Burlington-based musician Abbie Morin spent 16 weeks last fall covering 12,000 miles of road, taking her self-described "foxy folk" music all over the country.
She recently spoke with VPR about leaving her day job and possessions behind to take the trip and the supportive community she found.
Often, listeners and fans try to label your music as belonging to a certain genre. How do you describe your music?
"I've been saying, 'foxy folk.' The fox, as an animal, is known to be a shape-shifter and kind of able to travel in between realms. And, you know, that's how I feel about my music. My roots are of me singing with an acoustic guitar but when I'm with my full six-piece band it's certainly not as 'folk' as my original tendencies are. And I'm very open to letting that shift as time moves on. Recently, I've acquired a drum kit and it's really hard to get me off of it lately. I love to play it. And even just looking at my music through that very rhythmic, percussive lens is changing it and evolving it even more so. I'm really open to just letting that kind of flow."
Last fall, you left your day job and your home to tour the country. How scary was that?
"I think I reached a point where the panic attack that I was having was how still I felt and how stuck I felt. I was cleaning houses, which, the grind of that day in and day out can be very wearing and I had been trying to plan a tour or a road trip since I graduated college in 2012 and I kept coming up with excuses: I don't have an album and I don't have the right people surrounding me and I don't have this certain amount of money in my mind that I think I need to have so I kept putting it off and putting it off until finally I just said, 'It's gotta happen. It doesn't matter what I have, I'm out of here.'
"So I smashed my vacuum cleaner off the second-story balcony and sold my possessions and hit the road. We planned a 34-show tour across the United States and went as far south as New Orleans and then skipped across Texas and went up through New Mexico and Wyoming. And then we were up in the Pacific Northwest and then we looped all the way back, of course.
"It ended up being 12,000 miles over the course of 16 weeks... You know, we were lucky enough to surround our plans and our tour around all of our friends and family and even some friends of friends... We kind of made a big map of 'These Are Our People' and they have a couch and a guest room...that's really what made the whole thing possible."
How is life as a working musician in Vermont?
"I arrived here in 2013. I lived here for two years before we embarked on the tour. I would say it was really the best thing I could have done. I went to school for theater and acting and I felt like I wanted to move away from that and kind of be making art on my own terms on my own schedule and creating my own show and I knew I wanted to do it but I'm not really sure I had the tools or the know-how to make it happen like I really wanted it to.
"I would say that moving to Burlington, Vermont, was like the singer/songwriter's grad school. It really was. This community was so welcoming and I got the knowledge and the help and the support that I really needed. Artists really support each other here and it's a great ecosystem and that's something that is really special."
What's next? Will you go back to your day job?
"The vacuum is back out right now but it's okay. It's okay. It's a short-term thing. It's kind of what you've got to do in the meantime to build yourself back up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33vtm2ewGsU
"Certainly, after everything we were able to accomplish, not having those day jobs, I'm ready to save back up for a security deposit again. So, kind of just letting it be and trying to just keep the smile on my face."
Morin and her band play a homecoming show Saturday, Feb. 20 at Nectar's in Burlington.
