Interview: Amanda Anne Platt (The Honeycutters)
When Amanda Anne Platt had a batch of songs primed to record with her band, The Honeycutters, in the early, frostbitten months of 2023, she intentionally steered away from the polished, Music Row sound of the band’s six prior albums.
“I'd been wanting to do something a little different for a long time,” Platt says from the Black Mountain home she shares with her husband and Honeycutters drummer, Evan Martin, and their two young children. “Our albums started becoming very Nashville. The process was taking a really long time with a lot of space between us sitting down and playing the songs in the studio and what people ended up hearing. I wanted to make that window smaller and capture more of a live feel.”
Platt, who was born and raised in upstate New York and moved to Asheville nearly two decades ago, also felt hemmed into a genre she’d outgrown and never fully embraced.
“At some point, I realized we were becoming very solidly known as a country band, and some would even say a classic country band,” she says. "But I don't hear myself as classic country at all. We have the pedal steel, yes — and I love fiddle and other traditional instruments — but I wanted to expand beyond that. Because country music is not the end of my musical appreciation.”
To shepherd the subtle but significant shift, Platt tapped a pair of indie/garage rock luminaries with rich musical vocabularies and a shared sensibility for lo-fi production: Scott McMicken (Dr. Dog) and Greg Cartwright (Reigning Sound; Oblivians). The Honeycutters (which also includes keyboardist Kevin Williams, guitarist Matt Smith, and bassist Rick Cooper) recorded the dozen songs that became The Ones That Stay on an eight-track in a converted shed brimming with vintage gear in McMicken’s backyard.
The album’s name is a line from leadoff track, “Mirage,” a shuffling, piano-led meditation on the resilience of the heart and silver linings of grief that showcases Platt’s gift for penning couplets that render new insights with each listen:
It's such a windy world out there
and everybody keeps on blowing away.
I try to tell myself that I don't care
but I learn to love the ones that stay.
The Ones That Stay feels rough-hewn and broken in. A faint analog hiss kindles Platt’s nuanced storytelling, at once restless and grounded, and thickens the surrounding Wurtlizer and pedal steel tones. She calls it the most-Honeycutters-sounding album yet, crediting her co-producers with giving the band the “freedom to do what we do without pressure or pretense.”
“It wasn't like they came in wanting to change things entirely,” she adds. “But for each song, they’d have ideas because they're drawing from a bigger pool of influences than I am. Greg, especially, has a colossal record collection and knowledge of music history. So they’d provide alternate paths we could go down, which gave us more space to be ourselves. They’d say, ‘What if you tried this?’ And I’d think, ‘This is how I've always wanted to do it but didn’t know how.’”
Prior to the band’s Monday, Feb. 3, show at 185 King Street in Brevard, Asheville Stages spoke with Platt about the making of the album, how motherhood has recalibrated her songwriting process, and why she’s now finding her voice in more ways than one.
Jay Moye: How’d you connect with Scott and Greg?
Amanda Anne Platt: They have a band called The Hypos, which Evan and Kevin play in. Evan and Scott have been buddies for a long time because Evan has played with Floating Action going back to when Seth [Kauffman] first started that project. They toured a lot with Dr. Dog. When Scott moved to Asheville [in 2021], he got in touch with Evan because he and Greg had been tossing songs back and forth and wanted to bring him in on the project.
Evan said to me, “We're recording in Scott's shed and doing everything live to tape. We should do a Honeycutters album there.”
I was a bit afraid it would be too much of a departure, because as dissatisfied as I was, I’m a creature of habit who fears change. But Scott and Greg are both such excellent dudes, in addition to being so talented, so I felt really comfortable.
JM: In addition to compressing time in the studio, what were the other parts of your vision for how you wanted the record to sound, and how’d you bring them to life in the studio?
AAP: We've always recorded live together as a band, but with separation. Everybody is isolated either in their own booth or with a lot of buffer between us, with the goal of keeping the rhythm track and then overdubbing everything else. But we play out a lot and are a very good live band, so I started to have this feeling of not wanting or needing to click-track everything. We got a little closer to what I wanted with our album we put out in 2022, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
And either Scott or Greg said something that struck me as really brilliant. Something along the lines of, “When you're recording that way, you're doing it so you can go back and fix mistakes. So, just don't make mistakes.”
JM: Or embrace the small mistakes.
AAP: Exactly. That was the overriding philosophy. We didn't record to a click track, so there were certain things we couldn’t go back and fix — like my vocals, because we didn't have separation, considering we recorded in a shed. What you hear on the album is basically what we sat and played together in the same room.
