On their forthcoming album Blue, Chalumeau — made up of vocalist and lyricist Katherine Bergeron and guitarist-composer Butch Rovan—peel back layers of personal memory, longing, and emotional transformation. The duo’s latest single, “My Hands Are Tied,” stands out not just for its raw vulnerability but for the deeply collaborative process behind its reinvention.
Originally written at the start of their creative and romantic journey, the track resurfaces now with renewed urgency, shaped by years of lived experience, evolving emotions, and a shift in musical language. In this conversation, Chalumeau reflects on the song’s intimate history, its reinvention as a guitar-driven anthem, and the emotional terrain that defines Blue—a record they describe, quite fittingly, as a “labor of love.”
When you listen back now, what emotions does “My Hands Are Tied” stir in you?
Well, all the songs on our new album, ‘BLUE,’ are personal because they are about real-life stories and real people. But it’s also true that, as the album unfolds, the tracks become more open and unguarded. The final two singles we released—“My Hands Are Tied” and the title track “Blue” (which we just released last week)—are perhaps the most vulnerable in this respect. Both speak about universal experiences, but they are also, in quite direct ways, referring to situations in our own lives.
The song was originally written years ago—how has its meaning evolved for you both over time?
Yes, “My Hands Are Tied” has a long history. Butch actually wrote the first version of the song at the very beginning of our friendship, at a time when he was not, in fact, free to pursue a new relationship. Those circumstances later changed, and the song, in retrospect, became about us. We often played it together as a piano ballad, and I thought about that as I was writing the new songs for this album.
The theme of loving something or someone you’re not allowed to love resonated with the ideas in the album, and Butch and I both agreed that it would be good to take up the song again in this new context. So I rewrote some of the old lyrics, added a bridge, and then Butch took the original setting and transformed the whole thing from a piano ballad into a full-out guitar anthem. The new version takes the wistful resignation of the original and ratchets up the intensity to produce a very different emotional impact.
The guitar solo at the end feels like an emotional release. Was that a conscious contrast to the lyrical restraint?
You’re right about the ending. I would say it was a conscious compositional decision to use the coda to prolong the song’s emotional curve. We both felt that the song, in its new incarnation, didn’t feel quite finished when it got to the end. The guitar setting ramped up the energy, and it needed something more. So, instead of simply returning to the head motif to conclude the song, as we used to do, Butch took it one step further and layered on an impassioned final guitar solo, which seems to express in music all the feelings—of regret, frustration, and longing—that the song itself couldn’t, or wouldn’t, express in words.
What was it like to revisit an old song and reshape it during such a different chapter in your lives?
Whenever you get into the final stages of mixing, mastering, and producing, you are essentially “revisiting” a track. You find new possibilities within the sound, which ultimately have an effect on the meaning. In the case of “My Hands Are Tied,” there were also new words—and even a bridge—that shifted the perspective and made the message more pointed. I think of each of these interventions as a different act of interpretation, where you keep trying to get to the heart of the matter. In the case of “My Hands Are Tied,” the process was, for me, less like retreading familiar ground than getting to see the song in a whole new light.
The video adds layers of memory and imagery. What did you want to express through it?
Yes, when you create a video, you revisit the song with the same kind of interpretive intent: to better understand what it’s trying to say. With “My Hands Are Tied,” the effort was to depict the central feeling of the song—of a love you were never supposed to have. We tried to do this through a montage of contrasting scenes: A woman looks out the window of a train, thinking about a place she has left behind; blurry black-and-white images, like home movies, reflect the warmth of past happiness, while the starker vision of a home, now abandoned, haunts her in the present.
Butch and I both make appearances, as does a train station in Rhode Island that holds particular resonance for us, but the video is really meant to be for anyone who has ever left, or continued to long for, something they should never have desired in the first place.
What’s the story behind the name “Chalumeau”? Does it represent something musically or personally?
Well, the French word “chalumeau” has a couple of different meanings, which resonate both personally and musically for us. As a musical term, it refers to the lowest and darkest register of the clarinet, which is not unlike the timbre of my own dark singing voice. In the vernacular, it means “blowtorch,” which I rather like, because it’s how I think about the lyrics of BLUE—especially the angrier songs—with their scorching candor. And then there is one more fun fact: the flame of a chalumeau, burning at 3000°F, is blue.
Do you think being independent artists—writing, producing, and mixing everything yourselves—makes you connect to your songs more deeply?
Absolutely. As I was saying earlier, each stage of the process, from writing to performing to recording to mixing to mastering to video creation, offers an opportunity to think about—and connect to—what you have made in new and sometimes surprising ways. I can remember, when working on one of the early songs for BLUE, how its real meaning didn’t actually become clear until we were finishing the lyric video . . . That Butch and I are both doing all of this work together is important, too, as we bring our different ways of hearing and listening, and interpreting to the table at every turn.
What’s the emotional thread that ties all the songs on your upcoming album, Blue, together, in your view?
The first song, called “Homecoming,” will be released in August with the full album. It’s about believing you have found a home in love, only to realize that it wasn’t your home, after all. The song is a ballad that sets the stage—like a first act—for a whole story of love, betrayal, loss, and reconciliation that unfolds across the 10 tracks.
If you could describe the upcoming album Blue in just three words, what would they be?
Labor. Of. Love. Quite literally.
Follow Chalumeau on Instagram to stay updated on their intimate, genre-bending journey through Blue and beyond.
