We’ve seen Nandi Rose, AKA Half Waif, a lot in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection over the past decade or so, from shows at PhilaMOCA and Everybody Hits, to opening Boot & Saddle for hovvdy and Land of Talk, and providing support for both Julien Baker and Mitski at Union Transfer. However, the last time we saw her was when she headlined Johnny Brenda’s in November of 2021, just after the return of live music.
Last October, Nandi released Half Waif’s sixth full-length, See You At The Maypole, courtesy of ANTI- Records, her home since 2020’s The Caretaker. The album is equally inspired by the mourning of a miscarriage that occurred shortly after Half Waif’s 2021 tour and the togetherness Nandi found with her musical friends (many of whom are featured on the album) and humanity and nature in general throughout her healing process.
While Half Waif played two album release shows this October, tonight, January 10th, she kicks off a 20-date tour of America and Europe with her first-ever stop at our very own MilkBoy. A week ago I got to chat with Nandi via Zoom about how her recent experiences have contributed to her methods of both making and performing music, the importance of connection, and her time in the 215, where she almost relocated years ago… to quite a famous address, at that…
Izzy Cihak: Happy new year! You’re actually my first interview of 2025! Any resolutions or revolutions for the year?
Nandi Rose: Great question! Happy new year to you, too! I just came up with three yesterday for myself…
One is less complaining… I have a toddler, and I feel like a lot of it’s just, “Oh my god, our sleep is so bad!” But this is just the water we’re swimming in and I’m trying to cultivate a little more acceptance. It’s okay once in a while to complain, but I’ve been falling back on it too much and noticing how much that can compound the negative energy.
Two is more goodwill toward other people and their successes. I saw a peer post something about working with this producer who’s like my dream to work with, and my first feeling was, “Ugh! I wanna do that!” And then my next thought was, “How cool that she’s doing that? That’s so amazing!” I wanna be happy for people and kind of cut out that other feeling…
And then the last one is more traditions and rituals…
Izzy: How do you consider See You At The Maypole to compare to previous releases? I know the collection sort of went through a lot of major transformations based on all of the things you were going through in your personal life.
Nandi: It’s definitely the longest offering I’ve put out there… I didn’t necessarily set out to have that many songs, but I sent the batch of songs to the label, and I was expecting them to kind of give their input on which ones to cut, and they were like, “We like all of them!” And it was like, “Okay! I guess we’re doing that…”
The last few records I’ve approached like, “I will now write a happy album…” and then the universe just kind of comes in and does its thing [laughs]. I’m coming to a place of acceptance that songwriting and music is the space for me to parse through the trickier moments of my life. When I’m happy, I wanna be out there in the world with people. And when I’m going through grief or anger or sadness, I wanna be alone in a room playing the piano and singing [laughs].
This album started out with this idea of being about the transition into motherhood in this very hopeful and uplifting way. I got pregnant very quickly and everything was feeling really good. I was pregnant at that show at Johnny Brenda’s! I found out on that tour, which was wild to be performing in that state… and then to have the miscarriage in December, about a month after the tour, I really just went underground in myself for a little while, really railed against the idea of writing an album about the miscarriage, not because I was afraid to share it, but I didn’t wanna write something so heavy.
My challenge and my task and my goal was to take this really heavy material and think, “How can I inject light into it? How can I make it feel like air?” I was thinking about each album having its own element. Lavender was water, The Caretaker was Earth, Mythopoetics was fire, and I was like, “This one’s gonna be air!” [laughs]. It was something Zubin [Hensler, co-producer] and I were thinking about along the way, bringing the sense of lift at a time that felt very heavy. I think we achieved that in the moment, sonically. It’s much more about organic sounds.
A big theme of that time in my life, and a lesson I’m still trying to embrace, is acceptance and surrender. I was going through something I couldn’t control, and I think that worked its way into the recording process in terms of being less crafty [laughs]. One of our mottos was, “Don’t be too clever” [laughs]. We weren’t trying to construct this perfectly programmed crystalline cage of sound. It was a lot more, “This is the expression of the moment,” and just letting go into that process.
Izzy: I know you’ve said that the album became largely about connection, in terms of you and your own loved ones and musical community, but also potentially with listeners, so I’m curious if you’ve had any favorite reactions to the music?
Nandi: That’s such a beautiful question! Thank you! No one’s asked me that, so I don’t have an immediate answer… Some of the most resonant responses have been people who’ve gone through pregnancy loss and all its different guises… When I went through it, I turned to art for comfort. I read poems by poets who had miscarriages and read a lot of books. It was my hope that I might be able to be a part of that canon in some way, so that I could extend a hand out to anyone else going through it, because it was so crucial to me in those early days just to hear from someone who had been through it, so that’s been really incredible.
