Songwriter Hillary Reynolds splits her time between her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin and Los Angeles. She’s written songs for artists including Little Big Town and Dani Rose, along with TV shows like Yellowstone and Loudermilk.
Over the past five years, however, Reynolds has been working on her debut record Changing Seasons, which is full of songs that felt too personal to write for other musicians.
"There were just a lot of precious songs that I had written that over the course of many years that knew I wanted to do something with, but I didn't want to give them away," she says.
Reynolds, along with producer Benjamin Kopf and other collaborators, recorded basic tracks for around 30 songs during the sessions that would eventually become Changing Seasons, but only eight of her most personal selections made the final track list.
"I decided to take a stance and just say, 'I'm doing a morning record; I'm doing an album that lowers my blood pressure, and I'm not going to take the commercial stance that I became really familiar with in the process of writing in sessions with a producer and maybe two other writers," she says.
Featuring double-tracked acoustic guitars, octave mandolin, upright bass and more, Changing Seasons was crafted to be a soothing companion to the morning routines that ease us into a new day.
"What I really looked at in terms of the sonic scape of this, I was trying to imagine if Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter made an album — like how could it fit those really beautiful dewy colors and morning magic?" she says.
The songs were was also inspired by the loneliness Reynolds' experienced while becoming a mother in Los Angeles — far away from family in Wisconsin.
"I became a mom through it and I didn't realize how much I needed that kind of music also," she says. "So it was kind of a gift from my past self in that way."
Reynolds' Wisconsin roots are an essential part of her artistic DNA. Growing up in a musical family, she remembers watching her father and other relatives play Appleton bars and barn dances with their band Baba Ghabooj.
"For the longest time, I really thought that "Down by the River," Heart of Gold," all of my favorite Neil Young songs, were written by them," she says. "And I was kind of devastated when I discovered in high school that they didn't write those songs."
Reynolds' musical journey would lead her from Appleton to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and eventually Los Angeles.
"Wisconsin, music-wise, was a very different place when I was growing up, and I think that really the limitations were playing bar gigs," she says. "And I think I just wanted to know, I had a curiosity about what else is out there."
Recently, Reynolds has found a new creative outlet as a children's author. What started as a poem penned during the pandemic eventually became Send My Love, a children's book Reynolds completed with the help of co-author Katherine Biskupic and illustrator Hannah P. Ribbens. It was released this April by the Wisconsin-based Orange Hat Publishing.
"This is our passion project," Reynolds says. "This is something that's gonna get us through these times."
Reynolds is on her local book tour, and you can see her on Sept. 13 at 11 a.m. at Lion's Mouth in Green Bay, Wis. and at the Wonderland Bookshop in Shorewood, Wis. on Sept. 14 at 11:30 a.m.
Hillary Reynolds is a singer-songwriter from Appleton and her debut album out now is called “Changing Seasons.” She’s also the co-author of the children’s book “Send My Love.” This studio session was engineered by WUWM’s Jason Rieve.
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