More about: Courtney Marie Andrews

Courtney Marie Andrews has a new album incoming. Old Flowers hits on 5 June, and the singer-songwriter has a wish for when it does: "I just hope it touches people - from six feet away!"

Old Flowers, a southern crafted folk album produced by Big Thief and Bon Iver collaborator Andrew Sarlo is a beautiful, life-affirming work. A devastating break-up album free of clichés and full of comforting imagery. Doubtless it will touch people when it arrives - and whether that's in a world still largely in quarantine or out of it no one can be certain.

Living alone in Tennessee, Andrews is "riding solo" through the quarantine. "I'm a lone cowboy" she laughs over the Atlantic Ocean. 

How is living alone in the quarantine? And how can creatives thrive in this environment? Courtney Marie Andrews has some useful insights and her own path to sanity during quarantine.

First of all, don't pressure yourself

"Obviously everyone will create in their own time. This is a crisis and a traumatic time - I definitely think that if you’re not feeling up to it you shouldn’t have to. But remember why you started creating."

If you have a project, now could be a good time to work on it

"I’ve been writing a book of poems. All of last year I was writing the album so I wasn’t as proactive about it. I’ve been writing one or two [poems] a day now so by the end of quarantine I should hopefully have a book."

Draw from the well of inspiration you have inside of yourself

"I feel like when you have the inspiration and the heartbreak and the life experience you can always draw from that well. I don’t think it ever dries. As long as you’re good at remembering and being nostalgic, you can always draw from it. I tend to try and draw from that now.

I’m very much an experience writer so quarantine is challenging me to draw from that well of past."

Everyone says it but it's true: try and develop a routine

"I like change a lot so routines have always been hard, but I’ve been trying to get into a routine where I write in the morning with coffee and then walk if I’m able to and if it’s sunny. Also I’ve been gardening. I’ve found being outside in my yard very helpful. I’ve been writing, cooking, gardening.

I have found that if I make a list of things to do then I am healthier the next day."

Stay off the news

"I have been working on this book and so I’ve been keeping myself busy but there are certainly moments when I spiral. Keeping off the news has been helpful for me, but also creativity has always been my safety harbour. So if I try and stick there at least a few hours a day, I stay sane."

But don't block out the themes of a changing world

"My poems aren’t all around [the heartbreak]. A lot of it is surrounding identity and self-discovery. There’s a lot of longing too. And now the book is going to have this whole reckoning with mortality section as we’re dealing with this pandemic. I’m thinking a lot about that."

It helps if you're already a loner..!

"I feel like I have always in some ways been a very solitary person. I don’t know if you’ve ever done the Enneagram Personality Test but I am classically a number four who never feels like they belong anywhere and constantly feels like an outsider.

Even in my relationship I felt like a loner. I think that’s something I will always feel. It’s like this constant conversation with my muse I guess. I’m certainly prepared in a lot of ways."

Remember how it was when you used to create for the love of it

"When I first started creating it wasn’t because I thought I would make money. It wasn’t because I thought I could impress somebody. It wasn’t because I thought I would play to an audience. I just did it because it was the only way to make sense of the world. I think that as artists that's sort of what we’re here to do.

Obviously all of us just lost our work so I'm definitely not saying ‘oh just get over it and make art for the sake of making art', but all of my favourite artists and authors have said that you can create through any circumstance. The greatest artists created in poverty too. You don’t create just if you’re living comfortably.

Now is the time to create just to create. Just purely to create and to hone that and to try and find something important for the world to hold onto."

Jump on Face Time

"I am wondering when my threshold is. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. None of us have. They’re saying June is realistically the earliest any of us will be free of this quarantine. Honestly, you know, I’m so grateful we’re in 2020. I’ve been having lots of FaceTime calls with my friends and family which is helping a lot.

Even fifty years before we’d be alone."

Hope for a better world

"I really hope that we become more mindful as a world. Lots of things are changing. People are hearing birds and seeing animals for the first time in areas they’ve never seen. People are spending more time with their families and digging into the importance of that.

And I think obviously I would really like to see big changes in how our governments run our societies. Especially in America, this is all pointing towards how we can make it work in a more communal way. It’s showing that it’s possible even though they said it wasn’t.

I certainly have hopes that this is a giant wake up call for how things have been going and it’s so hard to say right now how that will all shake out.

The craziest thing about it is they’re having to implement left wing idealism. Thanks for showing us that it’s possible."

Old Flowers arrives 5 June via Fat Possum Records.

More about: Courtney Marie Andrews