Nataly Dawn of Pomplamoose

by Nicole Roberge

How her journey to mindfulness and self-acceptance led to the songs on her album Gardenview, and what makes Pomplamoose a unique creative environment.



Singer-songwriter Nataly Dawn is one half of the band Pomplamoose with her husband, Jack Conte. Based out of Northern California, with 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube, the duo makes innovative and quirky music with accompanying music videos that they release weekly, directly to viewers. Originating in 2008, by 2009 they had sold approximately 100,000 songs and had found their niche. They have expanded, bringing in other musicians and talent with unique covers and clever originals. Pomplamoose is a dynamic talent with thrilling, creative energy that not only fills a room, but the internet.

Yet now, Nataly Dawn has taken a step back and a deep breath. She takes listeners on a new path with her solo album, Gardenview.

Deviating from Pomplamoose, here we see Dawn in her truest form: raw, honest, and vulnerable. While Pomplamoose is playful and edgy, Gardenview is a window opening up, layers being exposed. With an ethereal sound to it, there is a peaceful comfort in Dawn's voice. She sounds at ease, even if she is pushing her own boundaries, such as on the song "Joy," but that is what makes for the best songwriting.

With songs like "Afternoon Tea," where she says she was channeling Paul McCartney the best you can, it's pure in a way we don't always see today. While both of her musical endeavors can be appreciated, it is on songs like this that we understand why she took the time to pursue another solo album. Dawn took some time to share with us why she took a more joyful approach with Gardenview, the importance of kindness when making an album, and why a more optimistic approach to songwriting is often difficult for her.
Nicole Roberge (Songfacts): Congratulations on Gardenview. It's a lovely album. How does it feel to release this and do you enjoy the creativity on a solo project? Was this something you felt you needed to do?

Nataly Dawn: Oh, absolutely. That's exactly what it was. It was something I needed.

It's funny, I write songs for Pomplamoose and they tend to be more upbeat, more playful. Sometimes I write songs that are trying to get to the heart of the matter and dig a little deeper. Also, just in terms of the genre, I try to write songs that are more in the traditional singer-songwriter vein, maybe a bit more folksy.

It was coming from a couple places. I had these songs that didn't really feel like a Pomplamoose production. It felt like they needed something else, something a little more rustic and a little more Americana. I have these two close friends, John Schroeder and Ross Garren, and I went to them with the songs because they're really great at doing Americana, bluegrass, and country. I showed them the songs and they were really excited about them. At first, we started collaborating remotely because it was the pandemic, but pretty quickly I realized I wanted to be in a room with these people to make this record. We set aside two weeks of time and recorded the whole record in person. Every day walking into that studio, it felt like a gift after a year and a half of isolation.

To really be in the same space with musicians for two weeks, get into details and refining, and be with other creative people was just amazing. It was the highlight of my years.1

Songfacts: That connection and creativity was probably so good mentally and creatively.

Dawn: Yeah, and it's like you said, I needed it. I needed to not be creating in a room by myself. Also, I had gotten some news a couple months before going into the studio that I had some skin cancer on my nose. It was removed and everything's OK now, but at the time it was really scary.

I'm fortunate I've had a clean bill of health my entire life. I go in for this routine skin checkup and I have cancer on my nose. It was really scary. You're already really paranoid about Covid and to get an additional health scare on top of that, I felt myself kind of spiraling a little bit.

If that diagnosis hadn't happened, I probably would've dragged my feet more on this record. I needed to make this record before I had this surgery because then I was going to be out for a couple weeks recovering. So it really pushed me to make this record. It was a really interesting time in terms of mental health.

Songfacts: I'm glad you're OK. I imagine that was really scary. You describe it, or the process, as trying to love the most unlovable parts of you, which is such a challenge for anyone. How did you even attempt to do that?

Dawn: I spent a lot of time walking during the pandemic. We live in a neighborhood in Berkeley where there are sidewalks, trees, gardens and parks. I would go outside and walk in circles every day, and while I was doing that, I was listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I was gravitating towards podcasts around mindfulness and self-acceptance. I was listening to Brené Brown and Tara Brach. I was trying to meditate as much as possible and get in touch with kindness. While this was happening, I was also dealing with insomnia worse than I've ever had in my life. I started to see a therapist and get acupuncture. I'm very lucky to be able to spend all this time investing in my self-care, but I think everybody needed that.

Tara Brach is a psychologist on top of being a Buddhist teacher. She was telling the story of a woman who she was having sessions with and telling her to work on befriending herself. To every day get up, look at herself in the mirror and say, "I love you." The woman said, "I can't do that, that's too weird. I'm not comfortable." Tara said, "Just say hello. Just acknowledge the other person there and see if you can work up to it." That became one of my daily practices. To actually look at myself in the mirror and express love to myself, and try to internalize it the way I would accept it if it were coming from a close friend.

