Hayden Anhed\u00f6nia, the singer-songwriter known as Ethel Cain, draws from an encyclopedic trove of cultural references for her work, stirring them into a Southern Gothic brew that feels uniquely her own. But long before the alt-rock visionary began building worlds with her albums Preacher\u2019s Daughter and Willoughby Tucker, I\u2019ll Always Love You, she was getting lost in those conjured by others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a massive reader as a child,\u201d Anhed\u00f6nia, who is 27, writes in an email the day after wrapping the North American leg of her Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour. \u201cI was extremely into the escapism of fantasy, so series like Redwall and Eragon were my bread and butter,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
Those books helped occupy the big mind of a small-town girl from Perry, Florida, who grew up surrounded by vast stretches of forests and swampland\u2014an atmosphere she\u2019s evoked onstage with haunting fog, tree branches, and a cross-shaped pulpit. \u201cI remember being so painfully bored all the time, so there was nothing I wanted more during the day than for everyone to go to sleep so I could turn my little flashlight on and read until 4 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an adult, Anhed\u00f6nia\u2019s life remains, in some ways, suspended between fiction\u2019s fantasy and the physical world. \u201cI\u2019ve always said I have one foot wholly removed from reality at all times, but I like it that way,\u201d she says of living her life half as Hayden, half as Ethel. \u201cI feel like I run parallel to so many narratives in my own head, like my own true mirror is cracked and reflects my true self back at me in various different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
She thinks she\u2019d like to write a book herself one day\u2014eventually. \u201cIt will take me a while,\u201d she warns. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to know what to say when you can say anything! I have to find my narrative style and the angle I want to take, but when the moment is right, I\u2019ll move forward with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While she says she isn\u2019t a big reader on tour\u2014\u201cI mostly sleep all day, every day or lie still in the dark just to combat the intense overstimulation of it all\u201d\u2014books have significantly helped shape her live show, as well as her pursuit of the \u201csimplicity of mindfulness and presence\u201d on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hayden Anhed\u00f6nia, the singer-songwriter known as Ethel Cain, draws from an encyclopedic trove of cultural references for her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75,49935],"class_list":{"0":"post-170408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-required-reading"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}