Five Questions With Casey Dubie, Who Knows That Softness Isn’t Weakness

Casey Dubie’s Into the Moon is as quietly confident and self-assured a debut as you’re likely to hear this year. Over the course of the seven-track album, the 26-year-old Vermont native excavates a painful, friendship-testing fight; puts her own dreamy, ethereal spin on the Carole King standby “It’s Too Late”; and defuses the act of rehashing painful memories with the help of a lighthearted attitude. Combining careful fingerpicking on tracks like “Silver” and “Into the Moon” with an electronic, synth-tinged sensibility on “Confetti” and “Carry On”, Dubie demonstrates that she is a reverent traditionalist who isn’t afraid of experimentation. While Dubie, who currently makes her home in Houston, Texas, takes an intentional and methodical approach to every song on the album, Into the Moon never lacks in immediacy or resolve. Mistake her softness for weakness at your own peril.

Into the Moon was released at the end of October, and to shed some more light on what inspires her and how the album came together, we asked Dubie to answer a few questions for us. Her next show is with Sofar Sounds in Nashville on Nov. 17.

What inspired "Silver"?

I got in a big fight with a friend and it really tore me up. Even though we were in different states, I could feel her anger and hurt. It felt like I carried it around with me. I wrote this song to help me process it. The image it revolves around is breathing in secondhand smoke, which is definitely accurate to how I felt.

Waffles or pancakes?  

Raspberry pancakes!

What was the most difficult song on the album to write? What was the easiest?

Most of these songs came relatively quickly to me, which is when I know they’re special. There were parts of the writing process that took longer. This happened when I came to the studio and we were editing pieces of the songs. For example, “Confetti”—the original version did not have the word “polychrome cloud” in it. We spent a lot of time looking at online thesauruses and playing around with a lot of words. We really fought for that line.

You've traveled a lot in the past few years. How did you eventually choose Houston as your home base?

Yes! I have bounced around a lot after college. Houston is also just another stop along the way, I moved here to be with my partner as he finishes up grad school. We’ll probably head back to Chicago (where we both went to undergrad) after he wraps up school in May. Vermont is definitely what I consider home base. I grew up there and always go back for holidays and parts of the summer—it’s my favorite place.

What is your favorite television show and why?

Toss-up between “Gilmore Girls” and “The Office”. Love the story and complexity of the characters’ relationships in “Gilmore Girls,” as well as the small town/quaint feel. And “The Office” is my go-to if I need to laugh.