Merce Lemon is a singer-songwriter who was born, raised, and currently lives in Pittsburgh, where she was immersed in the city’s DIY scene from an early age. Her father, who played in Lemon’s live band for years, is a film archivist; her mother, who encouraged Merce to legally change her last name to Lemon when she was in 10th grade, is a letterpress printer. Both of them played music, and Merce was in both an a cappella group and a punk band by age 12, though she admits she didn’t learn to play a chord on guitar until she was 17, when she moved to Seattle to live with her uncle for a few years. The decision was partly a response to losing her best friend when she was 15, a subject Lemon explores with bracing intimacy on ‘Backyard Lover’, a highlight from her spectacular new LP, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Leaning more firmly on alt-country than any of her previous releases, the album does not include March’s ‘Will You Do Me a Kindness’ – one of the best songs of the year – but it does feature a host of collaborators, including Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel. It’s alternately, and often simultaneously, warm and wild, raw and rapturous, lonely and open-hearted. Lemon’s songs are uniquely capable of squaring hardened emotion with gentle curiosity – toward the natural world, which is to say, the wonder of staying alive – making aimlessness sound beautiful, and home a thing like heaven.

We caught up with Merce Lemon for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about her musical upbringing, turning poetry into song, the process behind her new album, and more.

I read that your dad was in your band until a few years ago. Do you mind talking about your background of sharing and playing music with him?

I was living in Seattle from like 17 to 20 years old, and when I moved back, I had left the band I formed there. I had fewer connections in Pittsburgh than coming back post-high school, but I really wanted to keep playing shows. I think I was on the phone and was like, “What if you played in my band?” and he was super down. His friend ended up joining, and we did that for about 3 or 4 years. By that point, I had moved back into my parents’ house, so we practiced in the living room. It all happened pretty seamlessly, and he was very thoughtful, just wanting to do the songs justice. I felt very supported in that.

My dad’s record collection – he could have a little record store, probably. He played in bands, my mom played in bands, I was very immersed in music. When my dad had band practice, the floorboards – I don’t know what kind of wood it is, maybe white pine or something – often had knots where there was a hole, so I would be in the living room, dropping things through the holes onto my dad’s practice in the basement. [laughs] There was always music going on, and it was something I kind of took for granted in my life. It was so normal. I was always downstairs banging on the drums or screaming into a microphone, just making sounds since I was a very little kid.

When did you stop taking that for granted?

I think when I moved to Seattle, I was like, “Damn, I actually don’t know how to play guitar.” It’s pretty funny that I grew up in a house of music – I learned clarinet in band when I was in fifth grade, but I think it’s the kind of thing where you’re around it so much, and it’s hard to have your parents teach you things. As soon as I left, I was like, “I wish I knew guitar,” or letterpress, like my mom does. These were things I had immediate access to, but it took leaving that space – I needed to I want it on my own, I guess. It’s kind of classic – your parents give you some advice, maybe someone else can give you the same advice, and you’ll take it from someone else, but not your parents.

What do you appreciate now about that experience of being immersed in a musical community early on?

The way my parents were immersed in the DIY scene throughout my childhood – bands crashing at our house, people playing music for the love of it – that was very ingrained in me. Just fostering that community was so influential. So much of the music I love is so influenced by my parents. I’ve been listening to some of my favorite artists since I was 6 years old, and they’re still my favorite artists. I have my parents to thank for that.

How did moving to Seattle fuel your drive to make music?

I was living with my uncle, and I made a drastic change because it was just something I needed. It wasn’t about getting away from my parents – they were very supportive of it. I moved to Seattle, I was pretty lonely, and I was drawing a lot – at that point, that was my main creative outlet. I was also writing a lot of poetry or just words in general. I was very curious about another outlet, and that’s when I Googled how to play guitar chords and learned like three chords, and started turning some of those poems into songs. I was like, I kind of want to write a song again – I hadn’t since I was 12 or something. But it was a very natural progression from words on the page to, “What do I want to do with these words?” I guess I could’ve made poetry, but I wanted to give them more life. I think the thing that drew me to music more than anything was melody and words, so that was what I was changing. The instrumentation was just an additive so they could be songs. Even when I was younger, I had an a cappella group, so I was always fascinated by voice and harmonies.

