We recently connected with Lianne Hutcheson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lianne, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I am in the process of completing a collection of recorded songs and accompanying visuals at the beginning of 2023. The project is called States of Grace: Vol. 1.

I have been writing my own music since 1998 and have many songs that I have been building into sonic landscapes in my mind. These songs have been developing and curing for a very long time. After finally meeting my friend and collaborator, Chris Turpin, we began carving out the peaks and valleys of sound waves and the songs began coming to life with his production and recording gifts.

We began this project in 2018. We were making pretty good progress until….
fall of 2019, I began falling ill.
And became so weak that I could not stand up.
I had to push pause on everything in my life and by the time I was able to get the surgery I needed to have my health on track we were in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shit continued to hit the fan off and on, but eventually after recovering and dealing with the residual pandemic depression and anxiety, Chris and I picked the project back up and slowly plugged away at the music.

Lianne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I love to create. My favorite medium is music. I sing and play several instruments and have been doing so most of my life.
I am a singer/songwriter just trying to process my life through the finessing of lyrics and melody. Musically I am inspired by rock, blues, jazz, country, and Celtic tunes.
Lyrically, I am exploring definitive moments in my life, States of Grace, that run the gambit of the human emotional experience.
I am about to release a 6 song collection over a 6 month period, called States of Grace: Vol.1.
These songs are moments in my life that were so impactful that the only way to move forward is to filter that energy into lyrics, melodies, vocalizations, harmonies, guitars, banjo, dobro, organs, violin, piano, bass, and drums.
I have been collecting these songs for over 20 years and marinating in exactly what I thought that they should sound like. With the help of my collaborator, producer, and friend, Christopher Turpin, we have been able to bring these songs to life, but not without the usual roadblocks to overcome.
It has taken us 3 years to complete this little project due to mental health issues, major physical health issues, and let’s just throw in a world-wide-pandemic to really shake it all up.
But beginning in January of 2023, I will be releasing the first track off of the project called, Food for the Soul.
This song was a new song, inspired by the wonderful community of musicians that I have discovered and have had the honor of collaborating and playing out with over the years.
This song is a hug from me to you.

Every other creative medium that I have taken on, has been inspired by and deeply intertwined with my love of music. I am an early childhood music educator and pride myself on cultivating an appreciation and joy of music for kids while enforcing the magic that music can create within our own lives.
From the sitting down and planning of each lesson, to the quick changes of plan when you’re live in class, I find a spark of inspiration in sharing music with my students. I have had the pleasure of instructing in metro Atlanta preschools for 11 years now. My business is called Atlanta Music Box.

I am also following in my father’s footsteps and I am currently enrolled in school for Film. My father was a photographer and my sister is as well. I am finding that being able to focus on creating visuals for all of the auditory creations go hand-in-hand. The creative process of editing a film or video together is very much songwriting, lesson-planning, and teaching. It is like moving around puzzle pieces until you find the perfect spot for the perfect moment. I am excited to be able to release several videos for the States of Grace project as well to support and enhance the music.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In the spring of 2019, I met my producer Chris Turpin and we began working on sketches and planning out which songs I was going to be adding to this EP, States of Grace:Vol. 1. We took our time playing through songs and deciding which were wanting to be on Vol. 1.
I was booking open-mic performances, battle of the bands, and playing out regularly around Atlanta, but I started to notice that I was extraordinarily tired.
Lethargy didn’t begin to explain the level of exhaustion I was beginning to experience.
I also had been experiencing heavy periods, but I always had my whole life and thought nothing of it, until I began bleeding for weeks at a time.
By fall of 2019, while still working full-time, playing out, recording an EP, I decided that there was something more going on with my body and went for my annual at my new GYN.
After a few visits, a few tests, more exhaustion, and starting to miss work, I was told that I had a fibroid growing in my womb. A fibroid is a benign tumor that can grow inside of your uterus, outside, pretty much wherever it wants.
The fibroid was causing copious amounts of blood loss and extreme anemia. I was recommended to have surgery to permanently remove the fibroid and stop the massive bleed out.
The scheduling of the surgery would take a few months and I was also reaching out to other physicians for a second opinion and alternative treatments while I was placed on a low dose of birth control in a pitiful attempt at slowing the bleeding.
The birth control wasn’t working and I began hemorrhaging blood and missed months of work by the time January of 2020 rolled around. My skin was grey and I couldn’t stand up on my own. I was completely incapacitated by the fibroid and all of the blood loss.
After reaching out to my GYN for more assistance and being gaslit by my doctor, I called my General Practitioner and asked for her to check me out and check my blood. I was beginning to think(in my anemic haze) that I may be getting into dangerous territory with the blood loss.
My GP called me as soon as she had the results and sent me immediately to the ER for blood.

I fired my GYN, scheduled the surgery and at the beginning of a world-wide pandemic, I had a major surgery to save my life. The surgery was a success and after years of extreme fatigue and exhaustion, I began to get my body and strength back. The recovery took me a couple of months physically, but the emotional strain of what I had just survived began to send me deep into a depression as the world began to shut down.
My teaching business began shutting down as well. I didn’t see my students for a very long time, then it was online…
All the while I was trying to convince myself that I did want to continue doing music, to create and teach music for the first time in my life, I wanted to completely give up and pivot.

I threw a hissy hit for a few months, maybe half a year. Felt sorry for myself and struggled to get out of the hole I had thrown myself down. My business was failing, I had almost died, people I love were dying of Covid, no one knew when it was going to end.

But time, did its thing as it does. It passed so slowly that all of the sudden, the world began to feel a little more adjusted to our new reality and the trauma of the last few years began to melt into new ideas, dreams, visions, paths, and appreciation to be experienced.

Chris and I began working on music again. We rolled through many ups and downs in our lives and came together when we could to keep working on the music and playing out when we could.

And in its own perfect time, my little EP is about to be sent off for mastering, my health is returned, my mental health is mostly returned…. :), and I am back to my full teaching load almost, and enrolled into a whole new creative space in the film world.

Sometimes progress looks like slowing down and questioning everything after you’ve been robbed of your momentum. And there lies the missing momentum.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I found out in 2020 that I have ADHD. And it made so much SENSE!!!!
And it is what it is,
but knowing this, has allowed me to understand, love, and forgive myself for where I feel like I have failed in life or in comparing myself to others.

My ADHD is more of a superpower than a hindrance. I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially to someone who is neurotypical, but when I lean into the things that are amazing about having ADHD, those are things about myself that I love.
The thing about ADHD that can make life hard, is just knowing now, that my brain is wired differently. The world is not built for a brain like mine, but I can do the best with what I have got, forgive myself for where I feel I may lack, and move forward to show others that they can find peace and happiness through creating, especially if they are neurodivergent.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.liannehutcheson.com
• Instagram: @liannehutcheson
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/liannehutcheson

Image Credits
Lou Raimondi Photography, The Cottage Bloom