Clementine Zawadzki: Hi Helen, how are you?
Helen Ballentine: I’m in LA at my partner’s family’s house by the water. My family is from New York, so it’s colder and more difficult over there. It’s been a bit like Groundhog Day, except today I’ve been working on a video for the next song I’m going to put out. I’ve been working on it with friends, sort of at a distance, doing it very DIY.

CZ: Although you started playing guitar from an early age, you didn’t start songwriting until a lot later. Did anything specific inspire you or encourage you to take the next step?
HB: I started trying to write songs in college to put pressure on myself to do something. I was studying fine art in college and I think it was easier for me to treat songwriting as a fun activity I was doing on the side. As soon as I felt comfortable enough to dabble in it without setting any goals, I was able to get into it more. I don’t know why I didn’t focus on it in high school, because I was always doing music in one way or another. My dad made me go to this songwriting class when I was in ninth grade or something, and I hated it …

CZ: How does a songwriting class work exactly?
HB: It was a small class at this music school in New York where I grew up, and we would just write a song a week, then perform it and talk about it. I think it really freaked me out because it wasn’t an easy thing to do. I preferred to just play songs I liked on the piano; it was just a much easier and fun way to channel music. I wasn’t really focused on it in a serious way, so I avoided the thing that was scary and hard for me, until college when I tried it again. I had a guitar teacher in my senior year that really encouraged me to finish something, because I’d start a song and just have no motivation to finish it. I worked in the art world for a year after that and wasn’t writing at all. I just found I wasn’t able to make music around a full-time job. I didn’t have enough leisure time, and for me, songwriting just comes out of sitting around and having nothing to do – picking up a guitar and going from there. I can’t condense my productivity into one hour. Some people can come home and work within that structure, but I can’t compartmentalise that.

CZ: It’s more of a spontaneous act for you…
HB: Totally. I think that’s why it didn’t start happening until I had long chunks of time with nothing going on…

CZ: Was leaving your job in the art world a conscious decision to pursue music or did that happen organically?
HB: It was a bit of both. I knew I was unhappy in that job, so that was the main reason, but in the back of my head I was thinking I’d like to work more on music. I feel when you’re making any decision like that, you tell yourself you’ll spend more time on your hobbies but I didn’t necessarily think I’d do it. It wasn’t my clear intention to make an EP and go towards music. I spent so much time just having no conception of what my future looked like. I was unemployed for about a year, working as a nanny here and there to earn some money. It wasn’t until the end of that time when I had a collection of songs I wanted to record, and was also thinking about going back to school to study psychology, maybe becoming a therapist.

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