Wednesday’s rapid rise has led to a highly anticipated show at Brunswick Music Festival in March. It’s been a long journey to this point though, Karly Hartzman has been writing for as long as she can remember.
What began as poetry has turned into lyrics, which explains her knack for the visceral, confessional storytelling at the backbone of her band Wednesday’s music. “I used to skip school a lot and write poems at coffee shops and stuff,” she confesses from her home in Ashville, North Carolina – the small, artsy town at the centre of many of her songs.
“I did a lot of bad writing then and luckily got it all out of my system,” she says while sewing and answering questions without missing a beat (Hartzman is a keen garment maker sometimes producing one-of-a-kind merchandise for the band).“I’m so amazed that kids are getting record deals from TikTok and stuff at like 16, because if you looked at some of the stuff I was writing when I was at that age… phew,” jokes the now 27-year-old.
Wednesday at Brunswick Music Festival
- Supported by Delivery
- Estonian House
- March 6
- Get tickets here
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
It’s easy to get lost in Hartzman’s lyrics when listening to Wednesday as they describe the minutia of everyday life so compellingly. “I love telling stories, so anytime someone’s telling me a story of something that happened in their day, my dad’s telling me a story from when he was growing up, or our old landlord Gary has a bunch of stories about Asheville… I take notes,” she says. “Of course, I ask permission to write that stuff into a song.”
Wednesday released Rat Saw God in April of last year, their fifth album since 2018. The quality and quantity of their output is made even more impressive as Hartzman learnt how to play guitar relatively late in life without lessons. “I always wanted to be in a band from the moment I started going to see house shows in my hometown in high school,” she recalls. “For some reason, I thought it was something I would never do because when I first started going to shows the level of worship I had for musicians… they were gods to me”
“It finally started to fall into place when I met people that would start a band with me, even though I didn’t really know how to play in college,” she says. “Then I just started going through all of the writing I had accrued before that and made it into songs, and just kept going until now.”
The band has a sound wholly of their own – alternative country with scuzzy guitars often building walls of sound. “It’d be hard to take the country influence out of our music just because it’s what we grew up listening to,” explains Hartzman. “If [we’re] writing songs about where we’re from… they need to be country songs because that’s what it feels like to be here.”
Hartzman’s influences beyond country are thanks to a mixtape given to her by a friend in high school containing bands like My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins and Deerhunter. “All these bands that completely broke my brain, and ever since the first time I pressed play on that tape, I think that’s the moment my world expanded to make music a priority in my life,” she says. “That first access into noisier and more experimental sounds… has just really stuck with me.”
Adding to the unique sound of the band is Xandy Chelmis’ lap steel. “I definitely wanted a steel in the band, and then he decided to put it through some effects pedals one time when we were playing and discovered how much he could do with distorted steel,” she recalls. “We just completely incorporated it into almost every song except the lighter country or songs where he’s playing pedal steel.”
Rat Saw God has garnered the band a horde of new fans and been met with critical acclaim, featuring at the pointy end of many year-end lists, though Hartzman says ‘breakthrough’ means something different nowadays. “We’re playing bigger shows, and we’re on a label, and people have been so positive about it, but our lifestyle hasn’t really changed at all, just because it’s expensive to live now,” she says. “Our lives are exactly the same.”
“I think if I lived in a bigger city where I could get more of a big head because people were recognising me on the street or something, I think that would affect me negatively,” she ponders. “Luckily, I’m just kind of doing my thing over here and it’s the same.”
As the main songwriter of Wednesday, Hartzman brings her guitar parts and lyrics to the band but allows for the songs to grow from there. “I don’t write any of the other parts because my bandmates are incredible musicians and would completely blow anything I wrote out of the water,” she says. “I just bring them to band practice, and we sit in a circle and parse everything out.”
“They can tell what mood I’m going for based off the words and they match it there – it’s gotten really intuitive,” she says. “We just learned six or seven new songs over the past week or so for these upcoming tours and it only gets easier writing together.”
Rat Saw God opens with the blistering 90-second ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell’ which leads into the eight-and-a-half-minute album zenith ‘Bull Believer.’ “I try to not write a song longer than it needs to be to express what I need, and if I need more time, I’ll take it,” explains Hartzman. “Every moment of ‘Bull Believer’ is crucial to me because that’s a song I’ve been needing to write for years, but haven’t known how, so once I finally sat down to do it, I was like, ‘I’m committing to whatever I need to do here and fuck everything else.’”
Nearing the end of the interview Wednesday guitarist Jake Lenderman pokes his head into the computer frame to say ‘hey,’ which isn’t a total surprise as he and Hartzman are dating and live together. Lenderman is the frontperson of the more country-tinged MJ Lenderman, who will be touring with Wednesday on their Australian tour. “It’s nice to have Jake fulfilled while we’re on tour with Wednesday and be able to perform his stuff too,” says Hartzman. “I could see it being harder if one band was doing better, but luckily we’re both able to do our thing with our bands, so I love it.”
“They’re very different moods to have to get into so sometimes it can be hard to transition between playing those sets because basically most of the members of Wednesday are in MJ [Lenderman] too,” she explains. “It’s just a different headspace to get into so it can be hard within one day if we’re playing the same festival, but if we’ve got a day of separation that’s nice.”
There is no love lost between the couple if their fans have favourites. “I think a lot of people are fans of both, but a lot of people will prefer one over the other,” says Hartzman. “I always think it’s so funny when people tell me which [band] they like better because I’m like, ‘cool with me’ – I don’t care, it still helps us pay our rent,” she jokes.
Wednesday are playing Estonian House supported by Delivery, as part of Brunswick Music Festival on March 6. Get tickets here. Check out the awesome festival program here.
This article was made in partnership with Brunswick Music Festival.
