“Anything Can Mean Everything”: Hannah Cohen Plants New Roots with ‘Earthstar Mountain,’ an Intimate Love Letter to the Catskills

Singer/songwriter Hannah Cohen reflects on how the Catskills’ quiet beauty and natural wonder helped her reconnect with herself, plant new roots, and create her new album, ‘Earthstar Mountain’ – a breathtakingly beautiful record born of stillness, clarity, healing, and home.

‘Earthstar Mountain’ – Hannah Cohen

Three hours north of New York City lies a place of natural beauty and quiet wonder: Rolling hills blanketed in hemlock and maple, winding streams cutting through mossy ravines, and stars so bright they feel close enough to touch. The Catskills have long called to artists, seekers, and storytellers — not for their spectacle, but for their stillness. It’s here, surrounded by trees and time, that singer/songwriter Hannah Cohen found her home. And it’s here that her fourth album, Earthstar Mountain, took root.

Hannah Cohen has always made music with feeling. From the dreamy melancholy of 2015’s Pleasure Boy to the rich, bittersweet warmth of 2019’s Welcome Home, her songs have long inhabited that liminal space between yearning and peace, reflection and release. But on Earthstar Mountain, the New York-born, Catskills-based artist reaches new levels of clarity, presence, and personal depth. “Anything can mean everything,” she reflects at one point in our conversation, describing a record that is as much about embracing the external world as it is about the internal one.

I think I know you well
At least I think I do
A perfect stranger there
Sleeping in my bedroom

I know who you are, it’s true
Part of me is always half of you
I, I see it now, clear as day
Riding out on our own waves, waves, waves

– “Earthstar,” Hannah Cohen

Released March 28^th via Congrats Records, Earthstar Mountain is Cohen’s first album in six years, and in many ways it is a reintroduction. Named for a rare star-shaped mushroom she found growing on the land she now calls home, it’s a deeply rooted collection of songs written amidst the trees and trails of the Hudson Valley, shaped by her surroundings and lived experience. The album is a tribute to nature and the slow churn of time, to grief and love, to the lives we build and the seasons that shape us. Written and recorded in between running sessions at Flying Cloud Recordings – the residential studio she co-founded with her partner, Sam Evian – it’s as immersive as the forest it was born in.

“There’s just this energy here that is undeniable,” Cohen says of the Catskills. She’s lived in the region for the past five years, and its influence permeates every note and lyric on Earthstar Mountain. Whether she’s singing about the quiet ache of loss on “Mountain,” basking in the soft psychedelia of “Una Spiaggia,” or conjuring a disco dreamscape in “Summer Sweat,” her music shimmers with place and purpose.

In conversation, Cohen is thoughtful, funny, and candid. She’s equal parts artist and host — someone who’s as passionate about scavenging for mushrooms and cooking a nourishing meal as she is about crafting a song. Her reflections on nature, grief, community, and creativity are woven with the same grace and humanity that echo through her music. Living up here changes your perspective, she explains. “You’re living and experiencing things, and it comes out in the way it needs to.”

At Flying Cloud, Cohen and Evian have cultivated something of a sanctuary for artists — a space where musicians come to work, rest, eat well, and immerse themselves in the music-making process. That spirit of care and collaboration flows into Earthstar Mountain, a record made with intention and love, and with a deep respect for the land that inspired it. “We’re the new stewards of this place,” she says. “There’s always something to learn from the mountain.”

Ultimately, Earthstar Mountain is a luminous portrait of an artist embracing her full self — the quiet and the chaos, the grief and the joy, the solitude and the connection. It’s a reminder, in Cohen’s own words, that “there’s beauty everywhere. Anything can mean everything.”

