Maybe what was your first concert by choice that you went to.

Kasey: My first concert by choice for me was Hozier which was phenomenal.

Amelia: The first one that’s a super strong memory is this band called Me Without You.

Autumn: My first ever show was Switchfoot. And then the show I went to on my own fruition was Flogging Molly.

Joe: Do you have a favorite phone app that you use?

Kasey: Unfortunately, TikTok.

Amelia: I open Instagram a lot, but and outside of social media there’s this Pikmin game. Pikmin is a Nintendo franchise.

Autumn: I’m gonna say my CHANI app. My astrology app. But it’s from the nicest person that does astrology. All the other astrology apps are unusually harsh and mean. You wake up and they’re like, you’re a bad person and you know it, and you’re like, that’s so much to deal with.

Joe: What are you into outside of music?

Kasey: I’m in law school. I have one more year and then the bar exam and I’m gonna try not to jump off a cliff between now and then.

Amelia: I do too many. I write sketch comedy and poetry and short stories. I do a lot of improv. Shout out to the Harrisburg Improv Theater.

Autumn: I’ve been in childcare and childcare education for a very long time. I love it so much. I credit it entirely for why I’m even slightly emotionally balanced because it gives me a good break. If I had a really super strenuous soul-eating job, it would be really hard for me to do this too. And because I work with kids who are literally so fun, even on their worst days it helps a lot.

Autumn Sky Hall will be performing at the Women of Folk Fest on September 10th a Moon Dancer Winery in Wrightsville.

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