Hannah Scott: Recent Episodes
Hannah Scott
“Your music moved me to tears.”
This is the refrain contemporary folk artist Hannah Scott regularly hears as she leaves the stage.
The best stories elicit profound personal reactions and in the 15 years she has been writing and performing, Hannah has become a consummate storyteller. Her music is shaped by human stories, with family, in all its chaos and glory, sitting at the heart of her work. Her lyrics are powerful and poignant, and her voice feels strangely familiar, though you can’t quite put your finger on why. Her writing may be deeply personal but her music has a universal appeal that extends beyond the melodies you catch yourself humming days after listening to her songs.
The connection she forges with her audiences often finds its most profound expression in the stories shared by audience members after her performances: the woman whose elderly mother lost a sibling in childhood and is moved to tears by Boy In The Frame; the young father who, upon hearing My Dad & I, realises he wants to spend more time with his small children; the adoptive parents who, like Hannah as a step-parent, may not have been the first person to hold their child, but Love You Like I Did. A deep-rooted desire for this connection has always been the driving force behind her songwriting and live performances.
Born in Suffolk and raised by an artist mother and an eccentric entertainer father, with music going back three generations to her songwriting great-grandmother, creativity was always destined to be an integral part of Hannah’s life. At the age of four, her father bought a second-hand piano for £70 from a friend in the pub and she didn’t look back, falling in love with both playing and listening to classical music. Picking up a guitar in her early teens as the influence of her peers and more contemporary music took hold, Hannah taught herself some simple chords that would lay the foundation for her earliest attempts at songwriting.
Hannah’s career highlights include having her song No Gravity featured on the hit international TV series Grey’s Anatomy, recording a live session on BBC Radio 2 with Dermot O’Leary and opening for Madeleine Peyroux, performing to an audience of two thousand. She has also shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Seth Lakeman, Cara Dillon and Fairport Convention and has performed at festivals including Cambridge, Sidmouth and Manchester Folk. Equally at home in small venues, she thrives on the intimacy of performing in spaces where she can look audience members in the eye, and, of course, speak with them after the show.
Hannah has just finished her third studio album due for release in the autumn of 2024 and the first she has self-produced alongside acclaimed engineer/producer Adrian Hall (Tori Amos, Anna Calvi). These songs are inspired by the greatest of human emotions – love, parenthood, grief – and an unwavering yearning for life, even during its darkest moments.
“I’m sorry, but also not sorry,” Hannah replies to the audience member moved to tears, so pleased her songs have connected in just the way she hoped they would.
”This is beautiful.” – Dermot O’Leary, BBC Radio 2
"She reduces women and children to tears - in a good way." – Paul Lester, The Guardian
"Exquisite voice." – Record Of The Day
“She is really, really good.” – Bob Harris, BBC Radio 2
“Hannah’s New Voice entry immediately made those at MOJO HQ want to hear more. Tonight she proved she can cut it live as well as on record.” – MOJO Magazine
“I hope you’ve never heard of her so I can be the one to introduce you to her!” – Mark Forrest, BBC regional radio across England
“I think there's a whole country just waiting to discover her - and I hope they do.” – Nick Coffer, BBC 3 Counties
“One of the best songwriters to come out of Suffolk in the last 30 years.” – Stephen Foster, BBC Suffolk
New single out now on all digital platforms
Written by Hannah Scott and Stefano Della Casa Produced and mixed by Stefano Della Casa
www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk twitter.com/hannahscottuk www.instagram.com/hannahscottuk/
All enquiries sdc@casamusic.eu
This song was a long time in the writing. In 2008 I split up with my partner of three years. We were living together and as we dismantled the home we’d built I was struck by the image of two lives having become one for a while and right there in the division of books and CDs, becoming two again. Like everything that moves me, I knew there was a song in it. I had to wait until 2018 when my Mum’s 15 year relationship came to an end to find the right way to express it: she called me and told me she felt like she was “untangling” her life from her ex-partner’s life. At that moment, I knew I could finally write the song.
We’ve been building castles Everlasting, or so we planned All our empires will come falling We’ve been building in the sand
Find a doubt, you hold it in I let it out and we begin
Unravelling where we were entwining And I am untangling your life from mine Unwinding and we are realigning And I am untangling your life from mine
We’ve been finding changes In the faces we used to know All the spaces we’ve been hiding Send us sliding as they grow
Find a doubt, you rush on in I slow it down and we begin
Unravelling where we were entwining And I am untangling your life from mine Unwinding and we are realigning And I am untangling your life from mine
We’re unravelling I’m still standing
We’ve been building castles We’ve been building in the sand
Unravelling where we were entwining And I am untangling your life from mine Unwinding and we are realigning And I am untangling your life from mine
New single out now on all digital platforms
Written by Hannah Scott and Stefano Della Casa Produced and mixed by Stefano Della Casa
https://www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk https://twitter.com/hannahscottuk https://www.instagram.com/hannahscottuk/ All enquiries sdc@casamusic.eu
Serious mental health issues aside, we spend most of our lives fighting our mortality. We don’t want to think about it, we don’t want to talk about it and yet it is where we are all heading.