I’m thinking of one of my favorite lines from the album, the opening from ‘Rain’: “This sounds like a song/ I barfed out in the drought.” I know that’s adapted from a poem by Justin Lubecki, but setting it in a song feels connected to this idea of taking words and poetry and melding them into song.

Yeah, that one’s funny because when he sent me that poem, that first line was actually his text message to me, prefacing the poem. But I thought it was part of the poem, so I just put it in. [laughs] He was like, “Oh, that’s funny! That was just me telling you this was a song I barfed out in the drought.” But I love that it made it in, and that I had no idea. I think now, I write words more tied to the music. Not that it’s always like that, but I think there’s something really cool about having words and then fitting them to music, because you have less structure – ‘Rain’ is a very unstructured song, in a way. It just builds in one direction, there’s not a chorus and then you come back to a verse. That’s very influenced by the fact that I almost verbatim used the words and fit them to chords, so the chords and the music are the following the words. Sometimes you have a structure and you’re fitting words into it, but there’s something very freeing about doing it the other way, and it often ends up being a little weirder and less structured.

I understand that you had to take a break from songwriting before finding the right space for the songs on Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. What did you learn about how you engage with songwriting during that period, both in the sense of what you get out of songwriting and what the songs need from you to come out?

I think I just felt like I was forcing it for some time. I had this idea that I wanted to make more music, but it just wasn’t coming naturally. So by taking some space, it was almost like it called back to me. I needed that feeling to be very genuine, without the pressure of anything around me, even my own brain telling me I had to make something. I think it came out of necessity, of just needing to get feelings out more than wanting to make an album or something. So, without a goal. I think I needed that space to write in a way where I wasn’t even thinking that some of these songs would see the light of day. Like ‘Blueberry Heaven’, I wrote that for a friend in probably 30 minutes – not as a joke, but just the way you’d draw a picture for someone and send it to them. It was just a doodle. I realized it was something I couldn’t escape; I kept being drawn to writing, and once I had enough little doodles, I thought maybe I wanted to put more intentional time into it. But for a while, it was just for myself and my friends, and that felt really good, for them not to need to be anything other than these snapshots. The way you’d journal, just capturing these moments that were standing out to me at that point in my life.

You mentioned the word genuine, and honesty is obviously foundational to your songwriting. What’s interesting to me is that although that’s the goal, what feels honest or true is hardly clear at the start of the process. Is that something that resonates with you?

Yeah. When I say “honest” or “genuine,” I don’t mean it’s 100% factual to my life, but just that its intentions are true. But yeah, I rarely go into a song being like, “This is what it’s about.” It’s also a journey for me. Sometimes it takes the song being done for months and me reflecting on it, or even someone else listening to it and reflecting back to me. The themes – I think a lot of the time, it’s more often a feeling, which is harder to describe.

Have you had any moments recently of someone interpreting something you wrote in a different way that really felt true to you?

Yeah, nothing too crazy, but there have been moments where friends interpret lines in a way where I’m like, “Oh, that was not how I wrote it,” but it almost makes more sense the way they’re seeing it. Because I know exactly where those words came from and why they’re there, but in the bigger context, it might be easier for an outsider to see the bigger picture and how it all ties together. My bandmate connected these two lines that I always thought of as separate thoughts – I think it was in ‘Backyard Lover’, “a wooden spoon tossed in the fire” and “what dying felt like” – and I was like, “Oh, that’s a really cool way to read that.” I love that none of these songs mean one thing. They’re hyper-specific in some ways but vague in other ways – you can insert your own experiences and they can still be relatable. Even though the songs are personal to me, I hope they can still resonate with people in that feeling.

