Massachusetts folk-punk duo High Tea releases second album ‘A Small Notion’

Isabella DeHerdt and Isaac Eliot, the folk-punk duo behind the band High Tea, are always singing.

“It’s probably a little obnoxious to anyone who’s not us,” DeHerdt joked in a recent interview with The Republican.

The duo first met at the Berklee College of Music summer program when they were 16 and quickly grew close. The COVID-19 pandemic struck while the two were living together in a small town in Western Massachusetts, and that provided the creative catalyst they needed to craft their first full-length album, “Hell of a Ride,” which they released in November 2020.

Since that time, the duo has released multiple EPs, including “Old Cowboy” in 2021 and “Suba Diving” in 2023. They were nominated for Best Americana Act in the 2023 New England Music Awards and performed at the Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2025. They’ve toured with artists like Heather Maloney and Raye Zaragoza, and have opened for Brandy Clark, The Whisky Treaty Roadshow, and The Oshima Brothers, among others.

They’ve received accolades from the likes of The Boston Globe, which wrote of the duo: “The band’s music has an ‘Alice in Wonderland’-like quality to it, and not just because it was named after a tea party.”

Now, DeHerdt and Eliot are gearing up to celebrate the release of their second full-length album, “A Small Notion,” on Sept. 6. Despite its name, the 11-track album is anything but small. It’s a powerhouse combination of lyrics and stories largely inspired by the duo’s own lives with high-energy instrumental arrangements.

The duo is touring in celebration of “A Small Notion,” with stops planned at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge on Sept. 18 and the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton on Oct. 30. They will be backed by their full band, so “get ready to dance,” Eliot said.

DeHerdt and Eliot spoke with The Republican prior to the release of “A Small Notion” about the album’s inspiration and their creative process. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Can you talk about the inspiration behind the stories you’ve crafted on “A Small Notion”?

DeHerdt: There is an ancestral lineage that pops up in a few different songs, like “A Small Notion,” “Shadows and Shadows” and “There Goes My Old Soul,” which is about the connection we have with our past, whether it be blood family members or chosen family members, people who are no longer here but you still feel their shadow and presence in your life. “A Small Notion” is pretty much directly about my grandfather and how it feels to lose people that were such an integral part of your growing up in your life and what space they still take up even when they’re no longer physically here.

And then we have other songs like “The Metaphysical & Technicolor End” or “Ouch, Oh Shit,” which is more about our struggles of modern-day living as 26-year-olds in the current world, where we’re like, okay, the planet’s on fire, we’re all going to be underwater, and also, I have anxiety.

Eliot: Literally bookending the album, we have “A Small Notion” and “Shadows and Shadows,” which are both very directly about the ancestral lineage that we’re experiencing right now, living in a house that your parents’ family has lived in for generations. But then, also, part of that is growing up contending with those harder feelings and not letting them all be too heavy. I love getting to explore those harder emotions within the context of sarcasm and playfulness.

DeHerdt: We also have storytelling songs like “Stray in Lee County” or “Heartbreak Kid,” which are characters we’ve created, or we’ve based on books we’ve read and are just expanding on a story we have in our minds, telling this story about a character we’ve made up.

Q. Can you share more about these characters you’ve created?

DeHerdt: So “Stray in Lee County” is based on a book called “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver. She basically wrote the modern-day version of “David Copperfield,” which is about this boy who’s growing up in the Southern Appalachia in the 1990s. I read that, and I was like, “I need to write a song about this boy.” The character is not a real person, but the story she’s telling about these folks is. I come from Franklin County, which is one of the poorest counties in the Northeast, and seeing these different farm families and the people I’ve grown up with and the stories of these farm communities are very important to me since I’m part of one.

Eliot: There’s a distinct way I think we’re all noticing, especially right now, that the institutions that are meant to be supportive are both underfunded and somewhat dysfunctional, and you get people who are inevitably trapped in loops that keep people down.

DeHerdt: And that’s what “Stray in Lee County” is about, but it’s based on the book by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s just an incredible read.

Q. What was the creative process like behind making the songs for “A Small Notion”?

DeHerdt: I write the song seeds, or the beginning of each song. Usually, I have the basic structure of the song and most of the lyrics, most of the guitar parts, and I bring them to Isaac who then expands on whatever the lyrics are that I need help with or adds the harmonies or helps with the arrangement side of things. So I basically bring the batter of the cake and then we put it in the oven together, is how I describe it.

Eliot: I think that’s accurate. [laughs] Isabella cranks out wildly good songs. We already have new songs that are so good.

Q. You collaborated with Heather Maloney, Corey Laitman and Chris Freeman for songs on this album. What was that like?

DeHerdt: We love those three musicians very dearly. We’ve worked with Heather on her stuff a lot, and we helped co-produce her latest album called “Exploding Star” and we’ve toured with her a bunch, so we were like, “of course we must ask her to lend some harmonies on one of our songs.” And then Chris Freeman I’ve known for a long time, he’s an awesome and really integral part of the music community out here in Western Massachusetts and he’s also a great banjo players – and we needed a banjo. And then Corey Laitman is a fantastic singer from the band Cloudbelly.

These are people who we really appreciate and admire, and we were really lucky that they stepped in and added some of their magic to our album.

Eliot: One hundred percent. And these three people all happen to be the chillest of vibes. It was lovely, not just because of their incredible ability, but also because hanging out felt like hanging out.

Editor’s note: Corey Laitman collaborated on “Bittersweet Evenings,” Chris Freeman collaborated on “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” and Heather Maloney collaborated on “Shadows in Shadows.”

Q. What do you hope people take away from listening to “A Small Notion?”

DeHerdt: It took me a long time to write songs that felt intimate. I would write about characters, I would write about stories, but I always felt like I was putting a wall between myself and what I was sharing with people. I think this album is the first one where I really just knocked that wall down and said, “I’m going to be really honest. I want to share how I feel. I want to share how it feels to lose people who are close to me, how it feels to grow up in a scary world.” I always say it’s about our music, but I just really hope that everybody finds something of themselves in at least one of these songs, because although we are all very different, we’re all living different lives, there are these threads through humanity that really draw us all together, whether it’s loss or birth or joy or sorrow.

Eliot: Just to build on that, just know that you’re not alone. There’s a lot of life that is really hard to talk about, and we are generally encouraged to keep emotions private. I think that we could all do with a little more public feeling.

Q. Who were your music influences working on “A Small Notion?”

DeHerdt: We have a lot of weird and different influences coming together. Isaac grew up on the Indigo Girls, I grew up on the Beatles. But we kind of bring together these different folk and punk influences, including harmonies from the Indigo Girls, or guitar from Shaky Graves. We also have some My Chemical Romance in there.

Eliot: I have been getting more and more comfortable just doing what comes naturally, and that means a lot more influences are popping up. I’m feeling a lot more Front Bottoms recently, which was definitely a coloring taste to ‘Ouch, Oh Shit,’ but really, I think that I would say our core is folk, blues and punk.

Q. What’s the future looking like for High Tea? Is there more music in the pipeline?

DeHerdt: We can’t stop. When you live together, you’re just like, ‘hey, you want to sing something?’ And then suddenly you write a new song. But we’re also trying to really sit with [this album] and be excited about it coming out and really give it the time it deserves.

For more information on High Tea, to stay up to date with their latest music, and to purchase tickets for one of their tour stops, visit the duo’s official website at www.highteaband.com