Hannah Juanita is ‘Honky Tonkin’ for Life
Photo: Brian Harrington | Western AF
Written By: Meredith Lawrence
On Sundays after church when country singer/songwriter Hannah Juanita was a child, her family congregated at her grandparents’ house. There was food and football. And in the background, her grandfather on the couch picking his Gibson Hummingbird guitar (100th anniversary edition). The gospel and bluegrass music he played was so much a part of the fabric of her childhood, it’s hard to distinguish any one song. As it has been for generations in so many families, music was a way of passing the time and gathering together.
Years later, Juanita realized she too needed to make music, and that it filled her with joy. While writing her second studio album, 2024’s Tennessee Songbird, Juanita asked a friend and avid birder about songbirds. To the best of ornithological understanding, communication aside, songbirds sing because it makes them happy and feels life-affirming. The night after she learned that, Juanita couldn’t sleep. She too felt that primal urge. Lying awake in the darkness, she sang lines to herself. “Tennessee songbird longs to sing her sweet melody…deep inside she’s moved to sing / wants to say out loud she’s alive and free,” she sings in the song that became Tennessee Songbird’s title track. “Whether we listen or not, songbirds sing.”
Photo: Emily Danielle Jones
“I have to continually relate to that. That's how I get by,” Juanita says. “I'm doing this because I want to, because I have to, because this is what makes me happy and makes me feel whole as a person in this world.”
Juanita’s grandfather died when she was 12, and his death moved her to start guitar lessons (later, she inherited his Gibson Hummingbird and it’s still the guitar she writes on today). As a teenager, Juanita sang in church, and even recorded with her youth group band. Still, growing up in Chattanooga, TN she was expected to get a steady job and build a stable, predictable life for herself. Intent on finding something different, Juanita hit the road and headed west after college. She is to her knowledge the only person in her family to move out of Tennessee.
Restless and unsure what she wanted out of life, Juanita spent her 20s on the road. She worked odd jobs like beet and weed harvests, clocked a short stint in an intentional community in Missouri building mud houses, spent a few years in Portland, OR, and travelled and woofed in Europe. Although she played occasionally–and memorably learned harmony to Hank Williams songs under the Eiffel Tower with a friend–Juanita considered herself a fireside singer.
Finally, she and a few friends bought 22 acres of undeveloped land in rural Washington (Morton) and Juanita and her roustabout boyfriend converted a Hostess Bread truck into a cabin. Juanita worked at the Home Depot and then a local hardware store, and her boyfriend was gone for weeks at a time on the road with the circus. Miserable and lonely, Juanita turned to an evening routine. She cooked dinner by candlelight then settled in to write songs by the fire. Slowly, she imagined she could sell her music.
The breaking point came after working one more weed harvest, and Juanita packed a free guitar she’d been given and her dog, Loretta, in the car and drove east. She landed in Asheville, NC for a few months where she played open mics and gigged with a local performer, Chicken Coop Willaye, named for the wooden contraption he played on stage. After another stint on the road, Juanita was drawn to Nashville, where she moved after a spectacular night visiting Honky Tonk Tuesdays, the long-running American Legion Post 82 event (now hosted by Eastside Bowl).
“I finally felt that sense of restlessness ease up, and I was able to really focus for the first time it felt like in 10 years.”
“When I threw myself into music, it really clicked, and I was like, ‘this is what I want to be doing; this is what I need to be doing,’” she says. “I finally felt that sense of restlessness ease up, and I was able to really focus for the first time it felt like in 10 years.”
Juanita released her debut single, “Our Love is Done,” in January 2020, waited out the pandemic, and released her first album, Hardliner in June 2021. Starting anew and chasing her dreams after turning 30 felt a little reckless and exactly right. She’s collaborated with Sierra Ferrell, and toured with Kaitlin Butts, Jesse Daniel, Nick Shoulders, Emily Nenni, Summer Dean, and Kelsey Waldon. Her second album, Tennessee Songbird released in August 2024.
Photo: Emily Danielle Jones
Songbird opens as Juanita returns to her home on the road in “Hardliner Blues,” a nod to Juanita’s first album. Written by long-time collaborator Mose Wilson, whose fast, intricate guitar picking feels like a car speeding down the highway, more than a declaration of mettle, the song is never giving up manifested. Whereas Hardliner’s characters often learn tough life lessons — the tension Juanita felt living in Washington is readily apparent — on Songbird, both Juanita and her characters have grown up. They’re steadfastly aware of their worth and needs. And even with their backs up against the wall, these women know they’ll get themselves out of the jam (“Fortune”) and that they’re living on their own terms (“Loose Caboose”).
Perhaps no-one more so than the bikini-wearing, Virginia Slims-smoking, pink martini-drinkin’ star of “Granny’s Cutlass Supreme.” Partially inspired by Juanita’s own grandmother, who drove a lavender Lincoln Town Car with white leather interior and wore high heels until she was 92, she’s a badass to be reckoned with (or not). “She's just a universal granny that has some country living wisdom to share with the world,” Juanita says. “She's collected all this wisdom in her time, and she's just doing what she wants to do.”
Juanita is, as she sings midway through the album, now “Honky Tonkin’ for Life.” By album’s end, she understands how far she’s come. “Star by star I tried to climb into the sky/ for I thought I’d drown in all the tears I cried /Overtime I learned that I was strong,” she croons in “Blue Moon,” the album’s closer.
Juanita is not only in control of her narrative, but at peace in it. Although these days she’s on the road with a purpose, it’s not always easy. In “Peace of Mind,” Songbird’s penultimate track, she reflects on the inherently rough-and-tumble tour life, inspired by Lucinda Williams’ “Maria.” “This ride I’m on cost everything/ gotta pay to follow a dream, it sure ain’t cheap / peace of mind is mine to keep,” she sings. Keenly aware of the hard work and luck it’s taken to make it this far, “this is what I’m choosing,” Juanita says. “You get the thorns along with the roses.”
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