Momma’s Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman talk about transitions and catharsis in their superb new record, Welcome to My Blue Sky.
Forget the Song of the Summer. When you live in the Midwest, the search for the year’s new album that will sound great with the windows down begins around this time of year. It’s the record that helps you welcome warmer temperatures and chase away the last remnants of seasonal depression. Fortunately, Momma made it easy this year. Their latest, Welcome to My Blue Sky, is a perfect spring record, filled end to end with big, catchy riffs and massive production. I can practically feel the sun on my skin when I put it on. Welcome to their blue sky, indeed.
However, it hasn’t been all sunshine all the time for Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman, the co-lead singers and guitarists of Momma. Relentless touring behind 2022’s highly acclaimed Household Name, including a mix of headlining shows and opening for acts like Death Cab for Cutie and Weezer, happened during a period of personal growth and transition for both of them.
The lead single from Welcome to My Blue Sky typifies that continued growth as songwriters. “I Want You (Fever)” is not only a catchy introduction to the new record but also the song that cracked open the creative vision for it. They wound up scrapping the material they’d already written, confident this song indicated where they should be going.
“We knew that this record needed to be different from Household Name, but it took a lot of trial and error to figure out what those differences were going to be,” Weingarten explains. “We wanted to push ourselves to try new things, though, and not just rely on using a big muff for every song. A lot of the record ended up sounding the way it does because of the songs and bands we were listening to on tour, and we wanted to capture the feeling of being on an open highway and under a big blue sky for weeks at a time.”
Never fear, Momma fans; this is more of a level-up than a bold reinvention, a snapshot of a band reaching another level of mastery of their craft. Longtime listeners will attach themselves to these songs just as they did to their previous records. Even as their sound evolves, Friedman and Weingarten have a locked-in process. They have been playing songs together since they were teenagers.
“Etta and I have had the same process since we were teenagers,” Weingarten continues. “It normally starts with one of us having a cool chord progression, and then we’ll sit there and figure out what we want to write about. After about an hour or so of talking about our ideas and getting on the same page emotionally, we’ll write lyrics, and the other person will write a guitar part. Then we’ll take it to Aron [Kobayashi Ritch, bassist/producer] and he’ll help us structure everything, add production ideas, and write his bass part. Then we play it as a full band.”
As for the groups whose work inspired Weingarten and Friedberg during writing, the eclectic list connects the dots on the new wrinkles in the Momma sound. “Hovvdy is a huge one for me. Kaki King, Eiafuawn, and Deadharrie were big too. And lots of country music. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I was listening to Narrow Head a lot. I’m also a big fan of Michelle Branch, and wanted to tie in some of those early 2000s pop elements on this record,” Weingarten notes.
“I had a playlist on my Spotify that I was listening to for inspiration in reference to Welcome to My Blue Sky. The first song on the playlist is ‘Warning Sign’ by Coldplay. There was a good amount of Ivy and Panchiko in there, too,” Friedberg added.
In addition to stretching themselves to include new sounds, the songwriters also felt that they needed to be unsparing and unguarded about what the last couple of years have been like for them. Under the pop hooks, there is a rawness in the lyrics to these songs. The new record’s themes capture a period of reflection and growth.
“The lyrics of these songs happened because we were at a really formative period in our lives. It’s slightly painful to look at yourself as an imperfect person, and highlight all of the mistakes you’ve made. But it’s also really cathartic, cause you can take that pain and make it into something beautiful–an awesome song,” Weingarten explained.
However, getting there, to the blue sky, if you will, required getting everything out in the open without holding back. “I think to fully process and honor the transitional period we were both going through, we didn’t really have a choice but to purge everything we were thinking. Being honest with ourselves was kind of the only way through,” Friedman added.
Still, it was essential to both of them not to cause further pain to anyone who was part of this journey. “There was a line we didn’t cross when writing this record, mainly because we didn’t want to be disrespectful to the people we hurt. But we knew we needed to be as open as possible or else the songs just weren’t going to feel truthful. We knew we couldn’t be too vague, because for the listener, you need to be able to latch on to the very specific experience in order to relate to it. But, we didn’t want to be disrespectful to anyone we’ve hurt,” Weingarten explained.
As Momma gears up to tour Welcome to My Blue Sky, they are going into the time on the road wiser. Having bounced between opening for veteran bands and headlining, they have experienced the challenges of playing to crowds that aren’t already fans, which has sharpened them.
“It can be difficult because my energy for the show can be reliant on the crowd, especially if they are not our crowd,” explains Friedberg. “So when the audience isn’t moving around too much, or clearly is just waiting for the next act to come on, it can feel like we are maybe doing worse than we actually are. I think we have all learned how to keep our heads held high and put on the best show we possibly can, though.
“It’s really hard to be an opener,” they continue. “You are essentially the one thing standing in between the audience and the band they’ve waited months, or even years, to see. You can’t actively think about winning people over, though, because at the end of the day, they’re going to like you or not like you, and there’s not much you can do to really move the needle either way. We’ve been selective about our setlists though, depending on who we’re opening for.”
“My biggest takeaway from touring with other bands was noticing how they conduct their business and the tour environment they create. I think as we grow and expand our crew, there’s a lot that I would like to emulate in terms of how they support, interact, live, and work with their teams,” Friedberg noted.
With the prospective time on the road ahead of them, Momma will have plenty of opportunities to apply what they learned. “Touring with more seasoned bands, we learned a lot about how to tour in a way that is sustainable and not completely harmful to yourself,” reflects Weingarten. “A lot of the bands we’ve opened up for take their craft really seriously, and are true professionals. It’s admirable and for this next big headline tour I think we’re going to make an effort to pace ourselves and not burn out too quickly.”