The Hypos at Scott McMicken’s studio (Photo courtesy of McMicken)
JM: You can really hear that in the recording, down to the stray notes and off-mic laughter. There's a warmth and intimacy. It’s easy to visualize the five of you huddled around a few microphones.
AAP: Thank you. And Scott has all this great vintage gear — obscure amps and microphones — we got to play around with.
JM: On paper, the guys behind Dr. Dog and Reigning Sound producing a Honeycutters record may raise eyebrows. But when you listen to the finished product, it makes sense. It sounds natural and refreshing, but not a radical departure from your previous work. I imagine that with Evan and Kevin [who’s also in Scott McMicken & THE EVER-EXPANDING] playing with Greg and Scott in The Hypos, that their familiarity with the studio and production team made for a comfortable experience.
AAP: Definitely. In general, they're both very laid-back, easy-to-work-with guys. And everybody in The Honeycutters is pretty laid back and easy to work with. So, it was just a bunch of nice people getting together to make a record.
JM: Are there examples of songs on the album that took on a slightly different life when you guys hit “record,” either through the contributions of your bandmates or Greg and Scott?
AAP: “Forget Me Not Blue” is a song I wrote with more of a bluegrassy, train beat kind of feel. We played it a few times that way in the studio and it felt pretty good, but we weren’t sure we had a take. When we came back from eating dinner that night, Kevin and Evan were jamming in the shed on what sounded like those chords. So I picked up my guitar and started playing and singing over that feel. And Greg stuck his head in and was like, “Wait, stop and start that again. We're gonna hit ‘record.’” We literally played it once that way, and it just felt right. All the things we'd been struggling with on that song to get it to feel good just fell into place.
JM: I hear Scott’s backing vocals on that one. Were those dubbed in by design?
AAP: My ideas for background vocals tend to just be, “Let’s put a harmony on the chorus.” Harmonies were the only thing we didn’t do live. In the interim after we finished recording, Scott was listening back to things and adding here and there. A lot of the harmonies he is singing were meant to be placeholders for somebody else to come in and record over. But they sounded so good with him doing it, and I really like his vocal attack, so we left them as they were.
JM: He’s also on one of my favorites from the record, “Big Year,” which seems to take on new meaning given the 2024 we’ve had.
AAP: What’s funny is the original “big year” I started writing that song about was 2018. And the reasons it was a “big year” now seem sort of benign. My parents sold the house I grew up in, which was Earth-shifting for me. And I got married. I came up with the line, “It's been a big year, maybe next one will be smaller.” And it's been a snowball since then.
JM: Anything but smaller. Two kids, a pandemic, a hurricane, two records...
AAP: Right. Obviously, the hurricane was the biggest thing to happen last year. My son — who turns one today — was also born. Oh, and I broke my foot.
JM: That’s right. For your AVLFest set at The Outpost, you played sitting down, sporting a cast. I guess you’re healed up by now?
AAP: More or less. It's just kind of stiff in the morning. But I'm getting old, so everything’s stiff in the morning.
JM: When the record came out in August, you played some shows around the Southeast, then headed over to the U.K. Clearly, you have an audience there, which makes sense, given Europeans’ love of all things Americana. When did your music start to catch on overseas? And how would you compare the experience of playing there versus the States?
AAP: That was our fifth tour there. The first time we went was 2017. I’d gotten in touch with a promoter and booking agent who started promoting us to radio and press. We’ve played the U.K., Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and a one-off festival in Spain. I love playing in Europe. What I've found is that audiences there are a lot quieter. I’d compare it to a listening room vibe here.
For the first four tours, we had the full band. But this time, it was just me and Evan. And we brought along Hannah Kaminer, an incredible singer/songwriter who’s done a lot of babysitting for us. So the way it was set up was Hannah and I would perform and showcase our music, but it was a family unit with Hannah watching the kids during our set.
JM: Smart way to plan a tour. How has motherhood shaped your writing, both in terms of lyrical content and your creative process?
AAP: I certainly have less time to create. The last song I wrote before my son was born was in October or November 2023. And I just wrote one just before the holidays. So, I basically went a full year without writing. It was close to that with my [now five-year-old] daughter. That can make you a little crazy if, like me, you're used to writing a lot. But I was trying to be generous with myself because all of my creative energy was going towards something else.
Lyrically, when I first started writing songs in my late teens and early 20s, it was a lot about romantic love and heartache — all the country music tropes. Then in my early 30s, it definitely shifted. I’m still writing about relationships and love, but more about loneliness and interpersonal interactions on a grander scale.
