Greta Gaines Interview
"Bird Before Light" and A Return to Self
Greta Gaines has never been one to stay in a single lane. From her early days as a world champion snowboarder to her self-taught journey into songwriting, she has always followed her instincts—sometimes against the grain, always with conviction. With the release of her new record, Bird Before Light, Gaines steps into what she calls a reclamation of self: a chance to return to music with fresh clarity, raw honesty, and the urgency of someone who knows there’s still more to say.
“At this point in my life, I want to be free of all the boxes,” she said. “I’ve toiled away to get to this exact moment where I have the potential to be the most free—not to walk away from responsibilities, but to follow the calibrations of my inner workings. I want to live out loud.”
That pursuit of freedom runs like a thread through Bird Before Light. Written and refined over two years, the ten-song collection balances delicate, searching moments with her natural love of rock’s louder edges. “I like to rock,” she said, “but some of these songs are much more delicate. It’s about dynamics, moving between the soft and the hard.”
A Return to Self
The album’s title, Bird Before Light, is more than a poetic turn—it’s a metaphor for renewal. “This album was a return to self and remembrance of who I was before I had kids,” she explained. “For the last twenty years, my life force energy went into raising these two boys. Now they’re gone, and I’m left asking: what do I do with all of this extra energy?”
The songs, she says, are carefully sequenced to reflect an arc of transition. From the tongue-in-cheek swagger of “Moderation,” co-written with Dan Bern on her mother-in-law’s upright Steinway, to the radiant joy of “Sonic Bloom,” which links the dawn chorus of birds with the awakening of plants, Gaines approaches her craft with a blend of seriousness and play.
“It’s heavy subject matter in places,” she admitted, “but I wanted levity and joy, too. I wanted it to bounce.”
Growing Up Between Cultures
That balance of weight and lift may come naturally to Gaines, who grew up straddling cultures in South Newbury, New Hampshire. Her parents, both Alabama-born artists, relocated to New England in 1970, leaving their daughter to feel like “a fish out of water” among Yankees with different accents and social codes.
“I absorbed a lot of Yankee ingenuity and self-reliance, but I also craved the warmth of Southern culture,” she recalled. “At 25, I moved to Nashville to reconnect with those roots.”
Her parents’ record collection—Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson—gave her an early soundtrack steeped in classic country. At the same time, growing up in rural New Hampshire shaped her into an outdoorswoman, skier, and eventually snowboarder. After college, she went west, lived in Wyoming, and briefly pursued snowboarding at a world-class level before turning her full attention to music.
From Snowboarder to Songwriter
“I became a world champion snowboarder, but by 1994 or 1995 I knew I wanted to be a songwriter full-time,” she said. “I taught myself how to play guitar and sing, started doing open mic nights, and just worked my way in.”
The move to Nashville exposed her to a tight community of writers. A background in poetry—she studied with Roland Flint (1934-2001) at Georgetown—gave her a literary grounding, but she felt liberated by her lack of formal musical training.
“I wasn’t a highly educated musician, so everything I wrote had to be self-generated. That kept me original. I never wanted to sound derivative.”
For Gaines, songwriting became a form of journaling, a way to translate her interior life into something universal. “That’s the challenge for a songwriter—walking the fine line between personal and universal. It takes decades to master.”
Defining Songs
Over her career, two songs in particular have stood as milestones: “Lonely” and “Heal Me.”
“‘Lonely’ is fun to sing, but it’s also about something deeper,” she said. “In relationships, people talk about the beginning or the end, but not the middle—that stuck place where nothing is happening and you can’t get unstuck. That’s a scary place, and that’s what some of my songs are about.”
“Heal Me,” meanwhile, grew from her longtime interest in plants and natural remedies, long before cannabis or herbal medicine had mainstream recognition. “Plants do things Western medicine can’t do. Music and plants both work from an energetic standpoint—matching energy, healing, connecting.”
These songs, both deeply personal and resonant with fans, helped solidify her reputation as an artist unafraid to confront vulnerability.
Coming Into Fruition
Now, with Bird Before Light, Gaines feels she has reached a new kind of maturity in her writing. The breakthrough, she says, was learning to embrace simplicity.
“It took me thirty years as a songwriter to get to the place where I could write something as simple and powerful as ‘What Do You Want,’” she said. “In the past, I was more concerned with poetics and syntax, which could put the songs out of reach for everyday listeners. This record is about stripping away ego and letting the song speak clearly.”
At 58, Gaines insists she’s far from done. “I want to be back on stage, back in the leather pants, hooking up the Fender strap. I want to rock,” she said.
For her, music is both a calling and a reclamation—an energy she neglected while raising her children but now embraces fully. “Music has been a neglected baby of mine. Writing this record was about relearning the muscle memory of putting myself first.”
In her words, everything is coming to fruition.
“I mean it,” she said. “If you put it out there, it becomes. I’m saying it into being.”
With Bird Before Light, Greta Gaines reminds us not only of her voice, but of the freedom and fire that have always been at the heart of her work. It’s an album born of transition, steeped in hard-earned wisdom, and delivered with the conviction of an artist who refuses to be done.
Find more info here on her website: https://www.gretagaines.com
For story pitches and ideas, Brian D’Ambrosio may be reached at dambrosiobrian@hotmail.com