I played the release show in my hometown in October, which was a really amazing experience. Community members came out, the woman who runs the children’s room at the library came out with her husband, friends, family, my sister flew out from Texas to surprise me, our midwife came. It was this incredible upwelling of support from all these walks of life. This woman who lives down the street — she’s in her 70s, one of those friendly neighbors who when she passes by we say, “hi” – came, and she came up to me after the show and sort of grabbed my arm and said, “I knew what you were singing about.” And that’s all she said. She just looked at me teary-eyed, and that moment of connection… I’ve had chills just remembering it…
Izzy: I love the album, but “Ephemeral Being” [which was recently remixed by Claire Rousay] was actually one of my favorite songs of the year, and made it to the Best of 2024 edition of my radio show.
Nandi: Thank you so much!
Izzy: You’re welcome so much! I dig it! How did that song originate?
Nandi: That’s such a funny one [laughs]. I honestly thought it was sort of a joke. I was at a residency in Wyoming in April 2022, and you come to residencies with all of these expectations of, “I’m going to write my masterpiece!” And I sat down my first night and just made this little Auto-Tune vocal bit and the beat, and I just made it for fun, and then I put it aside for the rest of my residency. Then, towards the end of my time there, I was really struggling with writing music, which is funny. (I wrote “Mother Tongue” there also, but that was the only other song I wrote.) I opened that file back up, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m just gonna work on this!” and sent it to Zubin. I was like, “This is my Charli xcx song!” I was just having fun, it was very silly. And he said he was biking home in Brooklyn and put it on and felt really, really great listening to it. He was like, “You have to release this!”
On the original tracklisting, it was gonna be the last song, because it felt like it was almost a sort of wink. It almost felt like it had nothing to do with the album. Sonically, it’s so different, and it’s a different persona, really. I’m trying on different voices, and it’s very off-the-cuff. Even lyrically, it’s a little more on the surface… And the label were like, “This is the jam on the record!” It’s so funny to see people’s reactions that have kind of taken it from what it was originally, just a song I wrote for me that was for fun. But, ultimately, that actually is the message, like let go of the seriousness…
I’m a very happy and joyful person, but I’m also a very serious person, and there are moments when I’m like, “Ugh! Girl, come on! Cut it with the sad feeling! You’re out here in Wyoming, these beautiful vistas, just be present, just be grateful to be alive. Just let it go!” So, in that way, I think there is a levity to that song that’s maybe unique on the record. So, I think it’s come to be an important part of the batch, but it is kind of its own character.
Izzy: I really love that you did a full-length music video for the entire album. What kinds of things inspired the visuals behind See You At The Maypole?
Nandi: It was an ambitious undertaking, but I worked with some amazing collaborators to create what I was thinking of as these visual tarot cards… I guess there are 22 cards in the Major Arcana deck, and there’s 17 tracks, so it doesn’t quite line up, but it felt like this deck of each song; you lift it out and it’s got some kind of symbol, some kind of message for you.
I had the idea of making these little visualizers for every song that were like the visual counterpoints. I worked with Kora Radella, who is the choreographer that I’ve been working with, who was my professor/dance teacher at Kenyon College. We stayed in touch and it was amazing to work with her, both on the visualizers and on the “Figurine” music video, and also the live show. She’ll be at the Philly show, too! She’s flying out from Ohio. And then Logan White did the photos and the videos.
Working with those two very strong, creative minds, we all came from a place of wanting to highlight the sort of sacredness of the songs. So, imagery that we’re using is pulling a lot from mythology and fairy tales, surrealism, sort of highlighting these moments that feel a little out of time, out of the norm, that kind of pull you out into these other little worlds.
Izzy: Since this is a Philadelphia publication, I have to ask your thoughts on the city, as you’ve played here a ton of times over the years from shows at PhilaMOCA, The Church, Boot & Saddle, Union Transfer, and Johnny Brenda’s… Any thoughts or memories of the city? I’ve seen you on all different scales, from like Boot & Saddle with Land of Talk, to Mitski at Union Transfer, and then headlining at Johnny Brenda’s, and maybe even one or two others…
Nandi: You’re so right! It has been a real love affair with Philly. Everybody Hits comes to mind as a fave place early on. Just how cool having shows at the batting cage, and then you’d always have the guy who takes the photos and you’d get a little baseball card with your picture. That felt like a real piece of Philly history.
