What of Our Nature

Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover made their second collaborative record, What of Our Nature, in the spirit of Woody Guthrie. From opposite corners of the country, the two songwriters spent a year sharing songs while reading Woody’s words and biographies, slowly exploring a patchwork of Americanism to see where their stories fit. García Conover, half-Puerto Rican, and Heynderickx, half-Filipina, found themselves with this collection of music about the legacy of colonialism, generational identity, commercialism, and the slippery target of addressing social equity in song. Heynderickx’s precise, delicate eloquence met García Conover’s vivid, angular poetics in a barn in Vermont, where this record was recorded directly to tape in five days. With guitars, voices, and some found percussion, they played the record straight through, channeling Woody’s union of spontaneity, sweetness, and defiance.