Harry Hudson Taylor is perhaps most well known for his work as one half of the band Hudson Taylor but it is his solo musical project, known as Lady Bird Lad, that we shall be focusing on today as we discuss his most recent release ‘More Than Enough’. Harry has managed to really connect with his audience through his honesty and openness about difficult topics and his music shares that open, honest nature. With an upcoming tour and an EP release on the horizon, we reached out to Harry and when he agreed, we were more than delighted to sit down and chat with him for an interview.
Carrying on from the success of his debut single, Ladybird Lad released his anticipated second single ‘More Than Enough’ on January 19th. With the use of heartfelt lyrics pairing with the emotional communicability within the instrumental, ‘More than Enough’ draws the listener in from the very beginning. ‘More than Enough’ is the second track taken from Ladybird Lad’s debut EP of the same name, set for release on March 1st. Before we publish an in depth review of the entire EP for its release, we wanted to release a spotlight post on “More Than Enough”.
‘More than Enough’ is more than just a conversation with a friend, upon reflection it is also the conversation you have with yourself every time you need to remind yourself that yes, I am worthy of everything good and I am amazing just the way you are. If you don’t have an emotional support pet, you can now join me in having an emotional support song. ‘More Than Enough’ is out now wherever you stream music and the lyric video is available on YouTube.
Questions
Do you find that music is a source of serenity/peace and therapy for you? Or is it more a safe space for expression?
A big influence on what I’m saying in my music now is, very much, that I didn’t have access to some of this stuff when I was with Hudson Taylor and I was very like- I will say I wrote a few songs that I was happy with during Hudson Taylor but I think I was unsure what I wanted to say and things kind of rolled out of me by fluke in the past whereas I think, since Lady Bird Lad, since starting that and conceptualising that as a project which is another thing we can talk about which is to say that for me it’s really helpful to not be Harry Hudson Taylor. It’s kind of just like being like ‘oh I’m going to do Lady Bird Lad stuff now’ and it has a little bit of distance for me in a way that feels removed from my given name, birth name, whatever. It doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of the name, I love the band, I love the whole thing. It’s both of those things. I’m writing songs that are, for me, they are just trying to encapsulate the experience of being new and find solace and peace and serenity within the acceptance of who you are.
Do you think there is a reason or an influence that inspired your songs to be what they are?
For me, a big part of the reason why the songs are the way they are is probably due to getting sober. I think 5- 4 or 5 years ago just before the end of Hudson Taylor, one thing led to another. I mean relationship problems […] just in general, it culminated in me deciding or it being shown to me by the world, ‘I think you need to sort you sh*t out Harry’. And one thing after another, a little bit of actually going to therapy and a bit of reflection on myself and stuff like that, I realised that I was just running from uncomfortable feelings and running from mental health woes and running from being honest, authentic and sincere about just anything really, to be honest, and the songs that I’d started writing around the time, these ones that I’m releasing right now, they came out just as I was getting sober. Now, I remember I was starting to get sober and going through a journey with that, going to recovery meetings with fellow… addicts I guess and hearing all of their stories and realising – they have this term it’s called ‘terminal uniqueness’ which is the belief that you are the only person in the world who has this experience and it’s so self centred of a thing but that’s really how I felt. I was like- it’s basically living my life through the lens of “nobody understands me. I’m special in some kind of way” and I kind of got a rude awakening like “no no no you are just a human being. You have an individual story, yeah, but it’s not dissimilar to our story.”
So, yeah, the songs are kind of autobiographical in that sense. ‘I’m Losing You’ is basically a song about losing connection to spirit or the present moment or a higher power, God, the universe, nature, whatever you want to call it; it’s just basically living in your head. It sounds like a relationship song and it kind of is and it kind of isn’t but really it’s like a relationship to the inner loving parent within. I sort of feel like all of my Hudson Taylor years, I was very much living as this inner teenager Harry that was desperate for love and looking outside of himself in every way to try and find that. Whether it was with substances, with shopping, with food, you know fantasy; just addiction to little things. I just get lost in these worlds and ultimately what I was doing was covering up the feeling of ‘I’m not enough. I’m not good enough’ and so ‘More Than Enough’ in a way is a song that I wrote to speak to that part of myself and to speak to that part in other people too.
