Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield: “I’ve been to San Diego a bunch of times. I like it. I wish that I understood it more.”

After releasing two lo-fi solo albums on independent label Don Giovanni, Katie Crutchfield delivered her musical project, Waxahatchee, to a larger home. Her first release on Merge Records was last year’s Ivy Tripp — a full-band outing that brought rock crunch to the table. It was a new path for Waxahatchee, and now Crutchfield is shifting back to solo mode for her current tour, which makes a stop at the Irenic on Thursday, March 3.

“I will probably play some new songs on the tour. It’s funny: when I was getting ready to tour before Ivy Tripp came out, some of those were already written. I didn’t take them for a test drive too much. I played some of them, but I didn’t really go for it, and I kind of want to do that more. I’ve been writing a lot more in this stage than I had last time around, so I think I’m gonna have more new material to play around with,” Crutchfield said.

Crutchfield explained that she expects her upcoming album to be more “autonomous” than her previous efforts. “I don’t think it’s going to be just me and a guitar,” she explained. “It will be on some songs, but it will be more just me at the head of the table, whereas before I had producers working with me.” Listeners can certainly expect more of Crutchfield’s trademark personal lyrics. A signature aspect of her work, and one that can be both a blessing and a curse as her band’s following grows.

“Waxahatchee music is really personal,” Crutchfield said. “It’s kind of a way for me to process my own emotions. I think that putting that out there for a bigger audience can be intense, because when I perform and air out to people who are fans, it’s more of an interaction than other [performers] experience...people want to talk to me, tell me, ‘This got me through a really hard time’ — that happens to me at every show. It feels heavier now that visibility has increased, and there are more people consuming my songs that way. I definitely feel like it’s a change, but with the exception of a couple of overwhelming moments over the past year, I think it’s manageable.”

Crutchfield is a native Alabaman who moved to New York when she was 21, although she recently relocated to Philadelphia.

But did she consider the West Coast?

“I think I’m just kind of married to the East. I think I’ll probably live on some part of the East Coast forever.... I’ve been to San Diego a bunch of times. I like it. I wish that I understood it more. It’s so close to L.A., and that’s such a hub for music and tours, and we have a lot of friends there...we always enjoy San Diego, but we kind of hustle back to L.A.”