I think that was one of the most helpful turns for me. As I did this daily practice of acknowledging the person in the mirror, I also started to view my demons with less harshness and less judgment. I was able to write from a place of empathy. I think that's where this record is coming from. Not having achieved nirvana but at least trying to recognize and show kindness towards the person in the mirror.

Songfacts: It seems to have worked for you and really translates to your music.

Dawn: If you listen to some of my other records, there's way more anger and judgment and suffering and anguish. In this one, there's still sadness. Sadness is there and will be there. There's also a kindness that I'm very glad about. I think it's important to work on that.

Songfacts: The album really is just a breath of fresh air, especially after the past couple of years. Were you trying to evoke some of those senses [joy], or did everything just come naturally, especially since you did this work prior?

Dawn: Sometimes I find myself wanting the benefits of meditation but not wanting to do the work of meditating. There's a reason they call it practice. It's one of those things where if you do it just a little bit each day, you will, slowly, be able to feel more presence and joy. There are weeks when I can write from that place and it's because I've been practicing for weeks to actually be present while I'm writing and then there are weeks when I can't. I'm aware of the ongoing nature of it now, that there is no arrival. You don't just get somewhere and then it's good.

Songfacts: "Joy" is such a beautiful, upbeat song. And the video is so fun and intriguing. What is the story behind that?

Dawn: The song and the video are two separate projects made several years apart. "Joy" was one of the very first songs I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic. We were still going to LA once a month to record. That's the way Pomplamoose works. We go down to LA, go into the studio and do these recording sessions. We film four songs a day and release one song a week.

We were down in LA doing these sessions and I didn't have a guitar with me. I asked my friend Ryan if I could borrow one of his guitars for the week and he dropped off this beautiful '70s Guild. I pick it up and strum it and I realize that it is in a completely different tuning. Rather than retuning it to something more familiar, I started to play around with it to see what happened. I was just having fun and getting to be a novice at guitar and rediscovering it and seeing what melodies and chords emerged. The more I played, the more I started fine-tuning it and figuring out what I wanted to do.

The whole song just happened within a matter of hours. It's one of those really magical songwriting stories that everyone will point at and say, "That's how you write a song," when in reality, that's not how most songs are written. But I got lucky with this one and I was having fun and playing in this alternate tuning and this song called "Joy" came out of it.

Lyrically, it's so hard to write happy songs. It's so hard for them not to just feel so saccharine and that this person has clearly never endured hardship. I have trouble writing happy songs and that's because I, as a human, have trouble letting myself experience moments of joy. It's just hard for me to not have my brain immediately go towards negative thoughts of, "This won't last, you don't deserve this. Someone else is suffering right now." If I'm having a happy feeling, my brain gets offset by a negative voice. This song was about trying to acknowledge that. The idea that joy is fickle. Joy isn't gonna hang out forever, but also when joy is there you should really just stop what you're doing and enjoy it.

Songfacts: Especially because in recent years, you get so negative sometimes, you're waiting for that next bad thing to happen, so when something good does happen, you think, what does that mean? So this is a great message. When joy is there, you should appreciate it. I think that translates well in the video.

Dawn: Yes! The music video was directed by Sammy Paul, who is this really wonderful UK-based director who has done a lot of stuff for Dodie, who has been in our circle of musicians and cinematographers. This was my first time getting to work with him on an original solo song.

He took it in a different direction with the music video. My feeling is, you have this joyful experience when you hear the song, and when you see the video there is a darker element to it. I cannot take credit for any of it, it was all Sammy Paul and his interpretation of it. Like we're gonna make a music video about Joy, but Joy is kind of a psychopath salesperson. And it's this idea of, is this joy? I don't know. Can I trust that this is joy? Is she gonna stay? It's almost playing more into this uncertainty when I have feelings of joyfulness. I feel like he understood my struggle.

Songfacts: "Have You Heard?" has a real classic, folky vibe. It's a very timeless sound. Was it empowering to write a hymn-like song centered around the Rapture?

Dawn: I grew up in the church. My parents were missionaries. From ages 10-18 I was in Belgium, France. My father also had a PhD in theology. Our bookshelves were always covered in theology books, so I started having theological conversations with my dad from a pretty young age. It's always something I love getting into. I love any time I meet someone who was raised with religion, any type of religion. I love having those conversations even though my faith has changed quite a bit since that time.