Simple, simple stuff because I always feel like questions- For example that song starts with a question “what kind of day is this that you’re waking up to?”- There’s a sort of inherent courage in asking questions of yourself and actually sitting with the uncomfortable answers that come up. So it is therapy, in a sense, because what is therapy except space holding for your story and the therapist is probing you and asking you certain questions to figure stuff out about you? So, yeah, the songs are therapy to me because they’re titbits of the knowledge and wisdom that we picked up and they kind of come through you. You are more than enough. I mean, on a good day, I might feel like that but a lot of the time I need the reminder myself. I have this inner critic and I need that little nice voice to come in and go “You’re more than enough just the way you are. Take a breath, it’s okay.”
Are there any particular lessons from your time with Hudson Taylor that you have utilised in your current project? What is the most valuable lesson that your previous musical endeavours have taught you?
I’d say there’s a few but something that comes to me right now, in this moment, would be to be, as much as possible, to be grateful for the different people around you because I’m definitely finding it right now- be really nice and kind and grateful all the time as much as possible because in a sense Hudson Taylor was, you know, we got to a certain level, it was kind of a peak at like maybe 2018 or something or ‘17, I don’t know, and since then it’s kinda been a humble decli- not decline. It’s a decline in a sense but not really a decline. You kind of realise ‘oh I’m not playing in this venue any more’ like the last time I played a show I played in this big venue and this next time it just kind of ‘Oh I’m here on my own’ so there’s something kind of humbling about it. So the lesson I feel like I’ve learned is generally humility and gratitude for the experience when you’re having it in that moment and not to get… well not to get lost so much in it and be just grateful. I remember just thinking about the simple gestures that we made along the way sometimes, just to a security guard in a venue where they might just be like ‘my daughter’s a really big fan of the band, can you guys do something?’ and sometimes just going that extra mile, doing these types of things, the lesson I learned was that I wanted to do that more.
Sometimes people will reach out to us and ask us to do you know a video for their wedding or a video for their thing and we did it sometimes but, honestly, I would have done it, such an easy thing to do but it goes such a long way, if you get me? It’s like being able to give back to these people who are- people who message you and say ‘I came to like ten shows.’ That’s a lot of money they spent on you. That’s probably €200 of their hard earned cash that they put into you and so I guess being really grateful for that and realising not to take it for granted, that’s what I’ve learned.I am now 31 years old so I did my entire 20s in this band and I kind of grew up with Hudson Taylor so almost everything I’ve learned in life, really most of it happened in the time that I was playing with that band and my entire identity was wrapped up in it so yeah. Loads of things there’s so many other things I’ve learned but that sticks out to me in my head right now.
Since moving to Germany, do you find that what influences and inspires your writing has changed and in what way has it changed?
Yeah I’d say so. I’d say one thing, it’s not like playing in Hudson Taylor, we were this incredibly famous band or something like that but there’s something about being… like if I walk around Dublin, you might have a few people who go like ‘oh it’s your man! It’s your man!’ and there’s a bit of a buzz off that but there’s also this sense of like I can’t really be anonymous in the city. It would probably be less so now but say at the peak where they put you on Hot Press Magazine on the front and that kind of stuff and people are like ‘It’s your man and he was on the Late Late show’ or whatever. That thing is kind of weird and kind of beautiful. I like being in Berlin because nobody knows who I am at all and that’s really refreshing.
The influence that I’ve had from being here as well, I’ve started going to open mic nights and just trying out new music and a lot of the songs that I’ve written or the songs that I’ve chose to put out are the ones that, honestly, my road testing for it was playing it in an open mic night a few times and seeing how it feels whereas in the past with Hudson Taylor stuff it was- we would be playing them at shows or maybe busking them but mostly playing them at shows to try them out. I like the togetherness of homegrown routine based music making like you get in an open mic night so I go pretty much any night of the week I go to one of these things and I just turn up and it’s almost guaranteed I’ll know at least one person if not 5 or 10 people and it kind of becomes your community and your church like a safe space that you can go and you don’t have to play, you can just sit there, you can listen, you can go in the back room and have a chat with someone instead of- maybe you’re not feeling in the mood for it. So that’s really affected my writing , being able to hear other people’s story telling. I’ve seen some incredible musicians, songwriters and musicians playing in these open mic nights who are just – some of them are just like’ ah yeah this is just something I do on the side’ and you’re just like ‘no you need to get out there! You’re amazing!’ That really influenced me. Often it’ll be like just having your notebook at the open mic night and picking up little bits. You know ‘I like what that person is talking about’, ‘I like how they’re talking about it’ and ‘I never thought of things like that’ and then a song idea comes in.