There’s also this image of resting one’s head that flows from the end of one song to the beginning of the next one.

I think I took a big break from listening to the album, and the other day I was like, “I just want to see how this flows again.” And I forgot that ‘Crow’ going into ‘Slipknot’ – maybe the people I showed it to were like, “Oh yeah, that’s a good album track order,” and they noticed it, but I never noticed the “rest their necks and nest their young” going into “I rest my head.” [laughs] I literally realized that yesterday, and I was like, “That’s actually really cool.” I completely missed that.

I feel like there’s a push-and-pull throughout the album between rest and recklessness, or being playful, which also seems to push back against the heavier emotions in these songs. I’m curious how that dynamic manifests in your creative process.

I think one of the things I try to do, often not intentional, is the balance of playfulness and kind of hard feelings. I’m deeply inspired by how kids play, and how you can keep that freeness or channel that somehow, even into adulthood. I think this idea of play shouldn’t die just because we have to be responsible adults. In the same way, a song kind of needs that playfulness or humor to offset these hard feelings it’s tackling. And maybe that’s just hopefulness. I was listening to Life of the Record where Will Oldham was talking about the making of I See a Darkness, and he kind of mentioned that, too. He’s like, “I don’t want to write a song that just has no hope and is all doom and gloom. Who needs that?” Not that I’m not also drawn to that music sometimes – I want it to be emotional, but I don’t want it to have you get stuck there.

Maybe that’s just my own genuine struggle with finding my place in the world. At moments, you feel very sure of things in yourself, and others you’re questioning everything. I think that’s probably going to happen your whole life, so the back and forth of that in the songs is probably just reflective of what it is to be alive and question your aliveness.

Was it challenging to try to order this back and forth, especially since you were initially working with a collection of snapshots?

Not really, but I do have a hard time ordering albums, and I usually lean on my friends and family a lot for help with that. I think this one had maybe two ways that felt right, and I kind of had to decide – there were two songs I could switch back and forth, but I decided that ‘Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild’ didn’t really belong anywhere except as an ender. Maybe the easiest part – and I do this for setlists too – is how you want to open and how you want to end it, and then fill in that journey in between. But the song that it starts and ends with couldn’t really exist anywhere else, and then I moved the ones in the middle around a lot. Also, this is the first time I’m pressing vinyl, so I was also thinking about where side A ends and how side B begins, which you wouldn’t experience on Spotify. But I wanted to be really intentional about that as well.

The songs ‘Backyard Lover’ and ‘Crow’ are lyrically and tonally very different, but they receive a similar treatment in terms of how they build and explore. It feels like a lot of the hope you were talking about also comes out in the instrumental and the weight it’s given. Is that a more intentional part of the process for you?

A lot of these songs I wrote on an acoustic guitar, and until you bring it to a band, you kind of don’t know what form it’s going to take. A lot of these songs developed into what they are by just playing them with a band and following the song and figuring out what’s best for it. Maybe everyone’s playing at once and you decide to pull a lot back, and it’s just that puzzle piece thing. I don’t often have a vision – I don’t, like, hear the drums and the whole band all the time when I play. Sometimes I have ideas, but I think it just takes playing.

One thing that I loved about the record is the physicality of it, in the sense that you often write about the body as way more than just that; the skin as something that can carry thoughts of escape. Do you see music as an extension of that, a vessel that can hold feelings you’re not even aware of the same way a body might?

Yeah. I think sometimes it takes me just strumming guitar for something to come out that I didn’t know was there. I think it’s pretty cool to be able to explore it in that medium, the way you would sit down to write something. I don’t really like to force it, but I think there’s always a melody inside of me. When it works, I usually know and I follow it. But I’ve probably discarded so many in my life.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Merce Lemon’s Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild is out September 27 via Darling Recordings.