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:: stream/purchase Earthstar Mountain here ::

:: connect with Hannah Cohen here ::

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“Earthstar” – Hannah Cohen

A CONVERSATION WITH HANNAH COHEN

Hannah Cohen: Well, I think this… Well, there’s so much. I spent the last couple of years writing this record and piecing together the record in between kind of touring. I tour, my partner tours, Sam Evian. We also run a recording studio and have a lot of sessions. So sort of this revolving door of artists and musicians that are coming up here. So I feel like I’m making excuses as to why it’s taken me so long to put out a new record, but life happens. And so, yeah, this record, it started to really kind of take shape over the last year and a half. Last year, 2024, I wrote more songs that kept kind of pushing other older songs off the record and songs like “Mountain” and “Earthstar” or let’s say “Una Spiaggia,” which was a cover. Those last three songs were like a puzzle piece to the record, really kind of making sense to me and feeling like it was finished. So I needed that time to marinate and… Yeah, for life. I needed that time for life. They say, like, when you’re not writing, you’re writing, like, even though if you’re not working on stuff, the body keeps score and you’re living and experiencing things, and it comes out in its way that it needs to.

Hannah Cohen: Well, I think my writing process just… I mean, I think the Catskills has affected me pretty deeply, profoundly. The way that I experience time is completely different because I’m so immersed. I live in the mountains. I’m so immersed in the mountains and seeing the seasons change and watching patterns happen over time and getting to witness that in the same place, I’m so in awe of this place. And so it’s really changed the way that I think about anything.

The Catskills, and being so immersed in nature, has just changed my outlook and perspective completely. So I guess, yes, it’s a love letter. The Catskills, it’s a thank you to the Catskills, I guess, is another way of saying it. It’s being deeply grateful for being able to live here.

Hannah Cohen: Well, so Sam and I came up together. We sort of fell in love upstate. We started dating, and I had these amazing friends who had this beautiful 17th century old stone house, like, stone farmhouse. They’re in their 70s. They’re sort of like my adoptive like East Coast parents, but they’re also really close friends of mine, Jay and Jackie, and Jay’s a director and taught at NYU and just became a really close friend of mine and Jackie as well. And so Sam and I would come up on weekends from the city to come stay with them, and we would go for hikes in the area, come to the Gunks and Lake Minnewaska and do all these hiking trails. So we really fell in love with the area that way. And so that was almost nine years ago. And then Sam ended up renting a house to make a record in the town that we live in now. We just fell in love. So it was really Sam saying, if we do move up here, it has to be in this one town or it has to be in this general area close to the reservoir.

There’s just this energy here that is just undeniable. So Sam made a record in this house where we all stayed in for like two and a half, three weeks and made a record in. And it sort of was the blueprint for what we do now at our studio where a band comes, we cook all the meals there, sort of streamline the process, go hiking, go swimming, I mean, depending on what season you’re in. But we still go in the creek in the winter. So it was really this thing that Sam and I sort of discovered together. Or not, we didn’t discover the Catskills. We found ourselves really being drawn to this place and music flowing and being able to have space and being totally submerged in nature, in the woods. We were in this house. The driveway was two miles long into this through a ravine. And then you end. It was just so magical. It’s just like, it’s undeniable that it’s just magic here. And everyone who comes here, who visits is looking to buy a house up here on the road or close by. I’ve had so many artists and friends that have moved up since coming to visit.

There’s also this thing where living in New York, you lived in New York for 10 years, right? It sort of shifts your thinking in your, I can’t live anywhere else. I can’t do work anywhere else. Or that’s how it sort of had this chokehold on me where I felt like I couldn’t live anywhere else because the culture and the bustle of the city. But I didn’t realize that it actually wasn’t really suited for me, and I was overstimulated and… Yeah. So now when I go into the city it’s like, too much for me. And I ask myself, how the f* did I live here so long? But you become so desensitized to it.

And of course, I still love the city. And when I go there, I go and do Thai food, I do all the amazing food that I can’t get up here so much, but we end up making it ourselves. But, yeah, now I really take advantage of the city when I go there and I go to shows or go to museums and I get the yummy food and then come back to the quiet of the mountain.

Hannah Cohen: Yeah. I had a small inkling, but I didn’t know how many heavy hitters were living up here. And I mean, it didn’t… That didn’t shift our wanting to move up here because those people are up here. But it’s just everyone is drawn to this area. And I also think because it’s so close to the city that you can still tap into that and not feel completely… But there’s such an incredible and community of artists and musicians and creative people who live up here. But there’s also… Yeah, it’s so like, I don’t really need the city anymore. I have all the culture that I not… Well, I don’t know about that, but I have a lot of culture also, because we run a recording studio, so many musicians and people from the city and all of the world are coming up. We have sessions from bands coming from Mexico City, bands coming from France, bands coming from LA and Chicago kind of all over. So we still feel very, I don’t know, tied to culture and people.