Writing "Have You Heard?" was my way of embracing my roots and embracing my musical heritage. These were the songs I was raised with - these were the first songs I heard. My mom was the music director at church and she would sit at the piano and she would sing songs and play and I would sit next to her and play with her. These were some of my earliest memories. So, the church was a big part of my upbringing, my musical education, and my education in general.

I don't generally write hymns but when I sat down and started playing this song, the first lyric, "Have you heard that the Rapture is coming?" came out. I grew up with this feeling that the Rapture was a scary thing. That you would come home one day and all of your family would be gone and you would be left behind. So the idea of the Rapture was a pretty terrifying thing for me growing up. I decided I wanted to retell that story, change the narrative, and make it about homecoming and divine acceptance, not contingent on what you've done or what you believe. Just unconditional love and acceptance. I think that's something that should be at the core of more faiths if we're going to teach about an all-knowing God. It needs to be more based in acceptance and less in judgment. But that's just how I feel. I just decided to retell the story of the Rapture, but I'm singing it as a hymn. It's a song for people who have grown up with a lot of guilt and shame and judgment. It opens something up for them and they're able to relax and say, "This is more like it, this is actually healing to hear this version of God." At least that's my hope.

Songfacts: "Danny" is a song about your great-grandmother, and it just came to you while playing around on your guitar. Can you tell us more about her and how that happened?

Dawn: That was the very last song that was written for the record. We were a week into recording. I was practicing guitar for the song "All Bad," and as often goes when I'm practicing, I get distracted and start doing something else instead. I started writing the song "Danny." Danny is the name of my great-grandmother on my father's side. She was this really brilliant woman. Some of my earliest memories were sitting on the floor next to her rocking chair and her telling riddles, reciting entire passages of the Bible. She has entire books of the Bible memorized by heart, and it was the same with poetry and riddles. She had so much stored in her brain. She was such a good storyteller.

I wanted to write a song in memory of her. The chorus lyrics are a riddle because that's what she loved. It goes:

You'd be surprised that the window
Of opportunity
Is never as wide or so narrow
As you expect it to be


I wrote it and was like, this doesn't mean anything, but the thing is, I think it's OK to write lyrics that you feel don't mean anything because oftentimes you're wrong and you'll figure it out later. I just let those lyrics be in there, and I thought the point of a riddle is really to just make you scratch your head and think about it.

For me, the song is how the window of opportunity is small and very large. It's small in that these precious moments you have are happening right now and you have to pay attention to them and you have to see them. And the window of opportunity is also very large. You don't have to beat yourself up for missing an opportunity. You can let that go. You can be in the moment now, you can do it again. That's my interpretation of the lyric.

Songfacts: I think you're a good example of that in the different windows of opportunity you've allowed yourself to be in. You've had such success with Pomplamoose. A song like "Bust Your Kneecaps" has close to 8 million views2 and is a completely different vibe than any song on Gardenview. What is it like coming from a band like Pomplamoose to what you're doing now, and which do you prefer?

Dawn: I love both is the copout answer. I really do get a lot out of both projects. My solo work allows me to dig deep and allows me to say some things that are close to my heart. I started Pomplamoose with my boyfriend, now husband, Jack Conte. It's always been joyful to collaborate with him. I feel the same thing when we go into the studio with musicians. There's so much energy and there's this feeling that people are going to see this session and they're going to see us having a great time together. We get to enjoy what we're doing right now and pass along this feeling of joy to other people. That's extraordinary. How many people get to do that?

I love both projects. I definitely feel like Pomplamoose is a collaboration way more than my solo project just in terms of writing. I go to Jack and I've got a melody and bassline. He sits down at the piano and fills it out with chords and figures out the production and arrangement. He mixes it and it's really us coming to the table with our strengths and leaving space for the other person to do what they do best.

It's a very different type of thing than sitting in my room by myself and plunking on my guitar. It's a very different songwriting process and very different recording process, but I love both of them.

September 7, 2022

For more information on Nataly Dawn, including her upcoming Fall tour, visit natalydawnmusic.com

More songwriter interviews:

Loreena McKennitt
Shawn Mullins
Linda Perry

Footnotes:

  • 1] Dawn has been running the Pomplamoose empire for a while now. That's because Jack Conte is occupied with Patreon, the crowdfunding platform he founded with Sam Yam, his former roommate at Stanford, where he met Nataly.

    Pomplamoose now has a team of musicians, editors and audio engineers that Dawn oversees. They typically record once a month, getting four songs done in a single day, then releasing them weekly on their YouTube channel. Pomplamoose remains independent, as does Dawn; Gardenview was issued on her own label. (back)
  • 2] "Bust Your Kneecaps" is a hit - pun intended - on TikTok, where the song is merged with dialogue from a horror movie. (back)

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