Hana Eid Talks to Us About How Her Singles are Her Favorite Children

Hana Eid. Photo by Violet Teegardin

Rising indie-rock artist, Hana Eid, is ready to release her debut album after years of activity in Nashville’s local scene. The singer-songwriter has had an exciting year touring with Pretty Jane and releasing singles for her upcoming album Trains Running Backwards.

Hana hopped on a call with us to talk about her debut album and the other exciting things she’s done this year.

Your debut album comes out this week, how are you feeling?

I feel really excited, I mean it’s definitely a lot of emotions. It’s weird to have so much of my life chronicled in about forty minutes of words and music. It is largely exciting and just overwhelming and so reflective. I feel like I’m reflecting a lot on like everything that I’ve written, been inspired by, and experienced; and how that’s manifested itself into this one body of work. I mean it’s just awesome, I’m really grateful that I’m able to put out my first full length record.

What was the process of writing it like?

I often say that I experience songwriting kind of like journaling, like it's usually me just sitting down and thinking about something. Sometimes I'm not even thinking about anything, it's like just word vomit. It's sort of a meditative time for me. I write pretty much everything by myself, I don’t really do sessions or anything like that.

Your album is produced by Noah Weinman, what was it like working with him and what was the production process like?

Oh my god it was so fun, it was kind of crazy because the way that I got connected with Noah was crazy. I was trying to figure out who I wanted to produce the record with and I was feeling really like overwhelmed and just struggling. I was just like ‘I don't know who's going to do this and I want to do it in a certain way’. Then I heard via a friend of a friend that Noah was taking on production projects and I'm a huge fan of his artist project, like I've been listening to Runner easily since high school. So I messaged this friend of a friend, and she didn’t respond for maybe a couple of weeks and I just figured he was so busy and wasn’t taking on projects, you know? Then one day she just put us in a groupchat, and I sent him the demos and he was so down to do the project so I flew out to LA, where we met for the first time, and did the whole project in a couple of weeks. Barring, I did do the first single “Bet” with my friend Joseph here in Nashville. I was so stressed but everything just happened so perfectly, it felt like divine intervention.

Speaking of singles, you’ve released a few of them leading up to this debut, “Swallows”, “Stare”, “Waldo”, and “Bet”. What made you want to release these ones as singles?

They’re just my favorite children, I think I just like them the most or maybe resonated with them the most. It’s hard because there are songs that aren’t singles, that I love just as much as the singles, but I think I just knew that these were going to land better in a commercially viable way. I also just love those songs and think they’re really strong. I was also unfortunately thinking ‘Hmm.. which one of these will perform well on TikTok.’

You have a beautiful folk sound, did you always write with that sound or did you find it as you grew?

When I first started writing I was a very intense minimalist. I felt like all the songs just needed to be acoustic guitar and vocal, and that’s it. I was really really into the whole singer songwriter thing in like a purist way, I thought the song wouldn’t be that good if I needed to add a bunch of other stuff to it. I mean obviously I don’t feel that way now because I make indie-rock music now and I like playing with a band, and I like how having a bunch of different instruments or parts accentuates a song. I think it really uplifts it in a way, but I definitely discovered I liked that in early college when I was eighteen.

You just wrapped up a tour with Pretty Jane, how was that?

It was awesome! We were doing mainly east coast, which was really nice because I’m originally from D.C. and my whole family is from there so I was able to see a lot of family and close friends. The Pretty Jane guys are so sweet and it was so fun to just be on the road with them and I also just love being on the road. I love touring just as much as I thought I was going to love touring when I was a teenager.

What are your biggest inspirations for writing, or just music in general?

I love a band called Wednesday, I love Big Thief, Slaughter Beach Dog. I also love Wilco, like I love Wilco, and Pine Grove. I probably should’ve opened with them, I love them.

You can listen to “Trains Running Backwards” on November 14th on all music streaming platforms.