alt-country comeback kid

I am a singer/songwriter, though when I was 19 and hellbent on making that my career, I got sick with late stage neurological lyme disease. My health has been a dumpster fire since then, and I spent basically all of my 20's on-and-off bedridden (You can follow that SUPER fun journey under the tag health ramble -- I have had this tumblr since I was 19 so we have gone through a lot of shit together). When I turned 30, after getting treatment for MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome), I finally started to get my life back. I have been diagnosed with Tourette's since I was 4. That has added an interesting dimension into my "medical mystery," which tends to fascinate (and befuddle) doctors AND ALSO keeps things somewhat entertaining day to day. I find a lot of humor in my tics (though sometimes they can be pretty debilitating!). I worked at a summer camp for kids with Tourette Syndrome for 4 years, so I love meeting and chatting with fellow ticcers and consider myself an advocate. I have recently begun writing kind of personal essays that explain inspirations for songs I wrote and connect them to what was going on in my life (and often my health shitshow) at the time. I've been tagging those with My Writing if you are interested in reading (or blacklisting). I recorded an album of original (mostly Americana) songs years ago. You can listen to that on Spotify at Molly Trull - "Nothing Is Enough" It's available on basically every streaming / music service you can think of (including youtube). Just search my name and the album title (Nothing Is Enough). My bandcamp is here if you want to buy and download the mp3s to own.

Some of the songs on the album are literally songs I wrote in high school, just to warn you. I feel like I have outgrown them a bit. I am still proud of my songs, though, and I think the album doesn’t sound too bad.

I have an old soundcloud account where I have uploaded some of the songs from my album as well as some home demos, and some covers I have done. You can find that here I post a lot of music that I love to listen to and that has inspired my own songwriting. You can find all that at my music tag.

I write about my family a lot because we have a lot of family lore and frequent shenanigans. You can find those posts under the tag my flamboyantly dysfunctional family

I watch a lot of tv. I am involved in several fandoms. I am a gigantic fucking nerd. Find my tv fandom-y posts under tv

I love my dogs and post pics of them a lot because I think they are super cute and ridiculous. Find those furry idiots (affectionate) under my dogs

Thank you for reading this monstrosity of a pinned post, and feel free to send me an ask anytime! I love making new friends.

xo

This is an F minor Blues song I wrote the summer I turned 18 and graduated high school (both big life events happened the same day for me). I always wanted to write a blues song. I was a Jazz and blues pianist for many years, so I love all those blues song tropes and the spirit of improv. I wrote it one night, taught it to the band the next day, and then the day after that we were performing it for the first time at a Benefit Concert we headlined as a prize for winning our school's Battle of the Bands. As you can see in the video from that performance that I'm sharing here, it's pretty hard to sing. The part I struggle the most with is that the melody goes incredibly low (somewhat outside my comfortable singing range) and then in other parts of the song goes incredibly high (which are the funnest parts to sing in my opinion!).

(to be fair to myself about the rough singing in this video, I had literally JUST written and memorized the song. I'm surprised I didn't fuck up any lyrics) It is a pretty rocking song though. We used to play it as the closer of all our shows. It's REALLY fun to play. We had a blast every time we did it. I love the shit out of yelling "GO!" to our lead guitarist when he starts his solo. Honestly, I think I stole that from a Neko Case song. Whoops.

I never recorded it besides live recordings.. and I kind of like that it's only a live song and there's no "album version." Seb, our lead guitarist, absolutely kicks ass in this video from our first perfomance of the song. Fun fact: he is now a Journalism Professor! Anyway, here's "The Heat"

I am sick in the head I need a doctor to help me please I am flirting with a troubled man I am crushed down to my knees

There’s nothing wrong with disaster you always say you like it best I think of you like a secret something burning a hole in my chest

I feel the heat come quickly whenever I think of you I feel it puff from my lips like smoke whenever I breathe after kissing you

I am lying to myself when I say you make me feel good I feel as bad as I’ve ever been And more addicted than I ever should

I feel the heat come quickly whenever I think of you I feel it puff from my lips like smoke whenever I breathe after kissing you

(guitar solo)

I feel the heat come quickly whenever I think of you I feel it puff from my lips like smoke whenever I breathe after kissing you

I wrote this song when I was 17. Not-so-coincidentally, the first line of the song is “You were 17…”

I had been listening to a lot of Laura Marling - in particular her song “Ghosts.”

