Claire Hawkins brings new life to the term troubadour as a singer,songwriter and travel vlogger.
Her genre-defying folk-pop music reflects the varied sounds and cultures that she was exposed to as a child growing up in New York City. She developed a love of language at a young age, thanks to her polyglot parents who spent much of their 20s living in Russia and France. Stories of their adventures in other parts of the world sparked Hawkins’ desire to explore far away places.
After releasing her debut EP Even These Words in 2017, Claire Hawkins had the opportunity to spend a year studying music and French language in Europe. While living in Berlin and Paris, she perfected the art of budget travel and visited any city with a hostel she could afford. It was this time abroad that inspired her passion for learning about other cultures through the lens of music.
In November of 2019, Claire Hawkins released Foreign Voice, a collection of songs centered around the theme of travel. To celebrate the release of this EP, Claire Hawkins created the Foreign Voices Travelers Tour. In this innovative brand of touring, she performed in hostels instead of traditional venues, aiming to channel the same kind of special connections she made while traveling as a student. On this tour, she performed in the US, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, the UK, and Slovakia. She documented her unique experiences on tour with travel videos which she shared on her YouTube channel.
In addition to offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at her tour with these music-focused travel vlogs, Claire Hawkins also started an internationally focused interview series titled Foreign Voices. In this series, she explored different music scenes around the world by speaking with local artists about their experiences. She has continued sharing her adventures abroad on her YouTube channel, using music from local artists in each city she visits as the soundtrack to her videos.
When the Foreign Voices Travelers Tour was unfortunately cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Claire Hawkins remained in Ireland, where she wrote and recorded her latest single ‘Small Doses.’ Working again with local Irish filmmaker Florence Bradish, she shot a music video for the song, which is available on her YouTube channel.
Claire Hawkins has always believed that music and travel are two of the best ways to bring people together, and her work has proved that to be true.
The residence project:
Her goal is to form connections and build community across the cultural barriers that divide us. She focused on writing a collection of songs centered around the theme of connection to lay the foundation for a concept album. In addition to focusing on songwriting, she used this time to engage with the local community with live performances as well as a video series sharing her experience as the artist-in-residence.