Album reignites creativity for young artist

Ether and Bone released by indie folk singer-songwriter Niikah Hatfield

By Elizabeth Fust

After catching a glimpse of the album cover, many may hesitate and think, “I know that face.” She certainly has been involved in the Marquette community her entire life. The name that goes with the face is Niikah Hatfield, creative extraordinaire. You may recognize her from Niik Creative Co (her pottery studio), from the Seed and Spores booth at the farmer’s market (her family’s farm), from Marquette Fringe events (for which she is the Performance Director), or from her first album. From that wealth of experience comes a treasure trove of creativity, her recently released Ether and Bone the latest gem to emerge.

“I’m an artist of many forms –– or a creative. I go between both terms...” Hatfield said in introducing herself and her backstory. “Identifying myself as an artist is sometimes hard, but yeah, I love creating things and interacting with the world through a creative lens.”

Hatfield’s story starts in Marquette. She was born and raised just outside of town. She studied ceramics and creative writing at Northern Michigan University and graduated in 2020. While actively creating through ceramics, dance and writing, her debut album Existence was released in 2018. It was a solo album –– just her vocals, her guitar, and her lyrics and songs. Now Ether and Bone has been created as a collaborative project. The team started with Myles Walimaa, who recorded Existence, and without whom the recently released Ether and Bone wouldn’t have been possible.

“He reached out and he’s like, ‘we should do album number two.’ And so it was a very playful beginning and I was like, ‘yes, I have enough songs ready.’ I knew I would record another album at some point,” Hatfield said.

That point was reached in 2020. The process of production took place over the last two years and the ensuing album was released earlier this year. Ether and Bone is an indie folk singer/songwriter, or alternative indie, album. The eight featured songs were all written over the course of three years, from 2019 to when the album was produced in 2021.

“It’s a very personal, intimate album. It carries a lot of just really potent moments in these songs over, you know, a period of time from when I was 19 to 22,” said Hatfield, who is now 24.

The timeline of Hatfield’s song-creating process spans personal events and growth in her own life, including the Covid-19 pandemic and unrest during that time. The second track of the album, Burn, was influenced by the 2020 riots in Minneapolis.

“I didn’t really realize until I wrote the song that it was also about that because I’d been hearing all of this in the news and this identity that I thought of our culture was literally burning before my eyes,” she said.

From Road to Ether and In Flesh and Bone (two tracks that lend their names to the album title), and all the other songs on the album, Hatfield drew on experiences and emotions of the last handful of years.

“I was kind of at the point this fall where I’m like, what am I trying to say to the world? And I was thinking about that and then I was listening to the album, hearing my own voice and realizing I had to release my voice out into the world. It was kind of this time capsule that I had to also give voice to these experiences. I think that was the biggest part, because they touch on tender places in my life,” she said. “It’s a very vulnerable thing to share them with the world, and I kind of had to come to terms with all of that, and in that process realized that the voice I was looking for was my own. It wasn’t some external thing that I was going to find, it was just me coming to terms with the words I had written and the stories I had to share. Especially your young twenties are a tender time and so to give them a place at the table and say that they’re worthy of being heard and seen, and listened to, it’s just a very real process.”

It wasn’t a process she had to undergo alone. While her first album was solo, Hatfield puts great importance on the team that made Ether and Bone what it is. With Myles Walimaa heading the campaign to produce the album, a collective of creatives met to make it happen. The band consisted of Noah Pickett (a brilliant drummer and first-person Hatfield thought of for the band), Gretchen McKenzie (a friend from childhood and incredible bassist), and Dylan Trost (who contributed both guitar and harmonies, and whom Hatfield said she was incredibly lucky to have in her band). Walimaa was the production wizard and Ryan Staples provided sound mastering.

It all came together in a very short period of time. The group practiced for a month and recorded everything within a week.

“It was a very surrendered process, in a way, of I brought the songs to these amazing musicians and it was just a very fun process of all pulling out different threads and creating something that was unique to the musicians in the room,” Hatfield said.

Collaborative, intimate, giving a voice to emotions and creatives - the contents of the album, and the creation of it, speak to a deeper image captured in its title.

“It also speaks to the spectrum of human experience that I’m interested in,” Hatfield said. “The ether is this very nostalgic, airy, textural place, very emotional. And then all the way down to, you know, this very physical experience of being a human in a body.”

She went on to say that Ether and Bone is also a nod to an artist who inspired her, Alela Diane, and her song Ether in Wood. Inspiration, collaboration and finally: creation.

“Since this album has come out .

. . I’ve been writing songs again. That’s also a really fun part of this creative process, really interacting with this energy and working with songs that are from a previous period of my life. . . A lot can change in two years, and so to still be like, ‘I want to release it.’ And also I had to rebuild a relationship with this album, with the songs and the stories behind these songs, the relationships that they kind of allude to in those periods of my life, and in that process of reclaiming my connection to them and myself, I’ve also been able to open up my creativity again and start songwriting,” Hatfield said.

Two albums out, and a surge of inspiration to write and return once more to song, so what comes next? There will be a third album, Hatfield reassured. In fact, it already has a name - but you’ll have to wait to find out what it is.

People will continue to see Hatfield out and about in Marquette, and they’ll hear her too. No official dates right now, but she will be performing live.

Hatfield’s albums can be heard on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Bandcamp, and can purchased on her website and at Niik Creative Co on Presque Isle in Marquette. To stay up to date on Hatfield’s musical and other creative pursuits, follow her at @niikahhatfield on Facebook and @ novanoir.music on Instagram.

Elizabeth Fust has a bachelors in writing from NMU. Although not a native Yooper, she refuses to leave the place. She is a self-published children’s book author and frequent short story contributor to the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association’s annual U.P. Reader. She has countless unfinished novels and procrastinates on those masterpieces by learning about the wonders of the U.P., meeting fantastic Yoopers and— on occasion—writing it all down for Marquette Monthly. Follow Elizabeth’s writing on Facebook and Instagram at Elizabeth Fust Books.