Laura Mustard channels her love of nature and her fierce belief in body positivity and self acceptance into music that will help you make friends with yourself. Her childhood was filled with hospital visits and medical routines at home, and she grew up making up stories in her head as a way to distract from her day-to-day medical care that easily morphed into writing songs in high school. Influenced by the poetry of Walt Whitman and Mary Oliver, singer-songwriters like Gavin DeGraw and Jason Mraz, and a healthy amount of Motown and bluegrass, Laura weaves together a fresh sound that uplifts and gets you moving.
“Will You Go Walking?” is a departure from her typical pop/Motown infused writing. This song is sparse in lyrics and lets the instrumentation of the banjo, fiddle and mandolin dance and shine. It is a folk song that mixes nature descriptions reminiscent of Mary Oliver’s poetry with the Celtic folk of the Irish countryside. It’s an outlier on Laura's new Dirty Minds & Wild Hearts EP and stands out for its simple arrangement of jaunty melodies that leads with a piano riff as Mustard sings about her favorite places: a path by the river and a trail by the railroad. She builds more imagery throughout the song while asking a new love, “Will you go walking with me?” that builds to a round of vocal parts and instrumental melodies at the end of the song. “Will You Go Walking?” also features a music video that is made from home videos across several months of Laura hiking on her favorite trails in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Tennessee. This video also features her dog, Stella as her hiking companion.