Becoming a parent — and I've heard other people say this — is a lot like having the skin ripped off your body. You have no barrier and are suddenly so sensitive. In some ways, your skin is thicker. But you have these little people walking around who are part of you, which sometimes makes things a lot harder to process. Pretty much every song I've written since my daughter was born has at least had some shadow of motherhood over it. I can't not write as a mother now. The passage of time is so much more remarkable.
JM: Are you writing more now in the early mornings or late at night? Or just whenever you have a break?
AAP: Pretty much whenever I have a break right now. What I really need to write is space and privacy. And that’s certainly been offered by various people I’ve lived with who would say, “Just go in that room and shut the door!” But it doesn’t really work like that. I really need the whole house and a set space to feel and really get in touch with the muse.
JM: I know all artists approach writing a bit differently. Either inspiration comes when it comes — which seems more passive — or being more disciplined and treating it almost like a job.
AAP: I'm learning how to treat it like a job. Throughout my 20s, I was lucky to have a lot of blocks of time to sit and write. Now, if Evan has a gig and is out of the house at night after the kids are asleep, I might be tired and just want to sit and watch TV, but I know I need to prioritize creativity.
JM: And is that rendering good art?
AAP: I mean, I'm pleased with the one song I’ve written in the last year. And I'm hoping to write more because the ideas and lyrics keep coming. Hopefully this next year will be smaller [laughs] so I can focus more on writing.
JM: Let’s hope. You’re a fan of making cohesive albums versus singles, and have said you hope listeners digest your records from start to finish. Are you writing with a collection in mind, or are you just cranking out songs and figuring out which ones stick together before deciding to start a new project?
AAP: The latter. What usually happens is I’ll get the energy to put out an album after writing a new song I'm excited to record and wanting to flesh it out with older songs I've written. I’m fortunate in that I was very prolific in my earlier writing days, so I always have a stock of at least 20 to 30 songs I could happily record. I’ll usually make a little demo with just me and my guitar to share with the guys for them to weigh in on. If I didn't have kids, I’d probably be making an album every year, but I think it’s good to not do that, too.
JM: You moved to Asheville almost 20 years ago to become a luthier. How and why did you pivot from making guitars to making music?
AAP: After doing the original apprenticeship, building my guitar, and learning to do some repairs, I just found that playing live was drawing me in a lot more.
JM: Did the tedious process of guitar-building instill discipline and patience that carried forward in your songwriting?
AAP: It was definitely a very formative experience, and such a beautiful introduction to Asheville. In those days, Brad Nickerson, who I was working with, had a shop in one of the warehouses behind The Orange Peel on South Lexington [Ave.]. A sculptor had most of it, but Brad had a box he’d built out of wood in the middle of the space — basically, a room in the middle of the warehouse.
I came down here in January or February [2007], so it was cold. I remember keeping warm with a little space heater and shaping the sides of the guitar I was making with a heated iron. My guitar has a rosewood back and sides, so it was a wonderful smell. For those two months, I lived at Bon Paul & Sharky's on Haywood Road. They were renting out rooms before becoming a hostel. I'd ride the bus downtown from West Asheville and get coffee from the [French Broad] Co-Op on my way to the studio. It was a really lovely way to arrive here.
JM: You grew up in upstate New York, which is hard to pick up in your voice. Did your accent soften after moving here and starting to make what I’d describe as Southern music?
AAP: My dad's from Virginia, and my mom’s from New Jersey, but she doesn't have a strong accent. They met and married in Austin, Texas, before my dad got a job in New York and they moved to Hastings-on-Hudson, a river town in lower Westchester County. So, I wasn't raised by Noo Yawk-ers. The place I grew up in was a beautiful marriage of being very close to New York City, but with an extremely small-town feel.
When I first started playing, as you call it, “Southern music,” I was hyper-self-conscious about being from New York. I now listen back to our first album from 2009, Irene, and hear a very strongly put-on, fake Southern accent. I don't think that's 100% true or fair, but there was definitely a feeling of needing to blend in. And that was well before I was using my name in front of The Honeycutters [in 2017]. I wasn't very comfortable in the spotlight, partially because I wasn't sure of myself and really just wanted to identify with a musical tradition.
It was several years into that when I realized I didn’t actually want to be heavily associated with one genre. By that point, I’d done it to myself. But now, as a common-law Southerner of nearly 20 years, I don't think about it much anymore.
IF YOU GO
Who: Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters
When: Monday, Feb. 3, 7 p.m.
Where: 185 King Street, Brevard, 185kingst.com
Tickets: $23
(Photo by Eliza Bell Photography)