At the time she was also 17 years old, and it inspired me to see a girl my age with a kickass music career showcasing her songwriting.

When I wrote this song, I envisioned it slowly building emotionally and musically with each verse until it had more and more drums that jolted you like heartbeats.

I did have a specific inspiration in mind. I was kind of making digs at myself with lines like “Only read what you were told, never were one for being bold. You did what Mama said, but now you’re getting old.” Despite being an independent thinker (literally won an award in school as a kid for that), and having a healthy distrust for authority, I was very much a rule follower and incredibly cautious at that point in my life. My mom even took me aside one day in high school and told me that “it’s okay to break the rules sometimes.” She and my dad were concerned how well behaved I was!

Though I’m not sure I properly conveyed it (because other parts of the song are dark as hell), some of the lines are very tongue-in-cheek. I was roasting the fuck out of how sheltered and well-behaved I was, while also somewhat roasting my friends who rebelled so hard against that very thing in themselves that they ended up going out and doing very stupid, very dangerous things to feel more badass and less guilty about their naïveté.

There is also the thing about tattoos in this song. I have never liked tattoos. My mom was always very negative about them in my childhood, teaching me about how in the holocaust our family members had been forced to have numbers tattooed on them. How we should treat our bodies as temples, and how my grandmother refused to even pierce her ears.

Embarrassingly enough, when I was 16 I wrote an essay about how much I hated tattoos. In my English class, we were learning about how to use strong language to convey your opinion and sway people. I definitely overdid it for that paper, using cutting words to describe how “disgusting” I thought tattoos were, even if I didn’t feel quite that strongly enough in real life.

Even more embarrassingly, my Papaw was at the time an editor of a publication called “Christian Ethics Today.” He went ahead and published my essay viscerally condemning tattoos, and so now that essay from when I was 16 and playing around with persuasive and descriptive language lives on in infamy as one of the top Google results when you search my name.

Thanks, Papaw.

Even though I have no tattoos of my own, I do not feel that way anymore (and honestly never really did). I am not judgy about other people’s tattoos. If they make you happy, I am genuinely happy for you! I’m not gonna be an asshole about it. But yeah, please don’t google my name and read that article ! So incredibly embarrassing.

Relating to this song, 17 year old me had seen several friends turn 18 and immediately go out and get some ….pretty regrettable tattoos (in their words, not just mine!). So keeping on the theme of roasting myself and my friends for trying to rebel against being sheltered and well-behaved… Getting a tattoo that said “I Never Could” clearly fit with that!

It’s interesting… I often ask my friends and family and musical mentors what they think my songs mean. I always have my own interpretations, but it’s very rewarding hearing how others hear and interpret them.

One of my mentors who recorded a bunch of demos for me in his local studio when I was in high school always told me how this was his favorite song of mine. When I asked him what he thought the song was about, his interpretation was completely different than mine and actually very compelling. He even viewed the narrator of the song as being a different gender than what I felt when I wrote it, which in my opinion changed the song a great deal in meaning.

I loved his interpretation. And every interpretation of this song that I have heard since then. Everyone I have asked seems to interpret it in a completely different way, and I think that’s so cool.

I even hesitate to share too much of my original intention when writing this song, because I think there are so many better ways to understand and relate to it. I also feel very differently about it at age 36 than I did when I wrote it at 17.

Another interesting fact about this song (though somewhat unsurprising given the lyrics) is that my mother HATES this song. It’s like she takes the line about rebelling against what your Mama told you to do incredibly personally.

When I would gleefully tell people how much my mom hates this song of mine, she would like to joke to them that I had probably been mad that she told me I wasn’t allowed to make cookies one day and turned my anger at her into this song.

That is definitely… one way to interpret this song, but I like to think there’s more to it than that.

This was one of the 4 songs my band played for my school’s Battle of the Bands my senior year of high school (which we won!).

Our set list was a Wanda Jackson song, a Byrd’s song, this original song, and another song I had written in high school called “Change My Mind.”

