Karly Hartzman and the Wednesday band perform on stage in the VU MPR, above a sea of heads in the crowd, on April 26th, 2026. Photo taken by Molly Shoffner for Wavelength.
To kick off spring quarter of the ‘25/’26 school year, AMP announced that Wednesday’s Bleeds album tour would be making a stop at Western’s campus on Sunday, the 26th of April, and, shortly after, I was offered the chance to cover the event and interview Karly Hartzman, Wednesday’s frontwoman. As I prepared for the interview, to cover the concert, and to eventually write the article, I kept returning to my own perception and experience of their music—to how Wednesday’s music has always spoken to a sense of finding belonging andidentity, experiencing change, and, in sum, the concept of “coming of age.”
For most people, college is an extremely transitory time in their life when they experience an incredible amount of growth and change. It’s through that growth and change during college that a lot of people find, and come to understand, their sense of belonging and their identity. In the transition from high school to college, from being a teenager to being in your 20s, you’re crossing over from one stage of the “coming of age” experience into another, where an increasing freedom and autonomy allows you to realize your full self and provides the distance—in both time and space—to reflect on how you became the person you are.
When I finally interviewed Karly, I asked her how she sees this theme of “coming of age,” and reflecting on that transition, in Wednesday’s music. “Everything felt so intense as a teenager... the beginning or end of any friendship and relationship was the end of the world. Just feels like an endless well of emotion to tap into when I need to write a song that drives me to scream. Those years were generally just really formative for me: lots of stupid stories cause I got up to a lot of stupid stuff.”
Karly Hartzman, as Wednesday’s frontwoman, sings into the standing mic as she looks down at the guitar she is playing. Photo taken by Molly Shoffner for Wavelength.
Wednesday’s music hasn’t necessarily been a constant in my life, but it has always found its way into my life during incredibly transitory periods, and, therefore, when I need it most. I was first introduced to them through their debut album, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone, shortly after it came out in February of 2020, when I was an angsty, rebellious 17-year-old whose grasp of reality had just been pulled out from under her due to lockdown. Amidst a rapidly changing sense of self and a world that was seemingly falling apart around me, I found a piece of myself in the emotional pull of Hartzman’s lyricism and the music that goes along with it, particularly in the song “Fate is…”, which I remember playing over and over again at a volume that probably should have blown the speakers as I aimlessly drove around my hometown, looking for something to do.
“I feel like Wednesday's music kind of captures what it means to be a regular person, in a way, because their music feels so homegrown. A lot of the lyrics revolve around the normalcy of a small town, which I think is really cool,” said Elyana, who I spoke to in the crowd at the concert.
Western isn’t a particularly “renowned” university—it’s public, underfunded and has a 93% acceptance rate. The student population reflects that—we are a pretty “regular” group of college students—which is why Wednesday’s music reflects so much of the student experience. As we are uprooted from wherever we were planted and thrown into this heap of young adulthood, where everyone is scrambling for a new sense of community and stability, there’s a sentimentality for the familiar normalcy of where we came from—a comforting sentiment that runs rampant in the lyricism of Karly Hartzman.
Having drifted away from their music, I returned to it with their sophomore album, Twin Plagues, which came out in August of 2021, just in time to help me through another incredibly transitory time in my life. Songs like “Cody’s Only” and “One More Last Time,” helped me through moving away to college, breaking up with my “high school sweetheart,” and coming to terms with this new reality I was facing.
In the upheaval of the “coming of age” experience of college, everything seems to be in flux—your sense of community shifts and the relationships you build within it can fluctuate. But, in time, you find your place in and appreciation for the community as it is in the moment, where the regular can suddenly become so much more.
“I felt that this is for Western, this is for the people here, in an amazing way. I wanted to do Bellingham proud. It reminds you how much support there is. […] It's this infectious, creative, supportive community that led me to music and to this opportunity that is rooted in support and encouragement—it's so positive,” said Hanna Wiczek, Western student and lead singer of local band Strawberry Milk, who was invited to sing Wednesday’s song “Elderberry Wine” on stage with Karly at the show.
“Their music is, like, so much of my inspo [for] how I try to sing. Her sound and her story have just been very inspirational to what I try to do,” said Hanna, who has found her place in the community through music andowes part of her place in the music to Wednesday. “A large part of what we try to do is inspired by them, so it was just so, so surreal.”
