Caroline Hale Is the Local Name to Know at Sips and Sounds Music Festival

SXSW is coming in hot, along with the Sips and Sounds Music Festival on March 13 and 14 at Auditorium Shores. Superstars (and millennial favorites) like Christina Aguilera, Calvin Harris, and Major Lazer will take center stage — as well as 24-year-old Texas native Caroline Hale.

“I’ve really been having a lot of fun trying to imagine what our show should look like on a festival-sized stage and in front of a festival-sized audience,” Hale says. “I’m excited for the potential of where this opportunity could lead me and my band.”

Hale, a San Antonio native, graduated from UT Austin less than two years ago. Her debut album, “BFF,” came out when she was just 22. Over the past year, with more time on the Austin live music circuit under her belt and a maturing song palette, she’s been dropping singles: “Blame You,” a pensive post-breakup song, and “Kick It,” a pop-rock plead for a needy lover to chill out. 

Mentors and muses

Though Hale doesn’t come from musical stock, she fell in love with singing and playing guitar at a young age thanks to tween icon Disney stars like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato. After spending her high school years writing songs, she entered her freshman year at UT Austin in fall 2020 as a writing and rhetoric major — and endured the curses of college under Covid.

“I vividly remember coming home to my dorm one night and being like, ‘Wow, this whole thing really sucks. I need something meaningful in my life.’ And that’s music for me,” Hale says. “I decided then and there that I was going to treat this as closely to a full-time job as I can.”

Entering college coincided with the year she met one of her mentors, songwriter Gordy Quist of Austin-based The Band of Heathens. Hale says he opened so many doors for her in Austin, connecting her to local venues and her band members. (She filled her early shows with friends from her Greek life connections; she’s a Pi Phi.) She’s also had another helpful mentor since she was 14: songwriter Martin Strayer, who’s often on the road with artists like Ariana Grande and is married to Emily Robison of The Chicks. Hale grew up around the country stars and even got to play guitar onstage with them at 14 at the Circuit of the Americas, “so you can see how naturally The Chicks became an influence for me,” Hale says. “When I think of Texas music, I think of them.”

Confessional tracks

Up till now, Hale’s music could fall under the moody genre of “sad girl music” — more Phoebe Bridgers than Dolly Parton. On the cover of her album, Hale stands in front of a carnival game wearing a funeral-esque dress and long black veil, holding a large black balloon. She sings of her first heartbreaks, both from the people she’s dated and the close friends she parted ways with. On “We Both Do,” Hale mourns a long-distance relationship with her first love that didn’t work out, thanks to mutual mistakes. And on “Frankly Speaking (I’m Done),” Hale immortalizes near-verbatim text threads with an ex-lover and the close friend he hooked up with after her. “I think it’s safe to say, I’ll find someone new, some new girlfriends too, who won’t settle for my dirty seconds.”

“All of the best songwriters have always said when you’re writing a song and it feels so uncomfortable because it’s so real, that means that you’re on to something great, and you need to chase that feeling,” Hale says. “That’s what audiences and listeners are going to connect with the most.”

A new chapter for Hale

While Hale’s proud of her first songs, she wrote most of them when she was in high school, and she’s ready to move on and express more of the artist she is now. Her new sound is morphing into what she calls “twang pop,” influenced by ethereal crooners like Maggie Rogers and Texas greats like Kacey Musgraves. After a stage of rebellion against the country music she grew up on, she’s embracing her Lone Star State roots and studying the sounds of iconic artists like Linda Ronstadt, Emily Lou Harris and Bonnie Raitt.

Hale says her creative work schedule is inspired by “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, a popular book that lays out a 12-week program to unlock anyone’s creative potential. Hale swears by “morning pages,” one of the core practices of the book in which you write three stream-of-consciousness pages upon waking. She also tries to write one song a week and “just finish it,” whether she loves it or not, “to free your headspace for the next project or the next song.”

“You can go to law school and become a lawyer or you go to med school and become a doctor, but there’s not really a formula to becoming a musician,” Hale says. “But I try to get up and write every day.”

After she gets to rub elbows with the massive artists headlining Sips and Sounds, Hale dreams of playing live with a Texan she idolizes: Kacey Musgraves. Until then, she’s putting in the work to make it a reality.

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