Getting inspired by other artists is basically what I’m saying in a long winded sort of way. Anonymity and getting inspired by other artists is really nice. Having to become an adult as well- I had to. It sounds a little bit pathetic and ridiculous but just because of signing a deal at a young age and all that stuff I went straight into you are the product you are this you will be managed and you will go here and you will go there. And I was like okay cool yeah yeah yeah and then when the band ended I was like I don’t know who I am without this band. I don’t know how to be an adult, I’ve never had a job. I literally never had any job because of being a busker at 16 and 17 and going straight into it. It was like ‘This is a bold new world for me. It’s weird to go and hand out CVs and all I have on my CV is played in a band for 15 years’ you know what I mean? So that’s kind of fun to play around with and notice within myself my tendency to sort of victimise like ‘poor me, poor me’ and then have to go ‘Wait a second come on buddy you just had such a roller-coaster experience that so many people don’t get to do and check yourself.’ It’s cool. And sure enough I’ve had you know three different jobs in the last year and I didn’t die.
Self-doubt and dealing with emotional hardship are tough topics to broach, did you feel that there was a certain level of care and consideration that had to be taken because the topics of the song are so delicate? How do you go about writing songs about such delicate topics without seeming insensitive?
I think my only responsibility is to be authentic and honest with whatever I’m saying and of course the topics that I’m dealing with in this song are personal to me but they may have a universal appeal and they may not and it’s kind of like I feel as an artist it’s not really your business ultimately how people view it, interpret it, good or bad. I like this thing that Blind Boy always talks about. He says, and it’s from some kind of- Carl Rogers, I think. It’s like a psychoanalytical thing where you talk about having an internal or external locus of evaluation so whether you’re getting your sense of validation from yourself or you’re getting it from the outside. So I think for me with art and music you put it out in the world and it’ll have it’s own life and you kind of can’t really take responsibility for it but what you can take responsibility for is, for example, in an interview when I’m asked a question about self doubt and/or mental health these types of things I can stay really in my experience and not advocate or tell other people how they should live their life. I can just say what really worked for me. That’s a guiding principle for me: stick with your experience as much as possible and don’t speak for other people’s experience and try to and the other side of that, the flip side of that is when writing a song sometimes it’s actually all about trying to imagine someone else’s [experience]. It’s a pure compassion thing. I’m trying to imagine someone else’s experience like a friend.
More Than Enough for me, I can reflexively now say “oh I was singing it to myself” but really it was written for a friend who was going through a hard time and so like what’s in my power, in a sense, how can I be careful not to be insensitive? It’s just to be honest, open and willing to go into spaces that are uncomfortable in terms of taking leaps into vulnerability. There is a sense of I want to be careful. If the topic is mental health and/or love, self love, or lack thereof, doubt, self doubt, these different topics – guilt, shame – they can be quite heavy. I would just hope that when you have the long form moments to talk when I have an experience like this having an interview with you it’s a chance to try my best to articulate something that is sometimes actually inarticulable. It’s just being a human and how that looks for different people. It’s very different, you know? There’s something of a… I’m not trying to be a saviour for anyone else. Everyone has to go on their own journey and you can just be a sign post and help people if they ask for help. Where’s the line of responsibility? I don’t know. Sometimes its just maybe you checking in on someone and that’s it. You ask them “how are you?” If they’re not in the space to give you more details then it’s okay.
Has going outside your comfort zone to connect with your audience gotten easier? Do you find that connecting with fans has benefited you personally? How so?
