Episode 53: Humbird
Siri Undlin is the musician who performs as Humbird. I sat down with Siri (and a mysterious cat) at the most excellent Mile of Music festival in Appleton Wisconsin. We take a trip through Humbird’s varied song catalog as a way of learning about Siri’s creative journey; which included time spent on a post-grad fellowship studying folklore in northern Europe. Siri tells us about the place of story in her songwriting and her other creative pursuits, working with bad ideas, and how an excruciating decision in the recording studio led to Humbird’s initial breakout hit song. Also covered: ice hockey leads to Irish trad music, and how it sucks to pretend.
Songs, at their best, reflect something of where we are, where we've been, or where it is we're going. Sometimes all at once, right when we need it. Humbird makes music in pursuit of exactly this phenomenon. With deep roots in the midwest heartland, Humbird also travels like a bramble, fusing experimental folk and environmental Americana genres in a mosaic of theaters, clubs, gardens, festivals, barns, caves, and other strange locations. Siri Undlin, the songwriter behind the moniker, forges an explorative embodiment of the narrative folk song and balladry tradition for these modern times, inviting a whole host of collaborators and listeners to add and expand the music.
Still Life (2021), Humbird’s sophomore record, focuses on small domestic moments in the context of global events. In particular, the record details the lived experiences within Siri’s neighborhood in South Minneapolis during the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a city police officer. It is an album that cultivates soundscapes and intentional lyrics that tell braided stories. It reckons with anger, grief, and white supremacy while carving out reflective, fertile space to process current events.
Humbird’s debut full-length album, Pharmakon (2019) a careful look at that which can both cure and wound us: love, ambition, winter, and sea shells, to name a few lyrical topics. The record received critical acclaim from tastemakers such as Folk Alley and 89.3 The Current and amassed significant streams online. Not long after the album's release, Humbird, along with so many fellow traveling musicians, were grounded by the global pandemic. Responding to the times, Humbird and friends took to backyard campfires, forests, and planetariums (in over 100 pop-up locations) to perform acoustic ballads and fairytales with original improvised scores for micro audiences, adapting to the moment and crisis at hand.
Since returning to the road, Undlin and her bandmates have toured full-time across the US, UK and Ireland. With plenty of new music on the horizon, Humbird continues to share reflections that combine and subvert genres and perspectives via recordings, performances, zines, stories, and more.