But we are in a rural area for sure. Like, there are… The Bears are in our backwoods, but I don’t know. I’m getting lost. I’m getting lost. I could talk about the Catskills, but yes, there are a lot of musicians and legendary musicians who live up here. It’s very cool.

Hannah Cohen: Well, it’s not an accident for Sam, for sure. He’s an engineer and producer, and he was working in the city at this studio called Figure 8, which is an amazing studio and a lot of people work there and engineers. And it’s funny because three of the head engineers at that studio have now moved upstate and have studios.

Anyhow, so we came up here not by fluke. Sam always wanted to have his own studio. And so being able to afford that in New York City is kind of insane and was not really in our cards. So moving upstate also before COVID. If we were trying to do this now, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. We really like the stuff aligned for us and in so many ways and so many different times from us moving up here.

So that was really Sam wanting to start his own studio. And I love cooking. I love hosting. I love looking after people. My sort of bread-and-butter job over the last 20 years since moving to New York was always in childcare as a nanny for newborns till… I’ll take care of newborns to old people until seniors. So it’s just in my nature. So it sort of was this kind of perfect match where I can cook for large groups and I love looking after people and Sam also loves doing that. And so it’s sort of like a artist retreat. And also, because we’re musicians, we know what musicians and artists need because we’re sensitive to that.

So I cook food that is not going to be like a Session Ender where everyone’s too tired to record. So we just cook healthy food, keep the sessions moving, but also have fun snacks like BjornQorn. Do you like BjornQorn? I love turning people onto BjornQorn. That’s always like… Do you know that chocolate company, Fruition, they’re up here. So we like to have local things to like highlight our other Catskillian friends. I mean, they’re not my friends, but I would love to be friends with the BjornQorn and Fruition people. But we stack those heavily here. So, yeah, building a studio. There was a barn on the property that we completely renovated. I mean, the barn just had… It was just like a shell of a barn and it had a gravel floor. And so we ended up pouring cement foundation, reframing it, residing it, and finishing the interior. So that took a couple years. We were in stages.

The studio wasn’t in our house for a very long time until two years ago. It’s two years ago. Two and a half years ago, we moved. We finally finished the studio barn. And there’s an apartment upstairs that has two bedrooms, but can sleep like four or five people. So, yeah, it’s been a lot of work and also kind of being the new, what’s the word called when you move to a home and you’re the new stewards. We’re the new stewards of the land here. And the house was built in 1974, so there was kind of a lot of updates and things. And the house needed a lot of love. And the property, we’re on six acres, so we’ve been working a lot. There was a lot to get into here. And we’re never going to be finished. There’s always going to be something that we need to do, and I didn’t realize that part of it. The seasons are hardcore up here, and it’s a lot of work!

Hannah Cohen: Yeah, yeah. We now have a system, but some things you just can’t really compete with, like snow and then rain overnight, that’s a freeze. And then everything is an ice-skating rink and you’re absolutely f*ed. There were a couple weeks there which were uncomfortable, but we figured it out, and you just kind of scoot down the driveway and park your car at the bottom of the driveway.

Hannah Cohen: I think having so many people here, which taught me to use my time wisely and to just not be so precious, maybe, like keep making and not… I mean, I guess, I didn’t really take that advice until now because it took me so long to make my last record. But I think with the next record, I think I want to record it in the fall or early next year, so put something out a lot sooner.

Yeah, I think seeing so many musicians come through our door just makes me feel a part of the community and that artists are… That we have to protect artists at all costs and that artists and musicians and writers are really sensitive people. It’s a reminder that there’s a type of person who’s drawn to this kind of work. And that’s kind of comforting for me to see that always that we all kind of speak a different language. Not a different language, but there’s this language that there’s a connectedness with being an artist and that sensitivity that’s really special.