We actually almost moved to Philly right after college, with Pinegrove, the other band that I used to play in. We had a house picked out, and we were gonna move there, and it fell through at the last minute, so we moved to Brooklyn instead. But that house went on to become a treasured DIY venue, the Golden Tea House?
Izzy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Nandi: Yeah, that was almost our house [laughs], which is really funny to think about. In a parallel universe, we move to Philly, we live in the Golden Tea House, we start a DIY venue…
And I think that was the first show I did with Mitski. I was a huge fan of hers and I just remember pulling into the back lot at Union Transfer and starting to unload the van and she came out, and I will never forget this, she’s like, “Would you like a seltzer?” And I [thought], “You are the sweetest person in the world!” Meeting her and having that kick off our tour together was really special.
I absolutely love Philly. I’m so excited to be back… I’ve never been to MilkBoy. What do you think of the venue?
Izzy: I was gonna talk about it in a little bit, because you do play, like you were saying, a pretty wide variety of venues… Very DIY spaces, and then kinda like barrooms, and then like Union Transfer and these huge places… MilkBoy is like a classic barroom venue. It’s only been there since 2011, but it’s that old school vibe. It’s 200 capacity, a long, dark, narrow room…
Nandi: I’ll be fascinated to see. We’re playing all different kinds of places on this tour. We’ve got rooms where it’s seated, we’ve got community spaces, rock clubs… I think we’re just gonna try to bring our vibe. We’re a five-piece band, and it’s one thing when I’m performing at a performing arts center, which is where my release show was, and it’s very like theatre-y. But, in general, I’m really interested in breaking down the artist/audience dichotomy… I really am conceiving of these shows as a place for communal healing and connection and these grief rituals. Kora’s choreographed some beautiful moments through the set, with props, and it just almost feels like doing spells. I’m hoping to kind of cast a little magic into whatever space it is.
Izzy: Yeah! I was looking at the photos from the release shows, and it’s like, “Oh, wow, this is a very different space! This is a real production!” But it is interesting to see the kinds of productions that people bring into smaller spaces. Do you approach different kinds of spaces differently, even if it’s with the same show? I imagine the sweaty barrooms and the seated things, even if they’re the same size and with similar stages, can be completely different.
Nandi: Totally! Just talking to you, I’m getting excited about it. The general idea of improvisation has always really terrified me. I’m a planner; I like to know how things are gonna go. I’ve been on this journey, ever since the loss and my journey into becoming a mother after that, which took a long time, and now being a mother, it’s taught me so much about relinquishing control and just surrendering and how beautiful that is, when you’re like, “I don’t know how this is gonna go.” I mean, we named our son River, so I think that’s also part of it [laughs]. We’re in the flow all the time, and he teaches me that.
What I’m excited about for these shows is the opportunity to improvise, because there are things I’m gonna be able to do at MilkBoy that I’m not gonna be able to do at Pico Union Project, in a seated community center in LA. And I think it’s gonna mean more room for playfulness. Maybe I’ll just be right out there in the audience, because there’s not gonna be these big stages! It’s like, just come right out there! So, I’m excited!
Something that I’m asking people to do is bring a piece of nature with them and kind of lay it on the edge of the stage as an offering. I’m asking people to do this at every show – either before the show, after, during the set, I don’t care – bring this offering to the stage. I’m gonna collect them from all 20 shows in the US and Europe. And, at the end of the tour (I’m gonna probably film it.), on May Day, I’m gonna make a rangoli, which is this Indian ritualistic artform, make this pattern with everyone’s contributions woven together. And then I’ll take it all apart and put it back into nature. I’m excited to have this little interactive moment that doesn’t normally happen at shows.
Izzy: On that note, what are some of the things you’re most excited about in 2025? I know you currently have dates through early March, but I know you’re doing all kinds of different stuff now, in addition to Half Waif.
Nandi: I’m excited to teach my workshop again, which I’ll probably do in the spring. I’ve done it four times now and 75 people have come through it, of all ages, from all over the world. It’s been really, really incredible for me to facilitate that space and learn from other songwriters. It’s a very communal space where we all gather our creativity and learn how to be accountable to our practice and vulnerable and open to new ideas.
And I just finished a draft of my book, which is a memoir. I will be shopping that around this year. I don’t know what’s gonna happen with that, but hopefully it’ll get published at some point. I’ve been working on it since 2022, so it feels really nice. It’s about that same year, and I talk about that process of writing See You At The Maypole throughout it. It’s sort of like these two chapters of my life are so intertwined, and they’re both ending and making room for something new!
And I’m so curious what’s gonna happen at MilkBoy! I have no idea! We’re just gonna get intimate in the barroom!
*Get your tickets here.
