Katherine Bergeron, one half of Chalumeau, walks. She walks long, contemplative routes through Rhode Island, and somewhere in the rhythm of her footsteps, melodies emerge. Words find their place alongside those melodies, harmonies suggest themselves, and by the time she returns home, another piece of Chalumeau’s debut album “Blue” has taken shape.
This pedestrian approach to songwriting—literally—represents something refreshingly analog in our digital age. While most contemporary artists craft songs in front of screens, Bergeron discovered her most fertile creative period came from disconnecting entirely. Over five months in 2024, eight of the album’s ten tracks materialized during these walks, each one arriving as a complete emotional package waiting to be refined.
The creative partnership between Bergeron and collaborator Butch Rovan reveals how two distinct artistic sensibilities can enhance rather than compete with each other. Where Bergeron brings the initial spark—those melody-and-lyric combinations born from movement—Rovan provides the critical ear and collaborative spirit that helps songs realize their full potential. His encouragement during the drafting process, playing alongside works-in-progress, created space for ideas to breathe and develop organically.
Their return to Rhode Island proved crucial to this creative flowering. There’s something about place that catalyzed their songwriting—perhaps the familiarity of home base, or the specific landscape that Bergeron traversed during her walks. The five-month period of intense creativity suggests that environment and routine can be just as important as inspiration when it comes to sustained artistic output.
The duo’s decision to revive two older Rovan compositions—”My Hands Are Tied” and “You Can Count on Me“—demonstrates how creative partnerships can breathe new life into existing material. These songs, written years earlier, found their proper context within the larger narrative arc of BLUE, showing how timing and collaboration can transform previous work into something entirely fresh.
Their five-week intensive recording period represents a fascinating collision between preparation and discovery. After months of phone recordings and home refinements, the studio became a space for deeper exploration. Bergeron describes how the recording process itself became a form of composition, with songs revealing additional layers of meaning through the act of performance and layering.
This approach challenges the typical Nashville or Los Angeles model of professional songwriting. Instead of rooms full of writers chasing commercial hooks, Chalumeau found their songs through solitude, movement, and extended collaboration. The fact that they handled every aspect of production themselves—from initial recording through final mastering—meant that their artistic vision remained unfiltered by outside commercial pressures.
The single release strategy, dropping eight tracks over nine months before the full album, created an extended conversation with their growing audience. Each release became an opportunity to gauge response and build anticipation, while the songs existed as individual statements before finding their place in the larger album narrative.
What emerges from this creative process is a model for artistic collaboration that prioritizes depth over speed, intuition over market research. Chalumeau‘s approach suggests that the best songs might still come from the most fundamental human activities—walking, thinking, listening, and responding to each other with patience and attention.