Abbie Morin Reconciles With Past Selves on ‘Former You’

Abbie Morin is a rock star. The Burlington singer-songwriter ticks all of the boxes: unfettered charisma and flair, extensive touring and high-profile gigs, exceptional instrumental skills, and, most of all, a distinct musical voice and sharp point of view that ties everything together. When Morin’s band, Hammydown, played to a packed house at Radio Bean’s monthly Queer Takeover in late May, kinetic energy flowed palpably from the stage into the sweaty, boisterous crowd.

Despite momentum from that show and others like it in the past few years, Morin, who is transgender, announced last year on social media that they are no longer pursuing the dream of a professional music career, which they had been working toward for nearly a decade.

“My values and my goals have really changed,” the 35-year-old explained in an interview with Seven Days. “I think there’s an alternate universe where I kept plowing along and tried to go viral. I’m kind of funny. I think I could go viral.”

But in order to go viral, Morin would need to fully commit to a “career in marketing,” as they put it, meaning distilling their art into TikToks to gain traction and putting their all into the vacuousness of algorithms and blue check marks.

However, Morin is not shelving Hammydown and will use technology to promote the project; it just isn’t where they’re going to put their full energy. That’s reserved for their burgeoning teaching career at the Sustainability Academy, a magnet elementary school in Burlington’s Old North End. In the coming school year, Morin will serve as the academy’s interim music teacher after several years as its in-house substitute teacher.

“I got the opportunity to meet and get to know every student,” Morin said. “I fell in love with it.”

Morin’s pivot to education reinvigorated their love of music, the arts and community-mindedness. And, in some ways, they’re more in touch with Hammydown than ever. In fact, they’re finally releasing Former You, their band’s long-gestating first proper LP, which has been in the works for years. Now that they have a clearer sense of where their life is headed, they feel ready to release it.

The title track, a thick-cut grungy banger, hit streamers this week, and a preorder album link goes live on Saturday, August 2. (Folks who opt for an early purchase may find themselves well ahead of the curve by the time the album is released in full on Friday, October 3 — wink, wink.)

Morin grew up in Laconia, N.H., and has lived in Burlington since 2013. Known for their friendly demeanor and signature mullet, they’ve become well known in the local scene and have organized large-scale events such as the Wallflower Collective’s Big Gay Block Party and Highlight’s Big Gay New Year.

Veronica Stella Russell, another local trans artist, lead organizer of Queer Takeover and front person of punk band Rangus, said Morin has been an “inspiration and mentor,” both as a musician and a community leader.

“Abbie really inspires me to be onstage and be free and be myself,” she said by phone.

Self-acceptance is a loose theme on Former You.

“It’s all about just having empathy for the past versions of yourself,” Morin explained. As a person moves from one phase of their life to the next, Morin continued, they “collect all these souvenirs” that they take with them to the next phase.

“Some of the joy and some of the grief,” they said. “And the rest kind of fades away.”

Touching on ’90s grunge, peak 2010s indie-dance, Phil Spector Wall-of-Sound maximalism and classic pop sensibilities all around, Former You explores Morin’s ever-changing experience. It refers to their physical transformation as a trans person, the language that goes with it and their realization that there are many ways to be fulfilled.

Though labels and industry folks have been interested in fostering Hammydown, things never quite aligned the way Morin would have needed to survive, let alone thrive.

Recently, they were offered an opening slot on tour with a fairly prominent mid-level artist. But in order to break even, they would have had to sell $600 worth of merch every night of the tour, not to mention covering the exorbitant up-front cost of materials.

“Everyone’s saying, ‘This is the opportunity of a lifetime. You gotta spend money to make money, but you’ll have all these fans at the end,'” Morin said. “My people in the industry are like, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re basically saying your career is over.'”

Morin couldn’t square the opportunity with the financial, mental and physical toll, nor the incalculable risk it posed. What if people didn’t buy anything? What if their tour van got robbed? The stress and pressure led to what Morin referred to as a “mental breakdown.”

While figuring out their life trajectory, they worked sporadically on Former You. Morin’s main collaborator is Caroline Rose, a former Burlington artist now based in Los Angeles. They’re also Morin’s best friend.

Morin was a longtime member of Rose’s band, and Hammydown also sometimes served as Rose’s opener (though usually not at the same shows). The two were touring Rose’s third album, Superstar, in March 2020 when COVID-19 shut down the entertainment industry. The sudden jolt to the status quo inspired the pair to finally start recording what would become Former You, with Rose serving as producer.

At the height of the pandemic, the two retreated to Rose’s primitive family cabin in Maine to “pod up,” Morin said. On several trips, plus countless sessions in other cities across the country, the two recorded the album bit by bit, slowly chipping away at its 10 cuts.

“Some of them were just fragments of songs,” Rose recalled by phone. “I’m really proud of what we made. It sounds awesome. I feel like it was a testament to this really bizarre time.”

Morin and Rose grappled with the same frustrations with the music industry. Some of those are addressed on Rose’s 2025 album, year of the slug, which does not appear on streaming services and was only available as a digital download or limited edition vinyl record.

“I’m not a McDonald’s hamburger,” Rose said in its liner notes, a parallel to Morin’s rejection of a career in “marketing.”

Former You is the second release from Slings + Arrows, a boutique consulting operation that specializes in artist and tour management and event production. Led by seasoned music biz pro Mark Balderston, who is Rose’s former manager and a close friend of Morin’s, Slings + Arrows is not an official record label, but Balderston makes exceptions for special projects.

Fully aware of the music industry’s “irreparable, broken systems that don’t support people with unconventional goals,” Balderston said he was excited to help launch the album.

“The thing that makes me enjoy putting on a concert or putting out a record is the connection that it creates between people and the artists,” Balderston said.

The final push to release Former You was a tragic one. In March, just days after Morin’s 35th birthday, their father, Mark, died unexpectedly at 67.

“He had been kind of losing his spice over the last couple of years,” Morin said.

Morin’s father was a “bad boy,” they said. He rode a Harley-Davidson, on the back of which Morin did “a lot of good thinking” over the years. Though their father didn’t like doctors or talking about his health, he wasn’t afraid to talk about death.

“My dad made me very aware that he was gonna die someday,” Morin recalled. “I remember him telling me he wanted [Procol Harum’s] ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ played at his funeral when I was, like, 8 years old.”

Morin said their father’s death was a sign that there was no more time to sit on the record. A fitting tribute, Former You comes out on what would have been Mark’s 68th birthday. Though it wasn’t yet fully mastered, the album made its way to Mark’s ears.

“He loved it,” Morin said. “I think he listened to it every day.”

Morin is headed into the new school year with high spirits and big plans.

“Ukuleles. Djembes. We’re gonna do songwriting. I’m developing a science lesson about sound waves,” Morin listed with a huge grin.

As a resident of the Old North End, Morin has felt newly connected to their neighborhood as they’ve spent time at the school and become more grounded in their own convictions.

“What am I gonna do in the face of all that’s going on, in the face of fascism, in the face of disparity, and, like, neighbor against neighbor?” they asked themselves. “Being able to give and receive that energy and inspiration and honesty and creativity of children is incredible.”

This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2025.

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