A crowd of concertgoers looks on to Wednesday performing in the background. Photo taken by Molly Shoffner for Wavelength.
Wednesday’s music has this effect on their listeners, and particularly their young adult listeners, because it taps into these themes that are so real and approachable to a broader experience—a “regular” experience. A sense of connection and belonging are cultivated through the solidarity of a generation’s uncertain experience of change and growth. The music is as much of a reassurance of the time’s passing as it is an appreciation for the moments that make it up.
“I think so many of their songs are about stuff that's kind of everyday and mundane, but it's so relatable, and I think that is a big part of it—everyone's been there,” said Sofia, who I spoke to in the crowd at the concert.
I don’t think that connection between Wednesday and their listeners would be achieved without the authenticity that comes across from the band and the music—on stage, off stage, and through the digital sphere;Karly puts her most honest self forward.
“I'm always 100% authentically myself on stage usually... any performance aspect is usually just performing in spite of exhaustion/pretending that I’m not really really tired sometimes. We wake up early and stay up late almost every day on tour, it really adds up,” said Karly, further reinforcing her authenticity throughan honest account of what “performance” means to her.
Admittedly, I forgot about Wednesday as I got further into my time at college, and didn’t listen to their third album, Rat Saw God, when it came out in April of 2023—probably because, at the time, I had forgotten myself. I was lost in the stagnant struggle of depression and anxiety, fighting to return to something I couldn’tquite place. Somewhere in all the change, in striving for a self I was not, my identity and my sense of belongingwere discarded, and I found myself stuck performing an identity that was not my own.
The search and appreciation for authenticity reflects what it means to find your identity and go through a “coming of age” as a young adult in the digital age, where our identities are forced upon us by an ever-increasing stream of content telling us who we “should” be and how we “should” get there. Despite the overwhelming support that she got from Wednesday and their team; her boyfriend, friends, and bandmates; and the greater Western and Bellingham music scene and general community, encouraging her to put her authentic self on that stage and telling her that she belonged there, Hanna was still almost drawn back to what she “should” be on stage.
“There was definitely a loud voice in my head that told me, ‘there are so many other people that are probably way more qualified to do this,’ but I had to catch myself at that thought and be like, ‘I just feel really grateful and lucky that I get to do this’ and, like, ‘I'm going to try to make the most of this on behalf of everyone here,’” said Hanna.
An audience member triumphantly crowd surfs across the “pit” at the Wednesday concert in the MPR. Photo taken by Molly Shoffner for Wavelength.
We’re told to constantly strive for a version of ourselves that we are not yet, and may never be, and so we lose the truth of reality and ourselves that is always there. In finding who we are, and in discovering what authenticity means to us, we have to remember ourselves as we are, where we are, and appreciate the authenticity of the moment. It might take some convincing, and it might take practice, but despite how overwhelming or chaotic it is, despite the voice in your head, or outside of it, telling you that you’re not enough simply because you’re not what you “should” be, in the end all we can do is face ourselves and our reality for what it is. And then, maybe, in the face of what we find there, you can ignite the change you needed all along.
Though she had always wanted to play guitar, Karly didn’t know how until she began teaching herself in college. She said that she had been writing lyrics for songs years and years before she could write chords for a song, and she just had to convince herself, over and over, that she could do it.
Sometimes, in becoming and finding your authentic self, it helps to first see pieces of who you are outside of yourself. For Karly, seeing the band Palberta live pushed her over the edge to finally learn guitar because she saw a lot of herself in them, and bought a guitar and amp off of friends the day after she saw them play. For Hanna, it was the Bellingham and Western music scene, along with Wednesday, that showed her a piece of herself she had yet to fulfill.
As you collect these pieces of yourself, in becoming yourself, you’ll begin to share those pieces with others, so that they might find pieces of themselves within what you offer. I think the people who listen to Wednesday and appreciate the music for how authentically raw it is to the reality of youth see pieces of their world, and therefore themselves, in the music. And, thus, a kinship with Wednesday can be established by just one song, like Western student Sofia, who has particularly found that in her favorite song, “Maura”, off I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone.
“I think it's so beautiful—I love her vocals; I love the lyrics. I know that it's a reference to something—aMorticia Addams quote or something like that. That's one of my favorite things about all of their music, that it'sso, like, referential to so many artists, and so many poets and writers,” said Sofia.
