Evelyn Gray Blossoms With ​“Flower”

“Now I’m starting to sprout from planting the seeds of a new me,” sings Evelyn Gray in ​“Gardening,” the fourth track from her new album Let the Flower Grow, which traces Gray’s personal and artistic journey throughout the past year through ten carefully curated tracks that marry lush and ethereal soundscapes with searing lyrical explorations of the self.

The record is being released digitally on Bandcamp on July 26 and on vinyl and CD on July 27, with a release show at the MAC 650 Gallery & Artist Co-Op in Middletown set for that day. This is not Gray’s first recording, but it is her first full length album — a medium that is important to this New Haven-based singer, songwriter, and musician for multiple reasons.

“The way that I consume music is a full album rather than a playlist,” said Gray. ​“I like to think of the album as the work that’s being put out, the entirety of the album from start to finish, and the choices that you make and the transitions between the songs, and I really wanted it to exist as an entity and all the parts make it complete…. For instance, I have two tracks — ​“Tired” and ​“Take with Food” (for which Gray also made a video) — when I recorded them, we did as one track because it was very important to me that they flowed seamlessly together.”

Gray had previously released an EP in November 2018 with three songs that are also on Let the Flower Grow.

“I had a lot of feelings about it,” Gray said of the EP. ​“I was on the fence about if I was even going to put on the internet or not, but then I was like, ​‘I did all this work on it,’ so I decided I might as well share it, even though it been something that been hard for me at the time.” The three tracks — ​“Dead Name,” ​“Accidents” and ​“Severed Hands” are ​“in a completely different form, but in the same form in a lot of ways.”

“‘Severed Hands’ I had written about two days before the session, so I just felt like, ​‘oh, this song came to me right now for a reason and I should record it,’” Gray said. ​“I did it on acoustic guitar. It was the only time I played acoustic guitar for that whole recording, and that’s not something I do a lot of because I’m a lot more about the manipulation of the electric guitar with different pedals to make all different sorts of soundscapes with it. So it was a very stripped down and intimate performance of the song, and ultimately I didn’t really love how it came out…. I’m so much happier with it this time. It’s the last song on the album, and I put a lot of thought into the sequencing of the record.”

Recording an album had been on Gray’s mind from the start. ​“I was already involved in all the pre-production work around that time [of the EP release] so I had a lot of the material written and fleshed out. I didn’t start tracking the songs that would be on the record as they are now until the first week of January right after the New Year, but I did a lot of work just at home because I have the set up available for me to record and figure out how I wanted everything to sound before I brought it to someone else.”

That someone else ended up being Sam Carlson and Sans Serif Recording.

​“I chose Sam because he had a lot of the equipment that I wanted to use for the recording,” Gray said. ​“The mic that we used for all the vocal takes and from the acoustic guitar takes was something I really wanted to have capturing sound on the record. He had this one particular pre-amplifier that I really, really wanted to use to run the vocals through. It’s a really well curated list of gear that he has.”

Carlson ​“was very kind, very affirming throughout the process and focused. He was ready to work and do the things I needed to get done for the project, and I really liked that approach,” Gray added. ​“He also was very open to letting me maintain creative control over the project because you know it is a very personal record to me and these songs are very much my children.”

Grey’s songwriting ended up being rooted in a process far beyond simply getting music ready for an album.

“I had never written a full song until I came out to myself as trans, which is a wild thing, because I have been playing music for over ten years,” Gray said. ​“I came out to myself, not even to anyone else, just once I finally accepted myself for who I was, and all of a sudden I had all these things I needed to say. And it just started falling out of my mouth and out of my hands through the guitar in just such a strange way. It just happened.”

The coming out process began in a very private and personal way for Gray.

“I had been having so much anxiety. I wasn’t sleeping and I just picked up a note pad and started writing this letter that ended up being the letter that I came out to myself in, and the first time I wrote the words ​‘I am a woman’ on a piece of paper,” Gray said. ​“It was also in that moment when my name was just in my head, like I just heard it. It was just there, and then I knew that that was always my name. I never once thought about, ​‘oh, am I going to have a new name? What am I going to change my name to?’ That just was my name.” 

But ​“I did not start telling people immediately,” Gray added. ​“It took me a really long time to come to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, and that it was something to celebrate instead of something to hide.”

Grey ended up coming out publicly for the first time after a performance at one of Best Video’s open mic shows during the summer of 2018 (in the interest of full disclosure, this reporter hosts that event). ​“I had never said that to a room full of people before,” Gray said. ​“It was a really kind of scary thing for me to do, but I had told other people before that privately. I did the social media thing through my personal page, but even then I was still playing under a stage name, How To Be Alone. I realized that playing under that name was just another mask I was wearing, and it felt really important to be the most whole and authentic version of myself as possible, and I think a lot of that is owning my name.”

That summer, Gray said, ​“I finally continued the lifelong process that is coming out, because even when you have your big announcement it never ends. That’s something that I wasn’t really aware of. I had always thought of coming out as this singular event and that’s it, you’re done, you don’t have to keep explaining yourself, but in reality it is something that I find myself doing every single day, often multiple times a day, in what is sometime a futile attempt to not be seen for who I’m not. And what I’m really learning is how to advocate for myself, how to be firm in who I am and not let people tell me who or what I am, and that’s very, very hard.”

Music has been a vital way for Gray to express and learn about herself as well as to connect with others. ​“There is something really cleansing and something really cathartic about playing my songs out live. Not just having these things that I kind of need to put out there, but actually doing it. It’s kind of different than when I practice them in my bedroom compared to when I play them on a stage. It’s a very different experience, the exchange of energy that happens in the room.”

“This thing has happened to me almost every show I’ve played where someone has come up to me afterwards and told me they were crying. And then I have a lot of people talking to me about my reverb.” Gray added with a laugh. ​“It feels affirming when people tell me that [about the crying] because it feels like my point is really getting across. People are holding space for me, and I really appreciate that. They’re really listening.”

Listening is key at Gray’s live shows, as they have evolved into an experience beyond that of simply hearing music. In addition to this weekend’s album release show, Gray is embarking on a national tour that begins August 17 in New York, New York and runs through September 6 in Grand Rapids, MI. The Safe Spaces Tour will take her to cities ​“around the perimeter of the country” including Philadelphia, Tuscon, and Seattle.

“I’m always trying to fine-tune every single element of my live sounds,” said Gray. ​“I put so so much time into it. It’s a constant work in progress.”

And Gray is still writing songs and changing her sound. ​“I just want to keep sharing my music with as many people in as many mediums as I am able to,” she said. ​“I’m always writing. It’s not something I plan for so much as I make time for. I like to allow it to happen in a more natural way rather than me sitting down and saying, ​‘OK, right now I’m going to work on writing a song.’ Oftentimes it will just be me running through my set and taking some time to just play around on the guitar, and then something catches my ear — and then that becomes its own new exploration of sound and music and voices. This record was just guitar and voice, and I’m really happy with the amount of sound I was able to get being that it’s just guitar for instrumentation.”

Gray sees Let the Flower Grow as one piece of an ongoing life’s work, not just the making and distribution of music. ​“The record is something that’s very much inspired by my experience in the world as a trans and queer person,” she said. ​“I put a lot of care into making the subject matter, the language that I use, and the way that I interact with the audience at my live shows as inclusive as possible, because it feels very important to me to make the trans experience something more understandable for anyone who isn’t going through it, or for anyone who is going through it and might feel alone, to make it more accessible and to put it out there.”

Gray’s new album can be found on Bandcamp. More information about her upcoming shows and tour can also be found there or on her Facebook and Instagram pages.