Baby Velvet celebrates debut album ‘Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else’ by sharing her tattoo tour diary
We pick the hottest new acts so you can tell your friends you heard them first. Meet singer-songwriter Baby Velvet on her debut solo album 'Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else'
Baby Velvet is delivering one heck of a sparkling, rhinestone-encrusted, emotional gut-punch on her debut solo album Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else.
You may know singer-songwriter Hannah Croft from the years she has spent as one quarter of indie-folk group All Our Exes Live In Texas. Touring the world together, the band’s debut When We Fall reached #6 on the ARIA charts, won an ARIA for Best Blues and Roots Album, they also supported the Backstreet Boys, sung on Kesha’s Grammy-nominated album Rainbow, and travelled across the USA with Midnight Oil.
But when the pandemic hit, following an almost-decade of non-stop touring, All Our Exes had to hit pause, and that opened up a new opportunity.
Now, with her new solo project Baby Velvet, Croft is turning her creative focus inwards and stepping out on her own.
We were first introduced to Baby Velvet in 2021 with debut single ‘Call Me’. Bounding in a blaze of vintage sequinned glory and ‘60s girl group production, the track – reflecting on those stretches of time where your mental health needs to you tap out for a while – was the perfect introduction for what was to come.
Halfway through 2022, and we have Baby Velvet’s debut record – the gorgeous Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else. Across its 10 tracks, Croft reflects on the complexities of love and the ache of love lost, navigating life, family, and adulthood, and everything that comes with it.
The record is an honest and open inward reflection, of her heartbreaks and repeated mistakes, self-doubt, and mental health. But throughout its journey, despite the album’s vulnerability and emotional weight, there is also an unmistakable thread of hope and resilience in every soaring harmony and heart-wrenching beat.
While travelling some people collect postcards or fridge magnets, for Hannah Croft, her favourite tour souvenirs are the tattoos on her body – each representing a different place, time, person, or memory.
To celebrate the release of her debut album Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else, Baby Velvet (Hannah Croft) shares with us her tattoo tour diary.
Check out Please Don’t Be In Love With Someone Else by Baby Velvet
Baby Velvet takes us through her tattoo tour diary:
I got this moon in San Francisco on the last night of our American tour supporting Midnight Oil. It was the most amazing tour to get to be on, our first tour of the States, getting to support the legends that are Midnight Oil, so after the show Georgia and I got late night tattoos. The band was next door having drinks and we popped out to a very loud heavy metal type studio and a very unimpressed 50-something-year-old-man tattooed a moon on my arm.This is my favourite tattoo I have. I got it in Los Angeles by the artist Tati Compton. It is totally hand-poked and the artist did it in about 20 mins, she was so fast and amazing at her craft. I love having a butt on my arm and for her to be the goddess I carry around with me. Instagram: @taticomptonMy Scorpion tattooed by Melbourne tattooist Lucy Waldron. I met Lucy through my ex boyfriend and spent most of Melbourne’s lockdown drinking/singing/hanging out with her (and her beautiful dogs) and as soon as we were allowed out of lockdown we went to her studio and did my Scorpion. Scorpions mean so much to me and are a real symbol of Baby Velvet. When I am full of anxiety they are in my dreams telling me to not pass go. Instagram: @lucyctattoosExes performed at Nashville’s Americana festival, while watching one of my FAVOURITE bands play (The Wild Reeds), I met Casey Jane at backyard house concert. She had set up a trestle table, a jar you put your cash in, and a stick and poke set up. Casey did my Evil Eye and dots on my hands – the evil eye is a symbol my grandma had in her house growing up and wore a necklace with the eye on it she bought in Greece – this too protects me. Instagram: @caseyjaneWhat feels like a million years ago now, I was the Tour Manager for Gin Wigmore in Singapore with her band. After the very last night we convinced a tattoo studio to stay open and got these two tattoos – it was such a wonderful experience working with Gin who is such a fierce wonderful powerhouse and felt like a real GRL PWR moment!I bought a tattoo gun from Ebay one night and began to try and teach myself how to do it. I took it on tour, when Exes were playing Bellingen Music Festival, and one night in the back of a hairdressers I tattooed all the girls + myself this little Exes jacket. It was truly such a bonding experience for the band and I love my lil Exies girl gang bomber jacket.When I lived in Sydney I had this amazing sharehouse on Ridge St in Surry Hills – for some reason every night someone would hide this two litre can of Pear Juice (unopened) in someone’s bed (there were six housemates). The pear juice can got passed around from bedroom to bedroom for years! When Exes were nominated for an ARIA we truly believed we wouldn’t win in and when I arrived home that night my housemates had turned the Pear Juice can into a Ridge Street ARIA for me which I love probably even more than the actual ARIA due to the sentimental value. When we were doing a show in San Francisco my friend Ian tattooed it on me after soundcheck but before the show. Instagram: Ian ReynoldMy bestie Jem Taylor bought a tattoo gun around the same time as me, but while I am still doing prison tattoos Jem is a true professional now – she did this beautiful shell on my arm in her Sydney Beach apartment (Pearl Palace) and it’s a good symbol of my link to her. Instagram: @tattsbyjemThis is the tattoo that makes me laugh the most. When I moved back to Melbourne, we had a housewarming party and I sat on the ground and tattooed the party guests (do not recommend this to anyone). My best childhood friend Pippa came and let me write my name on her back. At about 4 in the morning I convinced her to write her name on my back – she was convinced she wouldn’t be able to, but I was telling her to do it. What you see in this photo is the strange shape Pippa made before putting the gun down telling me she would pay to have it removed. Later that week I got a tattoo artist to write her name underneath it – to me it’s a little artwork signed by Pippa and I bloody love it.This tattoo I got on my first European trip in Berlin. I was obsessed with Shakey Graves and going to get him tattooed on my arm, ready to do it the tattoo artist asked me why I would get a man tattooed on my body and I thought…yeah! Why would I do that?! So instead I told her to do whatever she wanted and she did these beautiful hands. Instagram: @daisydoestattoos
