Douglas lived in Brooklyn and played shows in Manhattan until last summer, when New York City's endless hustle and bustle persuaded her to return to her roots in Portland, Maine for a much-needed writing retreat in her oceanfront room.
"I don't think the city is most conducive for writing," Douglas said. "After having a writer's block, all of a sudden I exploded and wrote this whole album in a summer, plus others."
The retreat helped Douglas reconnect with many of the artists who informed her music, she said.
"I listened to everything that inspired me and reimmersed myself in my childhood head," Douglas said, citing the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and recent favorites Sharon Van Etten and Beach House as sources of inspiration.
All of Douglas' prior efforts, including 2011's "I Love Mahself, Yup Yup," and "The Edinburgh Tracks," and 2012's "Apollo," feature quick, mostly acoustic-guitar pop songs buttered with beautiful lyricism. "Summer Valentine" is the first record Douglas wrote on the electric guitar and recorded with a full back-up band, though she still aimed to capture her personal perspective in the songs.
"It's always worrisome when you take your kernel, your songs, to a bigger band," Douglas said. "You want the feeling you wrote in it to remain authentic. Everyone did a great job of honoring the Tica-ness' of the music while making it swell and be beautiful. I think it's leaps and bounds ahead of the other ones, the songwriting is more complex."
Douglas' longtime best friend, roommate and musical collaborator Ryan Dieringer '09, lead singer and founder of the band Double King, served as a producer while the band's producer and lead guitarist, Andrew Lappin, served as sound engineer and mixer as well as co-producer with Dieringer on the record. The rest of Double King played backup. Douglas added Kyle Morgan, a Pennsylvania-based songwriter who she had recently performed with, to round out the crew.
"Kyle kind of brought this new thing to the songs," Douglas said. "All of sudden he'd start playing slide guitar it really changed the fabric of the whole sound and it was beautiful."
Although unconventional, the group headed to a family friend's converted barn in Patterson, N.Y. for a five-day recording session in January, coinciding with the coldest week of the year.
"It was really funny, we'd go into the house part of the barn and get whiskey, it was just freezing," Douglas said. "You can hear the barn, hear the conditions in the sound of the record."
Rather than hamper the recording or musical processes, the frigid conditions seemed to bring everyone together, Dieringer said.
"For a little while, we kind of didn't notice, we thought it was normal to be seeing your breath, but then it kind of occurred to us late that Hey, this could be unhealthy,'" he said. "With all of us hunkered down in the same room, it was a journey and an extreme recording environment."
Lappin, a longtime native of cramped recording studios, said that the barn ended up providing inspiration to the musicians in ways inaccessible in big city environments.
"[The barn is] modern, but at the same time there's no one around you, you can focus on the matter at hand and live in the art you're making," Lappin said. "It's something you don't get in New York City, it's why things like destination recording is becoming more and more popular."
Lappin said that while the recording process is sometimes arduous, "Summer Valentine" went smoothly. Douglas' commitment and professionalism as a songwriter encouraged the "smooth sailing" of the five-day session, he said.
"Tica is super open to criticism, open to trying different things," Lappin said. "Sometimes you get artists who are pushovers and they won't say anything until the last minute, and you've spent a lot of time on it. Tica definitely speaks up when she feels something isn't working."
Lappin mixed "Summer Valentine" at Doctor Wu's, a Brooklyn-based recording studio, and is due out in May. A tour is scheduled for June.
On April 5, the unstoppable blues pop-rock force of Douglas and Dieringer will once again grace campus, as Douglas and Double King are scheduled to perform at Friday Night Rock. Douglas will open, playing a solo set, and may return to stage with Double King later in the evening.
"I'm looking forward to the energy in that room, there's nothing like the energy of a packed FNR show," Dieringer said.
Douglas looks forward to performing her newest set of songs for Dartmouth fans.
"A lot of my superfans have graduated, it will be really interesting," Douglas said. "I'm hoping people will be open to hearing new stuff."
Mark your calendars for Friday's show, as Douglas' true niche is in performing. She fine tuned her craft as an undergraduate, spending two terms abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland. Regardless of crowd size, Douglas said she found herself performing each evening in what she deemed "live performance boot camp."
"If there's even three people in a room who are locked in on my performance, it gives me energy," Douglas said. "I love the freedom to go with the feeling of a room at the time," Douglas said. "Live performance is where I shine."
"Summer Valentine" promises to be just as awesome as her previously catchy efforts, hopefully combining the endearing wit and "old hat" of her older songs while infusing them with even more spunk and boldness than before. A single off "Summer Valentine" will be released this week on Douglas' website.
"It's much bigger, but at the same time it doesn't go too far, it still stays within the genre where I belong," Douglas said.