Hannah Cohen: I think my songwriting has shifted, my perspective has shifted, and I think I’m proud of a lot of the songs. If you kind of dig into them, there’s a searching going on there. But there’s also kind of a sense of humor in there if you can find it. I hope that there’s something for everyone in this record. I really feel that way because we’re bringing a lot of different elements happening and different types of songs. So it’s a mixed bag for sure. But I think in that way, there’s something for everyone in this record.

Hannah Cohen: Well, the Earth stars are these mushrooms that I found on the backside of our mountain that we live on. So when I was trying to think about the record or what it wanted to call it, it was like songs that came from ‘Earthstar Mountain’, they did come from this “Mountain”. I wrote them here on the “Mountain” here. So, I mean, I think it’s kind of fun naming the place where you live your own kind of pet name. And there’s a lot of mushrooms that grow on this mountain. And I found these incredible earth star mushrooms that I had never sort of… I’d never seen before or heard about. And they kind of look like they’re from another planet. And so I was really inspired by that. And I thought “Earthstar” is such a beautiful word. So that’s where Earthstar Mountain came from. And then I was trying to think of titles, and then if I combined two songs, like two really important songs to me on the record, which is “Earthstar” and “Mountain,” so I just combined them, merged them.

Hannah Cohen: The native people of the area used to use them in a tincture for lung health, possibly. I should look into that more, but I did read that.

Hannah Cohen: No, I have not eaten them. I only eat the oyster mushrooms, Maitake mushrooms, chanterelles. And I kind of just stick with those ones because there’s the cinnabar ones, but those look close to a poisonous one. So I don’t f* with those – like, no thanks.

I don’t care. I’ll go to the same tree that my mushroom forager friend identified and said, these are great. I’ll go to that tree every year and I’ll just take from that one. That’s fine. But no, I can identify a bunch of mushrooms now. And that… I mean, it’s just so fun learning about all the native and invasive and whatever species that are here. It’s so fun to be able to identify a witch-hazel tree or an oak tree versus a maple tree or a birch or a river birch. There’s just so much that you can get into here. Like, did you know that in New York State you can get… Ginger grows here?

Hannah Cohen: Native ginger, yeah! It grows here. You can harvest it in August. It’s so crazy. And that’s just growing here naturally. It grows wild, and it’s a different type of ginger, but it’s ginger. It’s not like the ginger that you get from Southeast Asia or whatever – but there’s so many things that are just growing here that you can use in your everyday life. It’s so cool.

Hannah Cohen: With all my writing, for me personally, it’s like this stream-of-consciousness and therapy. Like lyrics come out as I’m writing a melody and I surprise myself sometimes with things that come out that I’ve been brewing on. And there’s the question of really actually knowing the person who you’re sleeping next to and that idea for anybody, you never really know. And there’s the uncertainty of just life in general, and I think sonically, that song, just the production of it, it was just this direction that I wanted the record to go into as a more like the flutes and the synths and how watery and the dreamscape, I really felt strongly about. So, yeah, I think, in any relationship, you’re so in tune with someone and you know them better than they know themselves. And there’s… But there’s still parts of somebody that you’ll never really know. And that’s beautiful and also scary.

Hannah Cohen: Oh, 100%.

Hannah Cohen: It’s hard for me to talk about because I lost a friend really suddenly, and he was really special to me. And it was my way of kind of processing that in a way. And maybe in a way, when you lose someone out of nowhere, you’re still… Your nervous system is still attached to them and connected to them and your nervous system is still sort of searching for them. And so in a way, you always wish the things that you could have said to them or that you want to say to them. And so I think that was my way of kind of dealing with or like being able to express the grief that I was experiencing. I know it’s like, I love that song. So beautiful. And then it’s like to know the backstory of it is about losing somebody.

I mean, I think you can tell in the lyrics. But yeah, it’s about just how grief can be so pervasive and it can feel like you can’t escape it in a way. But that was my way of moving through it in a way, for sure. But there’s definitely some Fleetwood Mac. Lots of Fleetwood Mac energy in there, which is comforting. I think that’s like… It’s like a welcome sound in there is like, you’re like, oh, I like that sound because we wouldn’t act.

Hannah Cohen: No, it’s 100% there.

