Volcanoes in the Kitchen Live at Adluh

It was a warm, slightly windy, summer day when I caught up with the Volcanoes in the Kitchen crew outside of the Columbia Convention Center and in the shadow of the historic Adluh building to film them playing two new songs. It’s easy to work with Volcanoes in the Kitchen, the sibling trio are a perfect mix of easy-going and professional. These are qualities you notice in their live performances. One minute they’re having fun bantering back and forth between songs and the next they’re deep in the emotion of a song.

It was a year ago when contributor Kalyn Oyer first found Volcanoes in the Kitchen playing in Marion Square in Charleston. In her write up of the band, Oyer noted keyboard player and vocalist Gabrielle Hadley’s striking resemblance to Taylor Swift. Oyer even noted there that it “must be the red lipstick.”

What we didn’t know then is that Gabrielle Hadley actually has a following of “Swifties” on Instagram where she has to deal with an array of comments, some nicer than others. Their comments inspired their new song “Wayside” seen and heard here. In a chat via email Gabrielle said “In all honesty, a large portion of this song was written from the inspiration of the “hate” I have to deal with from some of Taylor Swift’s fans.  Although there are some Swifties who think I’m cool and yell nice things in all caps on my Instagram photos, there’s still a consistent stream of negativity aimed at me.”

Hadley goes on to talk about the coincidences of their resemblance and the unwarranted obtrusiveness it brings into her life.

“The first line of the song says “whispers following me, people don’t know what they cannot see”. This is directly from the perspective of having people talk about me and my life without knowing the full story. The full story being that I don’t, and never have, intentionally copied Taylor Swift. I fully understand how ridiculous that sounds if you’ve seen some of the photos on my Instagram in a collage of photos that Tswizzles have posted… It freaks me out more than the public that follows me, I can promise you that. Basically, this song came from a vulnerable place of me having to work through not caring what people chose to believe about me in this specific situation. I’ve tried to run from the comparison… like chopping off all my hair… and she just did the same thing two weeks later. So now I’m embracing it in the healthiest way I can. I do look like her. We both like red lipstick and that’s okay. I will take a photo with the girl who stops me in coffee shops and I will tell her about my band.”

After we filmed these acoustic sessions, Volcanoes in the Kitchen played a show at Conundrum Music Hall where they played a handful of songs not on their latest release From the Hill Where We Counted Stars. Live they’ve been testing out new material that they’ve been hard at work on in Charleston, and recording in Nashville.

Hannah Hadley said “We are in the process of recording our first LP in Nashville with Josh Kaler in Butch Walker’s studio, which we are super excited about.” The recording of the album hasn’t slowed down their live shows though. “While going back and forth from Nashville we are also playing a good bit in Charleston at the moment.” Another one of those new songs is “All I See”, a song where Drew Hadley takes more of the spotlight.

In “All I See” Hadley “chose to pick a fight” with the idiom “love is blind”. Drew Hadley said via email “I think love sees everything, love has a four dimensional radar sense, nobody gets anything past love. I do think that when you’re in love with a person it’s like locking eyes with someone a centimeter from your face and that can certainly impair one’s sight. With that said, I would coin the idiom “Love is visually impairing” but then everyone would think I’m a pedantic nerd.”