INTERVIEW ~ HANNAH CUTT

Hannah Cutt, singer songwriter out of Los Angeles debuted in 2019 with her EP Nightmare. She released her first full length album Stories of A King in 2022. She has performed at such notable venues like The Viper Room, Whiskey A Go Go, Troubadour and more. Late 2023 she released the single “Dirty Enough for Hardcore” and has followed that up with her new single “No Crown In This Dead Town.” A video for the song is scheduled to be released shortly. I’m Music Magazine was able to catch up with Hannah to talk a little bit about the new single and more.

I know we’re here to talk about your new single “No Crown in this Dead Town” and the video that’s coming out along with it. But before we get into that, I want to give our readers a little background on who Hannah Cutt is. So how’d you get started in music? What led you down that path?

Hannah Cutt: I was acting at the time and I booked commercials here and there but I didn’t really feel I got a lot of control over my career. So, ’cause I wasn’t a writer, I don’t write scripts but I wrote a lot of poems and I could sing. So I ran into this guy at the driving range. and I was talking to him about maybe getting into music, and we went in the studio and produced my first, the first version of the first single I ever released, “Messy,” who Scott Storch ended up producing that, but his name was Danny Saber, and we produced a few songs with him, and then from there, I just started working with different writers and wrote my first song, Stories of the King album, and yep, that’s just how I got started. This was around nine years ago.

When you are writing with other individuals, are there certain qualities or characteristics you’re looking for in those individuals before you’ll team up with them?

Yeah, usually I want people who are not controlling. I usually I’ll come in with the the lyrics and then maybe like a melody to the chorus and they’ll make the music behind it and usually my writing sessions have gone well except for there was this one guy who every single idea I had he just shot to the ground and finally I was like this is not working out because usually he just wanted more control, like he wanted to do the melody and change the lyrics up, and I’m like that’s my job, like that is what I do. I do the melody, I do the lyrics, you do the music, and so that was just not a good match. But besides that, I’ve had some pretty good writing sessions. Of course, not all of them are good, but yeah, I like all of the music I write.

For “No Crown in this Dead Town,” you teamed up with Sean Hurwitz and Greg Cash, who produced the song. How’d you team up with them? How’d you meet up with them?

Sean was in my band before. Sean and Greg were in my band, my first band that we did around three years ago. I met Sean through this one songwriter that I wrote my first album with and we performed at the Pig and Whistle in the back room in an acoustic show. He actually plays for Smash Mouth so it’s pretty funny when my mom found out I played for Smash Mouth she was so embarrassed she’s like god this is like a far far far drop from that but yeah so we performed just my acoustic songs at the Pig and Whistle. Then around three years ago, I ended up calling him up and was like, “Do you want to perform some music?” And he got the band together and we started performing.

How long have you been working on this single?

Oh, this single? I mean, I had the… I wrote the lyrics and then I came into the writing session and they already had some music that they were prepared to use and I just ended up making a melody to the music that they gave me and it ended up working out really well.

The single No Crown in this Dead Town, what’s the story behind this song?

Um, I don’t know. I was just tired. I was actually in the ER all night because I hit my head on the door and it was like 4 a.m. and we were stuck there for hours and I was just thinking, like, I didn’t really want to do this writing session. I had the writing session the next day and I felt like I just don’t want to have to work and I just felt a little bit tired, you know, releasing music and not getting as many followers as I wanted. So I started writing lyrics and I came up with this song and I was like, perfect, this is a great song, and I knew, I knew, I knew we were going to do it in the set because sometimes I’ll write songs and I will be like, oh, it’s not very good, but I knew before I even wrote the music that this was going to be a good song. I even texted my drummer. I’m like, we got a good one before we even finished the writing session.

I know the video hasn’t been released, but what can you share about the video itself?

The video is very inspired. One of my favorite shows is Entourage. I watch it all the time. So the first scene is us in a Cadillac driving on Sunset, a red Cadillac, kind of looking out on the billboards, kind of inspired by the intro of Entourage, and I’m looking up at the billboards and kind of imagining myself on the billboards, and then we ended up, so we were supposed to do this shot on the bridge, but all the lights were down so we improvised it and I ended up doing a scene of just me on the Cadillac and then it was me and my band in the Cadillac for the opening scene and then we ended up improving another scene of me just singing on the Cadillac and then we did a performance on the rooftop in downtown. So those are the three shots that we did.

With the single coming out and video. Are you working on any other singles for later in 2024?

Well, I have an EP that I’m going to release next. It’s a five-song EP. I’ve released two of the songs, singles so far on it, “No Crown in This Dead Town” and “Dirty Enough Hardcore.” But I’m going to release three more singles on that. It’s going to be called “Misery in Heaven.”

Are you going to release the singles before the whole EP?

I released two of the singles and then I’m going to release the three other songs on the EP just as a full package.

You’ve released EPs and you released an album, some performers prefer to just do singles, some performers still like to do EPs and albums. Where do you fall on that?

I mean, I’m definitely, because I have so many lyrics, and I have pretty much my next four albums or three albums kind of outlined lyrically and title wise, like I already have that all planned. So for me, I’ve loved albums, I’ve always loved albums. So I definitely have a plan to release, after this EP, my album ‘Hell Can’t Cry.’ I also have two albums after that that I want to release.

Any upcoming tours?

No, we’re trying to get on a tour right now. Try to be like an opener for a big band. ‘Cause right now I’m just staying local in LA, it’s like the Whiskey, the Troubadour and the Viper Room. and alternating between those three spots. We went down to San Diego like a year or two ago, but we’re trying to kind of branch out. So we’re putting out feelers right now to see if anyone would have me open for them.

Hannah, I want to thank you so much for taking time to do the interview. Wishing you much success with the new single.

Thank you so much.

I’m Music Magazine Writer Tim Board