Hannah Cohen: Well, we listened to a lot of Sly and the Family Stone, Shuggie Otis, Dusty Springfield. A song on the record is named after Dusty, the song “Dusty.” And Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, Luiz Bonfá. There’s a lot of… I have a lot of influences. It’s like a lot of Brazilian. It’s instrumental music, film scores, Morricone. I listened to this Italian singer, Mina. She was making music in 50s, 60s… 60s, 70s, 80s, still into the 1990s into early 2000, maybe. I listen to Turkish folk, psych… I listen to everything. Listen to jazz. I love Coltrane. I love everybody. I listen to it also. There’s a lot of influences there that is long and everlasting.

Hannah Cohen: I think why I’m so drawn to music kind of that are in other languages that I don’t understand or instrumental music is what it allows your brain to do. It’s just you’re focusing just on the music and not lyrics. So being able to pull that kind of sonic scape and have that in my music, I feel like my lyrics can kind of swim in that and not be overpowering and it be groovy and have the groove and be exciting, but also relaxing. Yeah, I’m still figuring out why I make the music that I do or I mean the… Also the reason, the last two records that I’ve made that I’m the most proud of and really feel like it’s finally the music that I want to make is because of working with my partner, Sam Evian.

So that soundscape and the production is very much of his doing and direction and we’re doing it together. I mean, I’m writing the songs, he’s producing them, but we’re working on it together and kind of weaving this world where Sam comes from a very like studied musical background where he studied composition and he was like a heavy jazz musician from like childhood until through college. So he has this background in music that like I don’t have. Mine is like I kind of wove what I was doing on my own and I’m self taught and so like I think those two worlds coming together kind of make for why my music sounds the way that it does.

Hannah Cohen: Thank you! No, it’s funny having your partner also be your like musical idol. Like I look up to him so much and I guess I would say I’m a fan girl too, but he’s also like my partner that I live with. So it’s like it’s sometimes you forget and that’s also kind of like, it’s a tricky line to navigate when you’re writing or you’re working on music with your partner because obviously themes are going to come up about. But I think it’s also a beauty and a way to talk about things through music instead of in a conversation. That’s how they… My music is therapy for both of us, I think.

Hannah Cohen: Well, there’s this song called “Rag” that I love and I wrote about the road that I live on, my neighbors, and there’s a lot of other things happening in that song that I hope people dig into. “Shoe” is a favorite songwriting kind of moment for me. Kind of all of them “Dog Years”. But yeah, I think there’s… “Summer Sweat” is like a really fun one that has a lot of influences. It’s this one, Chico Buarque and Ennio Morricone, they did this record together. They recorded it in Italy. Chico left Brazil in the 70s when there was like a lot of political stuff going on. And he re-recorded this record and the arrangements are so exciting. And so there’s this kind of moment in that song where I think I was inspired by… Oh well, I think I just heard a tree fall.

Hannah Cohen: It did, it did. It’s crazy. But yeah, that song has some really fun moments in it and it’s kind of this kind of disco-y kind of sexier tune that I really love. There’s something for everybody in this record. So I hope they listen from front to back, back to front.

Hannah Cohen: In “Shoe,” it’s, “I’m not lost, just kind of stuck. You get behind and then you’re f*d.” I think there’s this momentum in life and trying to keep your head above water and there’s this kind of… I feel like everybody’s really struggling to keep their heads above water and financially, emotionally, physically, we’re getting older and life just keeps getting harder and harder. I think there’s a frustration in where this country is going and a fear of getting behind and things kind of come crashing down. And I feel like everybody is feeling that really deeply that if you don’t keep up, you’re going to drown.

Hannah Cohen: What is my takeaway? I don’t know if I’ve really thought about that yet. I just made it. I’m not sure how to answer that. My takeaway is that there’s beauty everywhere. You look there, anything can mean everything. That’s my takeaway, that anything can mean everything – and that goes to the mountains and the things growing all around me and witnessing rot and repeat and rebirth and the cycles of life. That’s the takeaway.

Hannah Cohen: I suggest discovering your own piece of the Catskills. There’s so much; there’s 700,000 acres of land up here and forest. It’s incredible. There’s so much to explore. There’s something for everybody up here.

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:: stream/purchase Earthstar Mountain here ::

:: connect with Hannah Cohen here ::

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Earthstar Mountain

an album by Hannah Cohen