With a voice as timeless and transportive as the songs she writes, Erin Durant invites listeners into the luminous, dreamlike world of her third album ‘Firetrail,’ reflecting on its creation, inspirations, and the magic of letting go.
Stream: ‘Firetrail’ – Erin Durant
New Orleans born, LA-based singer/songwriter Erin Durant is an artist through-and-through.
Her music, her style, even just the way she speaks – with such diligence and thoughtfulness – is mesmerizing. The way she lives her life is like a form of art itself.
Following her 2019 album Islands, Durant is returning with her third full-length offering called Firetrail (released May 16, 2025th via Ruination Record Co). Her voice, pure and spellbinding, often steals the show on this record. With a vocal range as full, high and effortless as Joni Mitchell or Joanna Newsom, Durant possesses the ability to not only pause time, but shift it.
The songs off Firetrail will make you feel nostalgic for places you haven’t been, or like waking up from a dream that sticks with you for the rest of the day. Each song is rich with orchestral instrumentation, and there are hints of some Americana influence. It is a captivating and truly distinct listening experience from beginning to end.
Oh is it real, how love goes?
I know that it’s real
I’m talking like I didn’t know how
Hard to love yourself
So easy to deny
Love is what I’ve come here for
I loved one more than I knew how to show
And it came out like rivers damned up
But did I ever have a real chance?
I don’t know
Sitting outside her home in Topanga Canyon for our conversation, Durant looks on with a soft smile. The lush, emerald-green trees are reflecting off the window pane behind her. The birds are chirping in the background.
It is a magical scene. There is an instant kindness and sincerity about Durant that pulls you in, even when she’s sitting on the other side of a computer screen.
Suddenly, thirty minutes of our interview fly by, and it feels like I’ve only just scratched the surface of getting to know her; she is a deep well, and an artist in every way.
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:: stream/purchase Firetrail here ::
:: connect with Erin Durant here ::
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A CONVERSATION WITH ERIN DURANT
Atwood Magazine: Hi Erin!
Erin Durant: Hi! How are you?
I’m doing well, thank you! It looks like you’re in a beautiful outdoor situation. I can hear the birds chirping in the background.
Erin Durant: Yeah, I’m outside in Topanga Canyon! And you’re in New Orleans?
Yes! I read that you’re originally from here but you’ve kind of moved around a bit?
Erin Durant: Yeah. I lived in New York for a long time, and I’ve been out here [in Topanga] since the fall of 2021.
Have you noticed any changes while living in these different parts of the country, particularly when it comes to creating?
Erin Durant: Yeah, I mean so New Orleans, I haven’t lived there for like half my life. I would go back to visit, but I wasn’t necessarily making music then. But it’s a place very close to my heart, so it’s been with me when I’m in New York or out here in California. But yeah, different places have such different creative energies. I feel like even when I’m in other places, those places are still with me.
That’s wonderful. Well I just want to start by saying that I’ve loved reading about your story. You have such an inspiring and organic musical journey, and I’d love to talk more about it with you. What is your earliest memory of loving music and thinking, “This is what I want to do”?
Erin Durant: Hmm, good question. I’ll try to answer that. I mean, I always loved singing. It just felt very natural to me. I was kind of a shy kid, but I had some hamminess about me in the way that I just loved singing, whether it was with a karaoke machine or singing along with records. I remember getting really excited about getting a microphone. I just remember loving a microphone and a microphone stand. At one point, I was using a reel to reel and then my parents got me some sort of – it was too advanced for me at the time – but it was an eight track. So I would record whatever I could. I just loved it. I’d read books, and I’d record it into my microphone, because I just loved the microphone. I think just growing up in New Orleans, there’s so much music. Obviously there’s a rich history of music. But yeah, just beautiful memories. Music was always present.
You have a gorgeous new album out called Firetrail. I’d love to hear in your own words what the title and the record as a whole means to you.
Erin Durant: Hmm, let’s see how to articulate this. There may be some false starts. [laughs]
I was inspired by the image of someone – in the way that when you go to a play or an opera or a musical, and there’s moments when the lights narrow in on someone. I think that kind of stayed with me, the idea of someone seeing these characters. They’re very personal songs. The firetrail is a representation. It can be metaphorical and also a place, like an open space outside. I remember listening to a Willie Nelson song – well, it’s his version of “San Antonio Rose” – and there’s something about being on a mountain pass that just really resonated with me. It definitely was a solitary thing, but within that, I was able to take on different attitudes and different heart space and characters, but all coming from the same place, if that makes sense.
Yes, it does. I love that!
Erin Durant: I feel like so much is in the songs, you know, I want people to have their own experience of what it means to them. But yeah, I think of that image of someone in that space when they’re in the spotlight and everything gets quiet and you’re just in exchange with nature.
Who are some of your personal role models and artists who inspired the ethereal, operatic sound of this record?
Erin Durant: I think at the time I was listening to Kate Bush and Edith Piaf and kind of that opera-esque vibrato. I was calling in a little bit of decadence in my life through the songs. Working with Kyp Malone – he produced the record with me and he’s a good friend – I think he brought in a lot of interesting sounds. I really appreciate the way he helps me with the arrangements and accompanies my voice in the songs.
