Hollan Releases “Ready as the Day” EP

SSW: Your new EP “Ready as the Day” is finally out! Congrats! Can you tell us more about this project? What was the inspiration behind it and what was the creation process like?

Hollan: Yes, thank you! The songs off “Ready as the Day” were all written at completely different times of my life so it’s kind of like a sampler of my last six years. I’ve been writing and performing for a long time, but this is my first professional project as far as anything past a bedroom demo goes. Although I was tempted to just use new material, I knew that there were a lot of people who became fans through attachments to my older songs and I felt like it was necessary to sort of recognize my earlier writing since it still seemed impactful to people. The first thing Justin (Justin Grimaldo was the producer on the EP) had me do the first night in the studio was play a stripped down version of every song I had ever written on electric guitar and we took it from there. I think that particular night well reflected our whole creative process together – so much fun, easy-going, and a lot of communication over long conversations. I had many friends in Humboldt (county in Northern California, where I was living at the time) who just happened to be really talented musicians so I would just be like “Hey, want to come track something on the EP tomorrow.” It was so cool how everything worked out the way it did, I feel really blessed to have been in those circumstances. And I’m really happy with the songs we chose, I think they show versatility and growth in writing but also are consistent with each other enough that they fit together well.

What would you like for listeners of your music to take away from your records?

I guess overall I hope that people can find the ability to express something they weren’t able to before. That is what music has been for me, and I think there is a lot of freedom in being able to say what you’ve been needing.

Our favorite song on the EP is “Perfect Home”. Can you tell us more about this track?

Perfect Home is the first song I wrote off the EP actually. It’s a pretty old one, I think I wrote it when I was 17, a junior or senior in high school. I remember sitting at my desk in my room doing homework and all of a sudden the first words popped into my head. I wrote the whole song as just a poem initially, and then a day or two later I came back to it and decided to try to put some music to it. It started off as a song just about questions. Asking someone about the endurance of their love. “Will you be there for me forever, through it all? What about now? Really? Well what about now?” But it somehow ended up with a story line weaving in and out of someone’s life that I was strangely young to be writing about. I played it to one of my best friend’s grandparents earlier this year and afterwards they looked at each other and said, “That’s us, that’s our story!” That was probably the most satisfied I’d ever been to play that song.

You got to travel the world with your music and even got to live in Germany. Have your travels had any effect on you creatively?

Oh man, yes! In a million ways. I think first and foremost my travels have ignited something in my soul and spirit, and since that’s where my songs usually come from they are naturally effected as well. I don’t really know how to sum it up other than to say I see everything and everyone differently after I’ve traveled. I see the impacts of cultural differences on people but mostly I see that we’re really all much more the same than I ever expect us to be. At the end of the day, we are all just humans and we feel the same things, and that is so unifying.

Lyrically, what’s your favorite song that you’ve ever written? And what’s the story behind it?

That’s a complex question! It feels like having to choose my favorite child. I don’t think I’ll definitively say that Water is my favorite song I’ve ever written, but I will say it’s the one I’m most thankful to have had poured out through me. That song was something I really needed to get me through a very difficult time in my life. I wrote it after coming back from a trip to Germany when I was 20. I didn’t know it then but I was on the brink of a really dark depression where I felt like I had lost my own identity in between cultures and worlds. The song is essentially just me sifting back through memories where I had felt most “myself” in life and trying to remember that I have always been the same person at the core. Some hope starts seeping through on the bridge and the last verse finds enough strength to look ahead instead of backwards. I’m even more thankful for the way the song seems to effect other people; helped them understand something about themselves or get through something hard. And for that, even though I often feel distant from that song now, I am eternally grateful to have been it’s writer. As long as it keeps moving people in the way that it does, it will keep being my “favorite.”

What should we expect from you in 2020?

New music for sure. I still have a lot of new songs to get off my chest (and I probably always will). I’m actually back in a studio for the first time next week and I’m looking forward to developing my sound further. I’m thinking of either buying a banjo or an electric guitar this year so things could really go either way at this point haha. I’ve also been playing a few shows with a friend & fellow songwriter called Zach Wood, who also recently put out an EP. We’ve been having a lot of fun playing together and we plan on carrying our fall shows into 2020. I’d also love to do a first-time tour in the upcoming year. That’s been a dream of mine for a long time.

Let’s talk about more of your personal journey. What is the hardest lesson you’ve learnt in life so far?

You ask the tough ones! I think learning and re-learning that life is fluid, it’s always changing. You gain people, you lose people, you go places and you leave places and you gain and lose parts of yourself too sometimes. As a person who clings to comfort and expectation it’s hard for me to be ok with letting things pass in and out of my life but I’m realizing that it can all be done in love and that makes it a lot easier.

We got one last question for you! Thinking of yourself as a soul on Earth, what do you think your purpose is?

Finally, an easy question! Haha… I think I have more than one purpose although at this point in my life it feels like music is the one taking up the most space in my vision range. I think my purpose within music is to help people feel and to give people hope. I’ve watched so many people from my generation struggle with mental illness like it’s an epidemic. I know how hard that is but I’ve also come out the other side of it with a lot of hope. I want my songs to be a light for people and a way to snap numbness. I want them to bring people freedom and peace and to know that they’re not alone.