Interview: Taylor Hall celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month with new EP 'Cheaper Than Therapy'

May is Mental Health Awareness Month; that’s why the Indianapolis-native, musician and activist Taylor Hall chose the month of May to release her latest collection of songs "Cheaper Than Therapy."

During a recent conversation with WFYI’s Kyle Long, Hall said she hopes the project will help to destigmatize mental health, and provide her fans with a message of hope.

This transcript has been edited for style and clarity.

Kyle Long: You're releasing this project during Mental Health Awareness Month. There's a tie in there, correct? Tell me what that is.

Taylor Hall: So for me, music has been my outlet for my mental health. My mom is a therapist, and my dad does music; he's a singer-songwriter. So music has always been my therapy and my journal.

So for my mental health, I've written songs and released them, and with my biggest song, “What I Choose," I had so many people reach out about how it's impacted their lives, their mental health and what they were going through. So I thought tying in positive messaging during Mental Health Awareness Month would make sense.

Long: How has music helped you cope with these issues?

Hall: It's gotten me through a lot of dark periods in my life. I moved to L.A. when I was a fresh 21 years old, and I had never really been on my own. I went to college, but I went to college here in Indiana, so it wasn't too far. But going to L.A. by myself, I was away from all of my family, all my friends, everything that I've ever known.

I don't want to quote my own song lyrics, but, I had days where I was down and had a hard time getting up in the morning, wanting to go out or wanting to just make it through the day. Songwriting was a thing that got me out of the house. I was going to the studio at least once or twice a day and writing about what I was going through to get myself out of those dark pits, whether it be adulting, being alone, relationships, all of those things.

Long: Is there a song on the EP that really embodies and encompasses this theme?

Hall: I would say "Silver Line" is the song that really embodies that because the messaging is about finding light, that silver line: the hope that I can get through this one more time. I played that song on repeat when I was going through struggles and things throughout my life. That song has really gotten me through dark patches.

Long: What do you hope people take away from this EP, not just musically, but in relationship to the theme? What do you hope this gives listeners in their lives?

Hall: I hope that it shows people that there's other outlets, like, if you can't afford therapy, or you can't afford to talk to someone, that's really the theme of Cheaper Than Therapy, so many people don't have access to therapy or to resources to better their mental health. So you can use different outlets to express what you're going through.

Also, the lyrical theme of a lot of my songs is like, keep going, keep pushing. You will get through this, you will get to the light, you will get to the other side. If you're battling depression or battling internal voices in your head, you will get through it, so keep going. That's the that's the main message, keep going, you got this.