Folk Singer Haley Heynderickx Alternates Between Vulnerability And Strength

Folk singer and indie rocker Haley Heynderickx is nearing the end of an extensive, 30-date tour, about a third of them opening for Ani DiFranco, and the rest comprising her first-ever headlining club tour. It’s taken the Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter-guitarist over to the U.K. and now back to the U.S., and to Cambridge on Monday, June 18 where she and her band will play the Sinclair.

Heynderickx, who recorded an EP, “Fish Eyes,” in 2016, is touring in support of her acclaimed first album, “I Need to Start a Garden.”

“I’m doing my best to enjoy each day, the positivity,” Heynderickx says, on her cell phone en route to a Chicago gig. “I haven’t been in my home in Portland since March 1 and have been on the road since then. It’s been three months and psychologically, very twist-and-turny. I’m trying to go day-by-day and have as much energy to pour into the show no matter how tired I am from all the traveling.”

Before we go much further, her surname: "It’s spelled very strangely, but I’m stuck with it. It makes me laugh because it’s pronounced ‘Hendrix,’ just like Jimi Hendrix" — a fellow Portlandian — "and having a funny last name gives allusions to rock music and that also makes me laugh."

Right now, Heynderickx is riding a huge wave of positive press with “I Need to Start a Garden.” NPR Music calls her “already an utterly distinct and wonderfully nervy, idiosyncratic presence.” Paste Magazine writes that she has “quickly established herself as one of music’s most captivating new voices” and Stereogum tops ‘em all by declaring Heynderickx’s debut album "one of the most intriguing and immersive debuts of the year."

Is she, indeed, flying high?

“I feel like a balloon stuck in the sky with extra-long cord, and feel this kind of sadness,” she says. “Floating away from whatever child’s hand that’s holding it.” Heynderickx pauses and laughs slightly. “That’s my really bad metaphor.”

Actually, it’s not really that bad and Heynderickx is a big fan of metaphors. The title of her album, “I Need to Start a Garden,” doubles as a key line from the first song, the semi-irreverent, doo-wop-inflected “Oom Sha La La.” It’s been interpreted as her need to make music, to create, to bring what she made in her bedroom to the recording studio.

Heynderickx faced a series of problems after making her EP in her attempts to follow up. You’ll never hear anyone sing “I need to start a garden!” with such fury. It’s a line she repeats, building slowly from a coo to a scream.

“The first EP was oddly easy-peasy,” Heynderickx says, “despite getting in a car accident and having jury duty through that whole time period. Doing the album was completely different from the EP. It took three different tries.”

Of the album title and line in the song, she says, “It kind of slipped out and the meaning interests me. Metaphors interest me a lot and right now that title means more to me in terms of taking care of one’s mental health, creating a really sustainable system for day-to-day life rather than songwriting. Because unfortunately, ironically, touring doesn’t allow for a lot of opportunities for making music, just sharing what I’ve got right now.”

Heynderickx, who’s in her mid-20s, is enjoying the buzz, but she’s wary about revealing too much about herself and qualified in her appreciation of it. “It makes me feel a little self-conscious,” she says, of the critical praise. “I understand that writers want to find a good hook, something interesting to share, but I’m pretty shy about talking about stuff outside the musical realm. I’m pretty boring outside of all of that. I hope the music is enough. My own story I don’t think is as shiny as the songs.”

Part of that thinking, she implies, may come from her religious upbringing. “My mother comes from a Filipino Catholic family and my dad comes from another small town in Oregon, another kind of Catholicism. So, two different worlds of Catholicism. Where I stand today, I try to keep that ambiguous. I think that’s part of the Catholic tradition, you keep your secrets to keep everyone happy.”

The album begins with a spare, acoustic song, “No Face.” Heynderickx sings from the viewpoint of a woman whose lover has left, leaving her tortured, mulling exactly what about her body (hair, skin, hips) is so wrong.

The stop-motion video for the song, Heynderickx has said, stemmed from the idea of a character in animator Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Spirited Away.” In press notes accompanying the album, director Evan James Atwood said, "Haley and I wanted a silhouette for simplicity to complement the song. Shooting it surrounded by these plants, the palo santo, and the energy, it came together naturally in one take. We both loved how we tapped into the heart of the song itself -- capturing the emotion so strongly."

Make no mistake, Heynderickx, like her touring pal DiFranco, comes from strong acoustic roots — delicate finger-picking on acoustic guitar and breathy, intimate vocalizing. She can be angry or wry; she can look inward or lash outward, she can belt or warble. She pivots between vulnerability with strength and seems emotionally naked.

One of Heynderickx’s heroes is the late country folksinger Townes Van Zandt, noted for his mournful, evocative music. She covers two of his songs in concert, “Rex’s Blues” and “If I Needed You.” “So many emotions,” she says of Van Zandt’s music. “I just feel so much honesty, the story holding hands with the music. And even if you don’t know what he’s talking about you’re going to feel it through this melody.”

And, yet, Heynderickx can get wild, as evidenced by the nearly eight-minute, ebb-and-flow of “Worth It,” where she see-saws between self-doubt and confidence. “Worth It” begins quietly with Heynderickx singing over soft electric guitar notes and then it mutates into something of a Dresden Dolls-like storm: “Soon you’ll have a box and you can put me inside/ Put me in a box, boy/ Put me in a box, boy and call me anything you want.” In the song, she muses, “Maybe I, maybe I’ve maybe I’ve been selfish/ Maybe I, maybe I’ve been selfless/ Maybe I, maybe I’ve been worthless/ Maybe I, maybe I’ve maybe I’ve been worth it.”

Yes, it rocks.

As to embracing her rock side, Heynderickx says, “I wish I could remember the artist who had this excellent quote, but he said, ‘How did we all become indie rock artists when a lot of us started on acoustic guitar?’ And we were all joking that maybe we think it’s more exciting for people for it to be louder. But I think my perspective on it is I get lonely and playing music with my friends is more entertaining than being alone all the time.”

Heynderickx will be joined by her Portland friends, bassist-keyboardist Lily Breshears, trombonist Denzel Mendoza and drummer Phillip Rogers. All contribute backing vocals.

“You can have a lot of self-doubt on a tour,” Heynderickx says, “especially when your body’s hurting. I’m practicing new levels of openness and trying to remain calm playing the same songs over and over. Because I know for some people they’re new and the people who come out to shows, the gift they’ve given me is just to be able to put some of those words into practice, believing in myself and continuing and trying not to let self-doubt follow me.”

Opening up for DiFranco and doing meet-and-greets after the shows were eye-opening. “People just greeting me with so much love it just makes me feel that I should continue,” says Heynderickx. “Someone told me their 5-year-old likes to sing ‘Oom Sha La La’ to go to sleep at night. And a mother-daughter duo, an 8-year old-girl who snuck into the show with her mom just to say she liked my music and my shoes and then ran away. It’s moments like that that make everything worth it. [I think] ‘Holy moly, these songs are meant to be shared outside my bedroom. I should trust my gut.’ ”

It was a lot of work getting that first album out. As to what’s next creatively, Heynderickx avers, “I try not to think about this stuff, but I’m worried that [talking about it] will curse me and I’ll never write music like this again. I’m hoping I can write something like this album again. Maybe. But we get so lost in the future we can’t enjoy the day-to-day. I’m just going to celebrate it while I can and hope I can do something similar and as interesting.”

Haley Heynderickx performs at The Sinclair on Monday, June 18.