Episode 26 - Tara Hack
Growing up on Long Island, Tara Hack witnessed older generations being transported back to their youth, recounting the stories of their childhood with specific songs that encased social movements.
Tara documents modern life and love, observing characters and their stories, chronicling all of it and setting it to music. “I try to write empathically,” Tara says. “Observing characters and imagining what they would feel, channeling that into stories”. Tara’s father worked as a conductor on the Long Island Rail Road, and as a teen she would occasionally accompany him at work. They noticed musicians busking for tips inside Penn Station in NYC and her father suggested that Tara give it a try, a suggestion that changed the course of Tara’s life as a performing musician.
Watching the world go by from inside a train station is a unique perspective, one that has shaped Tara’s repertoire as well as her approach to songwriting. Busking has created tremendous opportunity for Tara: donations collected at her Penn Station and Atlantic Terminal performances funded a 2019 trip to Abbey Road Studios in London for a set of recordings to be released later this year. Making music for commuters is a reciprocal relationship, one that Tara respects deeply. When asked what her ambition is for the release of her new music, Tara replied simply “to make someone’s day better. Whenever I’m performing, that is the goal.”
Tara is currently in the studio, writing and recording her debut original album. The process has been an empowering one, with Tara firmly in control of her creative process, incorporating the music of her childhood influences, as well as Coldplay, John Mayer, Avril Lavigne, Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch.