I always wanted to do more. There was stuff that stopped me from being as connected to fans and connected with people as I would naturally like to be so I’m trying to figure out what I want to do and what I want to use these spaces for. I much prefer- I love podcasts, I love interviews, I love lifestyle blogs and things that take you on a bit more of a journey so it’s hard for me to adjust to the short form content. It’s something that I question whether it’s going to sustain itself, like how much longer can you people be getting dopamine hits from swiping before there’s a craving for the longer form stuff and so I’m kind of doubling down on the idea that I might just make more longer form diary almost storytelling type things that are… Basically the video editing side of things, I really enjoy it, the story telling but it does take a lot of time. It takes a lot of hours to conceptualise but then also to do the work if I want to do- I have a high standard with what I want to do and when I don’t meet it I just end up looking at this these old videos and being like ‘oh God there was so much compromising going on there’. I like the personability and the connection and the human element of the internet and trying to cut through the bullsh*t and go to the heart. Not to say that there aren’t people who are doing great things with short form content, there’s amazing stuff but sometimes it’s really sifting through a lot of sh*t to find those gems. I’m just trying to be, if I can, honest. I think that the people who’ve been supporting Hudson Taylor, for example, some people for literally the entire 15 years, I just think that’s just so beautiful and I’m so grateful to see people who show up at the shows all the time consistently coming back and people always having moving experiences that I can relate to with bands that I like. It feels really important.
How does the concept of returning to Ireland to do a tour on your own make you feel? Is there a certain level of apprehension or nervousness about performing as a solo artist?
Yeah I am excited and apprehensive as well because it is a lot. I just wanted to set myself some kind of a goal to do something and I really want to get back to Ireland, I’m not there enough, so all this was decided upon I’d say a year ago. Eight, Nine months ago I got some funding from the German government, this thing called Musik Initiative, and they gave me a small amount of money that – 40% I had to pay myself – so around the summertime I was like “okay what do I want to do and how do I have to do it?” The funding only has to be spent in a very particular way and so I had to structure the year based around that so last year I knew that this EP was going to come out around this sort of time and then I kind of thought ‘well what do I usually do when there’s something coming out?’ I’ve always done shows with Hudson Taylor so I’ll try book some shows on my own but again that’s one of the things that I comparatively I find very difficult because yeah it’s usually done by an agent, manager, whoever, or at least it has been done for me in the past like that so what I crop up against was a lot of- that’s where self doubt comes in for me. I’m like “Am I able to do some shows on my own? Without all the bells and whistles I used to have with Hudson Taylor, tour management, getting driven around,having a full band?” So I’m excited about it. The challenge of it.
I’m excited to be home because I have been coming back to Ireland less and less more recently and that’s literally just for financial reasons and not having anywhere to live, stay when I come back there, I want to be back in Ireland as much as possible and I hope to settle there in the future but it just makes more sense financially to live in Germany at the moment but I’m super excited to play in venues that I’ve played with Hudson Taylor as me. I’m excited about that. Honestly I need to work my ass off to get these tickets to sell so a lot of that is questioning where I should spend money, how I should spend money because a lot of it is like getting a PR company in my case I have a company I’m working with now and it’s been fine so far but I was like ‘Maybe I should have paid instead of spending that money on that I should have spent the money on PR in Ireland for a radio campaign. You know? Those are the kind of decisions that are hard to make on your own and you’re hoping and kind of guessing how this might have been done before.
Were aspects of the instrumentation, like the piano, more intentional than others?
It’s so funny, I mean, instrumentation stuff is … A way to explain this would be when I do some productions, I basically mixed this entire song myself, I got someone to finish it off but I produced it and I came up with the concept and stuff like that and most of the time with something on piano I’m just doing the instinctive thing that I hear and it usually is supposed to be a placeholder for a demo and I just get attached to it and I can’t let it go and some people who I sent that song to to get feedback on before I released it were like “I don’t know…the piano’s maybe a bit too happy. It’s not really the vibe” and, whatever they said, I couldn’t be swayed. I was like “No I really like that piano actually so, I appreciate your feedback, but I’m going to take a rain-check on anything about the piano. Leave me alone about my piano, okay?” *laughs*
I wouldn’t say there was anything massively intentional about it but it was the first thing I played and I was like “Yeah, that’ll do.” Seriously, that’s usually the way it is. It’s like “cool, something like this?” and then I don’t get around to changing it and I just felt like I liked what I did so I just leave it. The other route is you then over think it and you start doing 20 takes of piano, and you’re like “I have no idea what the hell this is supposed to be in the first place” and maybe it’s just getting in the way of the song. It’s like you have to wear all these different hats – gotta wear the hat of the listener, the artist, the mix engineer, you know the hat of the person who’s never heard the song ever and you’re trying to make a good first impression.
