In 2022, the Current Local Show host Diane checked in with the multi-talented singer-songwriter Haley. That discussion came ahead of her performance at the MidWest Music Fest in Winona, and she dropped a few details about her new record, her first since 2018’s instrumental Pleasureland. They also discussed Herman Mint, the moniker Haley has chosen for her painting projects, and a bit of the recording process for an as-yet-untitled album.

Now, the album has moved along and is being mixed. “So it's nearing the finish line,” she says in a conversation earlier this year. And, she’s beginning to reveal the songs from the album, which is now titled Hunca Munca. In a pair of intimate weekend concerts at the Pink Slip Gallery in south Minneapolis, she’ll perform them with co-producer Steve Garrington while her Herman Mint work hangs in the space. While the Pink Slip’s site says the shows are sold out, Haley’s got more shows in the works — and she’s expecting her second child soon.

The Current reached Haley this year to discuss a variety of topics related to songwriting for another story that we’ll publish soon. But first, here are a few moments too good not to share from the conversation ahead of her weekend shows.

On her upcoming performances

My co-producer Steve Garrington and I are going to be premiering songs from the new record. So it'll be our first time playing that music live and just giving it a test run, and I decided to do it in tandem with my first visual art show. I've been painting a lot. That'll be hanging at the Pink Slip gallery before the show, and then I'll take it down after the performances are done. Then we've got Valentine's Day at Sacred Heart in Duluth, which I've done before a few times. That place is uber Valentine's. And then, I just booked something at the Hook and Ladder on April 1. So yeah, I've got a bunch of stuff coming up. And I'm trying to try to cram it all in before the end of May.

On producing creative work during pregnancy

I have felt so creative. The first trimester sucks. I don't know if you have kids, but it's really kind of a bummer. You're really tired and don't feel great and don't have the energy for anything, and nap all the time. So once I got through that period, now I've felt really energized and creative and found out I'm having a girl, which I'm really excited about. My heart feels really open to this whole experience. Painting, playing, and working on music just feels extra good right now because it's nourishing for me and my soul and also nourishing for this new soul that's growing inside of me and that feels really beautiful.

The new album’s inspiration

The title of the album is Hunca Munca. It is from one of my favorite stories, Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Two Bad Mice. It’s a children's story about these two mice, Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb, who have all these children. They live in the walls of a mansion, and they're hungry, their kids are hungry. One day they decide to break into this doll's house in a playroom where they see all this food and blankets and riches. When they realize that all the food is fake, they get angry and start breaking everything. They smash all the food, the furniture, and the plates, and take what they can. When they get back to their home, they realize that what they did was kind of bad and feel guilty about it, so they kind of make it up in a way. When the humans, who are not in the story at all, realize these mice are getting into stuff they set up all these traps. They spend the rest of their days I guess making it up by sweeping the porch and around the doll's house and leaving gold coins there. I just really love that concept.

When I wrote this record, it was over COVID. It was 2020. And when the uprising was happening here in Minneapolis, like, after George Floyd was murdered, and the story just stuck with me. I just thought, like, the rage, desperation, and disillusion was really relatable. I thought about it in this way through a kind of innocence of, that's our human nature to find things we love. We need to feed ourselves and our children. And when those simple necessities are taken away, suddenly, things don't feel good. It's natural for us to turn to anger. And with that, we have the capacity to come back to love and to forgive and to be accountable for ourselves and what kind of damage we can do.

I really thought that related to my love for this city, and my love for my friends and, and fellow citizens who are people of color who are feeling an extreme amount of pain for all of the people that were dying and sick from COVID-19. For myself, it was being terrified, losing out on my career, and feeling like I didn't know what was going to be happening. and so that a lot of that subject matter is really what the record is built on. So there are a lot of different subjects that it touches on, but it never really detaches from that basis of hope and rebuilding and forgiveness.

Haley performs at The Pink Slip in Minneapolis on Saturday, Feb. 11, and Sunday, Feb. 12; and at Sacred Heart Music Center in Duluth on Tuesday, Feb. 14.