Anastazia Acker is releasing her seasonally named album, GRAVEYARD, with a release show (all ages and free) on October 27 at Badger Hill Brewing. Her album is honest and her voice delivers emotion in a melody that’s easy to get lost in.
Tell us how you got into music and how that developed into releasing an album.
I started writing in high school as a sort of coping mechanism for anything going on in my life and it turned into how I started processing life events. In college my grandma really pushed me to record some of them and I dabbled a bit, but last year I met Michael Koppelman and we really hit it off when it came to music. Michael and I worked on Ghost Town as a trial to see if we worked together creatively and it felt like he could read my mind on what I had envisioned the song would turn into. We haven’t stopped since and it has been one of the most fun and fulfilling things I’ve been able to do.
There’s a line in Past Tense that struck me, “he was my sun and moon and I was his crime.” How did that feel to write and how does it feel to sing? (Assuming there’s autobiographical inspiration in the song.)
Writing that line felt cathartic. It gave me the ability to let it go. Singing it now… I have fun with it, honestly. I really love this song. It’s about the growing pains of becoming just friends with someone you loved once, having to admit that they hurt you but you can move on and laugh at it a little.
I think you’ve captured that feeling at the start of a relationship where life is a whirlwind and we feel out of control. Do you still feel you’re Kind of a Mess?
I think I am always going to be a little bit messy, it is just going to shift to a different part of my life. But I have someone who embraces my messy and I am learning how to enjoy it.
Please tell us more about The Graveyard Shift. The subject seems like a big departure from the rest of the album. It seems to celebrate a different kind of love and loss.
I would almost call The Graveyard Shift a love letter. My childhood best friend passed away in November of 2021 and the song was written a year later. Almost every line in the song is pulled from a memory, like little snapshots into the past. The song started off with me saying, “what would she want to know?” and I would want her to know that she had accomplished what she had set out to do, she was a spitfire and one of the most courageous people I have ever had the honor of having in my life. When I started writing songs about Julia, it was in a very grief stricken manner, but she is someone who deserves to be celebrated and that is what I really wanted to do in this song. Celebrate her, all of the years of friendship, the drives to Duluth, the times I would try to go running with her, the little things that make up memories you never want to lose. But most importantly that she had done it, and even though she is no longer with us, that she is absolutely changing the world. If you want to read about Julia, Samantha Mathers covered her story. This is the link to the first post about her story, https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfjgi-gOYNwAzi78CnCRYsipmk-zFNg-Mx590E0/?hl=en.
Where can people see you play live and help celebrate the new album.
We are having an album release party this Friday, Oct 27th, at Badger Hill Brewing in Shakopee starting at 7pm. Michael’s band raintribe will be closing out the night as well as playing with me for the evening! There is also going to be a fundraiser going on for Julia’s Race, which is a non-profit organization that Julia’s parents founded to support college athletes like her. So if you come and drink Oktoberfest you’re supporting a really amazing cause.
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