Did any of the feedback or ideas provided to you by others influence the final version of the song?
The song, as far as I was concerned, was finished entirely, lyrically and melodically, but it was just that in the middle of that song it used to just say ‘there’s some kind power in sharing your pain.’ It just did that twice and I was like “Nah there needs to be something different” so Seraphina wrote all these different versions where it was like ‘there’s some kind power in sharing your pain living in the moment we can start again’ or ‘take it by the hour, slow down my friend’. She’s really good at quick fire lyrics and those are both brilliant so actually, in the production, I only used one of them but if we sing it live we actually sing both. We remove the instrumental part of the song and sing those two lines together. And when you’re too close to something as well and someone comes along and they just really easily, nonchalantly just go “what about this?” and you’re like “yes, that’s exactly what I was asking for. Thank you” and then you just put it in so that was the story of that. And then just having her vocal you’ll hear in the other song it comes out called ‘Healing’ that will also have her vocal on it. It’s really nice. (Side note for you all, Seraphina will be joining Harry for his Irish tour too.)
Is there symbolism in the lyric video regarding the number of ladybirds that are included? What inspired the approach to the music video?
(Side note: Niamh studied Celtic mythology in college and adored learning all about historic symbolism. In Celtic mythology three and the multiple of three’s were important. In the lyric video for more than enough 15 ladybirds appear throughout the video, for this reason Niamh felt the importance of three and it’s multiples needed to be highlight. The number three and it’s multiples indicates a sense of harmony, completion and unity. Niamh felt this was important to highlight as the message behind “More than Enough” can add to a feeling of unity and belief within oneself by the end of the song.)
The amount of them no but definitely the two was supposed to be like parents. Like these two parent ladybirds and then all their little kids. It was more like I picked up a packet of those from an arts and craft store just before Christmas and they were just lying around. I literally have them stuck to my Mac like on the screen. So nothing massively symbolic about it apart from I think they’re really cute little creatures and the amount of them that was there, no there’s nothing seriously symbolic about it. You know what inspired that video was sitting in front of Josh Turner Guitar and his most recent lyric video is him writing in his journal and it was posted 11 days ago and I was just like “I have my journal in front of me. I have all those bits in front of me that you see in the video”. I had that stuff just there lying on the table and I literally didn’t even finish watching the video, I watched 30 seconds of this video and I was like “Mmm I could do something like that. I could definitely do that. That’d be cool.” and then I just did it. I mean this was about a week ago. Like ‘Cool this will be a good idea.’ I wanted to make a lyric video. I played the song in the background and then I turned the pages at certain moments, I moved stuff around and then I had no plan to animate the way I did and then it made it kind of like it was interacting. But funny that you picked up the symbolism stuff.
With an EP coming out soon as well, what’s it about? Describe it in three words.
More Than Enough *laughs* Three word summarisation of the EP More Than Enough… Well actually not quite enough as in I want more songs. The reason it’s only four songs, but I’m thinking maybe five. I might just throw in another acoustic, really simple thing at the end as well just for fun, but it’s just… I can’t afford it. I haven’t been able to afford it so that’s why it’s a short EP but it’s also a good place to start. I always think it may be a bit much to be committing to an album. This process took quite a long time and not quite enough songs. That’s not a good three word summary, it doesn’t really sell it. Healing. One of the songs is called Healing and I nearly wanted to call the EP Healing. Yeah, healing is one. Contemplative. And vulnerable? Vulnerable, yeah. Or inner loving parent, that’s another one.
Tickets for Lady Bird Lad’s tour are available here and the EP ‘More Than Enough’ will be released on March 1st. The single ‘More Than Enough’ is available on all good streaming services. We would once again like to thank Harry for being so generous with his time, being so open and honest while answering our questions for this interview and for being so accommodating and understanding throughout the interview process.
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