These references—these pieces of Wednesday and Karly—come directly from what has made Karly herself. As “regular” college students, we’re able to see pieces of ourselves in Wednesday’s music because the inspiration comes from “regular” things that we know, love, identify with, and have found belonging from in our own way. When I asked Karly what her non-musical inspirations were, she said, “So much!! My friends and family, video games, graphic novels, movies/tv, books... I write about all of these things on my personal website. So much of what I do is building little shrines to all this stuff I love.”
Part of coming of age, and finding yourself, comes with learning to love your life and your world for what it is, and finding the bits and pieces that help you to grasp onto that. In building shrines to what she loves—either through her music or her blog—Karly taps into what we, as young adults feeling a bit “lost” in our lives, are really trying to learn how do: to love our lives, and, through that, find the selves we love so that we can share—and celebrate it—with those we love.
“People will blog forever I think... because so many people are insanely passionate and are driven to celebrate things they love. I think it's just the most fun you can possibly have on the internet... it's such a pure way to engage,” said Karly, who blogs on her personal website (www.prisondivorcebombshell.com), when I asked her about the significance of blogging today and whether or not she thinks it’s becoming a dying art form.
I didn’t listen to Wednesday again until I was reintroduced to their music through a friend, who showed me “Elderberry Wine,” the single off their most recent album, Bleeds. Somehow, through all the transitory growth and change I experienced between the last time Wednesday had surfaced in my life and the release of Bleeds, I had forgotten about Wednesday to the point that I found myself listening to their discography over again through a new lens, as if it was the first time I had ever heard them. Still, something felt so familiar about it, as if this was a long-lost friend I had just reconnected with.
When Bleeds was released last September, I didn’t consider it at the time, but, once again, this was Wednesday’s way of coming back into my life during a transitory period. The album, released a week before I began my final academic year at Western—the same year that I have experienced multitudes of both loss and revival in my life—became where I found solace, time and time again. The changing, blending, dynamic progression of the album, from the heavy, grungy opening song, “Reality TV Argument Bleeds”, to the playful, twangy final track, “Gary’s II” felt like it was reflecting the progression of my year. To cover the concert and interview Karly truly felt like it would be my “last hurrah”—my magnum opus to my time at Wavelength, beforeI had even connected the dots of what it meant to my time at Western.
Karly Hartzman sings into the mic as she plays guitar. Photo taken by Molly Shoffner for Wavelength.
Recently, whenever I conduct an interview, I like to ask the question, “What have you been thinking about recently?”, which I borrowed from my dear friend Maureen, who poses it to me and others every so often, and has always been cause for consideration and conversation. When I asked this question to Karly, her response (having given it right as she was wrapping up Wednesday’s tour at the beginning of June) was a single word—“Home!”
In the end, I think that this is why Wednesday’s music matters—why it matters so much to the college and young adult experience, and why it has mattered so much to me at times when I found myself in transition.Wednesday’s music is, in itself, a bit of home, a bit of yourself, and a bit of belonging, and by having pieces of that, you are able to find what home, your self, and belonging means to you.
Looking back on my own “coming of age” experience throughout college, I can’t help but think that itisn’t so much about reaching an end goal—just as high school wasn’t the best four years of my life, I don’t think college will end as the best five years of my life (though I definitely had a pretty damn good time when I could). Sure, graduating from Western is a milestone that I will always hold a sense of pride for myself in, but, to me, the point of college wasn’t getting through it. Just like the point of listening to Bleeds, or any other Wednesday album, is to experience its many ups and downs, its many beginnings and endings, the point of college is to experience it—it’s many ups and downs, its many beginnings and endings—so that you don’t necessarily “come of age,” at the end but, instead, come to yourself. By blending who you were, who you are, and who you’re becoming in order to simply be you, you come to understand that as long as you can find pieces of yourself, you belong somewhere amongst all the change.
***
Thank you to Karly Hartzman and the Wednesday band for being there for me, somehow, during all the changes I’ve been through, as well as for being so open to my questions and the Western community.
Thank you to Hanna Wiczek, as well as anyone else who I spoke with about their experience of Wednesday and the concert.
Thank you to Ava Gedicks and AMP for continually providing the students with such amazing concert experiences, and for continually trusting me, alongside Wavelength, to take over the coverage of it.
And, finally, thank you to the Wavelength staff I’ve had the blessing of working with and getting to know over these last two years. I will be forever grateful for the people, the experience, and the opportunities that have come along with it.