At 98, my paternal grandmother has reached an age where she has made peace with her own mortality. I think deep down she is even hoping to die. I love her so much and although it saddens me, I think there is something undeniably beautiful in these thoughts of woman who has lived her life, had a family she loves, watched her friends die and is now ready to follow them. She is tired.
Not many of us will be lucky enough to reach this point: most of us will go before we are ready.
98 is also a reminder that she is still alive and that there is still pleasure to be found while she is here.
When your bones give in and your hair grows thin There’s more lines than skin in the mirror When your mind gives up ‘cause your thoughts get stuck And your words don’t come quite as easy
So you dwell in dreams of dying Do you think it feels like falling or flying? There’s a swell in days of hoping That there’ll be somebody waiting where you’re going
When your Christmas cards came in thick and fast As the years go past they get fewer When your friends have gone, still you stumble on While the younger ones went before you
So you dwell in dreams of dying Do you think it feels like falling or flying? There’s a swell in days of hoping That there’ll be somebody waiting where you’re going
Step outside, there is pleasure yet In soft spring air; let it fill your chest So step outside, for the days still left And feel the life in the power of your breath
So you dwell in dreams of dying Do you think it feels like falling or flying? There’s a swell in days of hoping That there’ll be somebody waiting where you’re going
So you dwell in dreams of dying Do you think it feels like falling or flying? There’s a swell in days of hoping That there’ll be somebody waiting where you’re going
New single out now on all digital platforms
Written by Hannah Scott and Stefano Della Casa Produced and mixed by Stefano Della Casa
https://www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk https://twitter.com/hannahscottuk https://www.instagram.com/hannahscottuk/
My parents met when my mum was 19 and my dad 32. My mum was studying at Oxford while my dad, though intelligent, had left school at 16 to pursue a creative career as a Butlin’s Redcoat and stand-up comic, then Entertainments Director for P&O.
My grandmother, my mum’s mother, liked my dad at first but when it became clear their relationship was serious, she made it clear she wanted my mum to settle down with a different kind of person - a doctor, lawyer, banker-type.
When my parents decided to get married 4 years later, my grandmother told my mum she would never speak to her again if she married my dad. She stayed true to her word for 20 years.
When I was born, my parents thought she might like to know she had a granddaughter and wrote to tell her. Her response came back: “I do not believe this is a matter for congratulation.”
They met again for the first time when I went to visit Oxford University myself at the age of 16.
Can words ever express how much she has missed out on? She has missed watching three granddaughters grow up because she was too stubborn to pick up the phone, too proud to apologise. To this day she still hasn’t said sorry. I often wonder if she regrets it. I’m sure she wouldn’t admit it if she did.
As Kahlil Gibran says, “Your children are not your children.” It was not her choice to make.
She’s the child that you betrayed When you denied the choice she made She refused to yield, you tried to shut it down You refused to feel, you chose to cut her out
How your words held their shape Held in time and held in place By your fear of losing face Now you’re twenty years too late
Make a child, you make a mind Its own desires, its own designs How you let them grow is how you gain the most How you let them go is how you keep them close
How your words held their shape Held in time and held in place By your fear of losing face Now you’re twenty years too late
For the hurt, for your hate, you have still not said you’re sorry To the child you betrayed; it was not your choice to make
How your words held their shape Held in time and held in place By your fear of losing face Now you’re twenty years too late
How your words held their shape Held in time and held in place Twenty years of saving face Twenty years you can’t replace
New single by Hannah Scott - out now
All enquiries - sdc@casamusic.eu http://www.hannahscott.co.uk/
New single by Hannah Scott - out now
All enquiries - sdc@casamusic.eu http://www.hannahscott.co.uk/
You chose your road, you walk it like a ghost You shield yourself in someone else’s clothes You make an empty bed, a shelter from harm But then you lie in it, hollow and numb
Walk a wire when you’re afraid to feel something Find the line where we were made to feel something
Hold the life pounding in my chest Guard the light that powers up my breath And there is no wrong train as long as you ride So give me something to remember you by
Walk a wire when you’re afraid to feel something Find the line where we were made to feel something
And there is no wrong train as long as you ride So give me something to remember you by
Walk a wire when you’re afraid to feel something Find the line where we were made to feel something
Something over nothing Something over nothing
New album out now
More info at www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk For all enquiries: sdc@casamusic.eu
New album out now
More info at www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk For all enquiries: sdc@casamusic.eu
New album out now
More info at www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk For all enquiries: sdc@casamusic.eu
New album out now
More info at www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk For all enquiries: sdc@casamusic.eu
As heard on Grey's Anatomy
More info at www.facebook.com/hannahscottuk For all enquiries: sdc@casamusic.eu