I can definitely hear the Kate Bush and Edith Paif influence on this record. There’s a timeless quality about your music and your voice alone that reminds me of singers from those eras.
Erin Durant: I love old recordings. I don’t know if “old” is the right word but… there’s something about that otherworldly quality. I heard a Fats Waller record at the time, and was just picking up little things. It doesn’t take a lot for me to do that. I can listen to something for a long time and go really into it and be really inspired by it.
Is there a song or lyric off Firetrail that you connect with strongly at this moment in time?
Erin Durant: One of the lyrics that stayed with me is a lyric in “Alone with You” where it says: The love that I feel wasn’t strange.” When you’re able to access a certain kind of love where you feel at ease – and I don’t even mean romantic love necessarily, but just an inner something – it’s not strange. It’s the most natural thing. And I like playing around with the past and the present and the future. Yeah, that’s an important line to me. And then I really appreciate the song “Roses & Thorns.” The arrangements that Kyp and the musicians came up with were just really exciting. I love working with Kyp. I just really appreciate his sensibility.
Who all was involved in the arrangement and accompaniment of this record?
Erin Durant: Kyp Malone produced it. We worked together. He came up with a lot of the arrangements and introduced me to some of the musicians. Some of them I had already met who worked on my previous record. And so, you know, these musicians are amazing and had ideas. I can get very attached to my own performance. When I made that record Blueberry Mountain – which was very lo-fi, and it was the first record that I made – I made it on tape. And so it was just me in my apartment making it. That’s where I learned. I would usually do three takes of every song, and I’d listen back and be like, “That’s the one.”
But then I remember being a little bit nervous when me and Kyp started recording, and I remember I was like, “I don’t know if this take has the magic.” Kyp said something to the effect of, “Erin, the magic is in all the parts and all of the layers that we’re gonna work on.” That was really helpful for me to hear, because it’s true. The whole process was super magical. It’s all kind of a blur. I was there for all of it, but it was all these different energies and artists and musicians creating this thing that I’m really proud of and so honored to have all these people play on and be a part of. Finding the magic in different parts of it was exciting to me.
It sounds like you had to release a little bit of control, which is not an easy thing for songwriters to do with their songs. Their songs are like their babies.
Erin Durant: Yeah, and I think when you build relationships with people and you trust them and they know you so well and you feel so seen, it’s exciting, because then you know you’re in good hands.
Where was Firetrail recorded?
Erin Durant: The rhythm section and myself and Kyp went to Texas to Sonic Ranch. There’s a residential studio there, so we lived and worked there for two weeks. And then we went up to a studio in New York. So, New York and Texas.
That’s awesome. I’d love to talk a little bit about your background interning at the Smithsonian! I read that you wrote essays and would help archive Bluegrass records while working there? Could we talk a little bit about that experience and how it’s played into your relationship with music, both as a creator and consumer?
Erin Durant: When I was twenty-seven, I did this internship at the Smithsonian, and that was just so wonderful. I got to just sit with all these tapes and listen. I learned so much through those projects, and it was a way of learning something and working. It kind of created a space for me to develop my own songwriting and find my voice in this really inspiring way. You know, I didn’t make music then, and so I just had this thing in me that was like, “How do I explore these ideas and feelings”? And so I think I was just slowly coming into my artist self. Those things were really formative for me.
What were you doing before you started songwriting? What were some of your goals and dreams?
Erin Durant: I was just growing up, I think. It was always there, but I didn’t know how to access it. But I just knew I had to. I also thought maybe I could get into humanitarian work. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I studied that. When I was twenty-two, I went to the US/Mexico border and volunteered with a group helping migrants. I was really just trying to find my way in the world. Music was always there, and I felt like that was the way for me to be able to connect, but it was just a longer road for me.
We’re down to the last questions. Thank you for your time and for your thoughtfulness. If someone were to take anything from Firetrail, what would you hope it’d be?
Erin Durant: I guess what I would hope is that it allows someone to go into their own world. I think that’s what I love experiencing about music and art. If it can help someone access something, that would be really exciting to me.
I think this record definitely accomplishes that. You know when you’re reading a book and you’ve escaped so deeply into a character’s mind that it takes you a couple seconds – maybe even a few minutes – to snap back into reality after you’ve finished the book? That’s the effect Firetrail had on me.
Erin Durant: Yeah! Well it’s like, the songs are so personal – I have my way of getting outside myself – but they’re coming from a very personal place. But I don’t want that to be necessary for me to make what I make and to put my heart into it. I hope there’s doors in it that are beyond my experience. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious.
It doesn’t sound pretentious! Any final words? Any shows and things our readers can look forward to coming up?
Erin Durant: I’m working on some things for the fall! But I’m really trying to follow the cosmic thread right now. I’m trying to ride the waves and figure out the next steps and be really paused. Trying to stay optimistic.
I’m right there with you.
Erin Durant: Yeah, just trying to figure out how to be in this world that is ever changing and be the most useful I can be.
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:: stream/purchase Firetrail here ::
:: connect with Erin Durant here ::
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© Maximilla Lukacs
© Maximilla LukacsFiretrail
an album by Erin Durant