(I think “Change My Mind” was what cinched our win… see the video of High School!Me performing it at our Battle of the Bands here:

Sidenote: I forced a friend of mine to play fiddle for our band even though she didn’t feel comfortable doing it and didn’t want to do it. So don’t judge her fiddle playing on this video!)

I have a recording of our performance of this song that night somewhere, but it does sound quite different to the version on my album I did in Austin with session musicians (which is the version I am sharing here).

The more slowed down, moody version on my album (that I honestly prefer to my original vision of the song) is all thanks to session guitarist Scrappy Judd Newcomb who came up with it and felt strongly that that was the vibe the song should have.

All right, that’s enough rambling about this song. But I would be interested in your interpretation of it if anyone is inclined to share!

Hope I didn’t ruin it for anyone with the backstory!

Lyrics:

You were seventeen Said you'd always had it easy Life was boring You were caged You dreamed of soaring So you got nothing to hide, nothing to lose So you got nothing to hide, nothing to lose

He was dark and handsome But not tall or like a con You said "I don't talk to strangers" But you followed him And no one even noticed you were gone And no one even noticed you were gone

He said he'd teach you to be wild And you were sick of being good So he took you to a place where you couldn't see his face And he said "if this don't make you bad, I don't know what would" You got a big tattoo that said 'I never could' And you always knew that you never could And you always knew that you never could

And you never had it easy Your head was full of worthless books Only read what you were told Never were one for being bold You did what mama said, but now you're gettin old You did what mama said, but now you're gettin old

I am allergic to so many things that fresh produce is some of the only food I can safely eat, so I eat a ton of it. Of course that has come back to bite me in the ass now.

I also just got my first shot of xolair last week for my allergies, and apparently xolair can make you extremely susceptible to parasitic infections. Fantastic.

Anyway the past few days for me have been a nightmare. Literal hell. I went over 3 days without any sleep just because of constantly having to run to the bathroom.

I seriously considered going to the ER but have had such bad experiences there that I refused to go unless absolutely necessary.

I have been having so much trouble breathing though and shivering and shaking. I kind of suspect I am in anaphylaxis on top of whatever infection I have. My blood pressure got really high again (despite all the meds I’m on for it), and I kept having these emotional outbursts where I’d start crying hysterically. I also have the taste of metal in my mouth and a horrible feeling of doom, which are symptoms of anaphylaxis.

I was afraid to go to sleep because of my breathing issues but my parents have been checking to see if I was breathing like every half hour. So I was finally able to get some sleep.

Kaitlin Butts - “If It Hadn’t Been For Love”

This came across my feed and since I am currently in anaphylaxis so my brain is mush…. I’m feeling super chatty / rambly

Mike Henderson was one of the songwriters of this song from the Steeldrivers’ first album (one of my all-time faves).

He was from my hometown (correction: I think he came here for college maybe and lived here for many years, but was originally from Independence, MO), and a very good family friend of mine was best friends with him for decades (she’s buddies with all the old hippies of a certain generation from my hometown because in her 20s she worked at an infamous sandwich shop in my town called The Sub Shop- iykyk… hashtag local lore) and was always trying to get me and my mom to take a road trip with her to Nashville to hang out with Mike and see him perform at the Bluebird Cafe.

I was always too sick to take her up on that offer, but I really regret that because he passed away unexpectedly in 2023. Huge loss for the music community as well as my hometown hippies. He was a really brilliant songwriter (and a great guy!).

That first Steeldrivers album has so many great songs. It came out my freshman year of college (2008) and at the time we still had this amazing music festival every fall in my hometown called Roots n Blues.

In Fall 2009 (my sophomore year of college) the Steeldrivers came to play at the music festival literally in the campus park that was my dorm’s backyard. So I basically went 2 feet from my dorm room to hear the Steeldrivers perform. I think that year the festival was still entirely free, though I volunteered for the festival with some dorm friends so I would have gotten free passes anyway. That festival always had the most legendary lineups.

I played that Steeldrivers album into the ground. First I had heard and seen of Chris Stapleton!

Anyway, Kaitlin Butts did a great job covering this song (no surprise there). Adele probably has the most famous version, but not my favorite overall (that would be the original!).