Mina Roth Looks Back at Faultline and the Version of Herself Who Made It

For Mina Roth, Faultline arrived two years after the songs were written. By then, the person at the center of the record was someone she had spent a long time trying to move beyond.

“I wrote these songs at a point in my life where I felt defeated and completely alone,” Mina tells Everyday Jams. “There was a part of me that had started to resent the EP because of how much I wanted to put that chapter behind me.”

Then people started listening.

“When someone tells me that they relate to these songs that came from such an excruciating place for me personally, it makes me have a new found love for the project and the girl who wrote it,” she says. “It’s a full circle moment.”

That distance between the girl who wrote Faultline and the artist releasing it is where the EP becomes particularly compelling.

Mina was 21 when much of this story was unfolding, living in what she describes as “constant fight or flight.” Looking back now, she doesn’t romanticize that younger version of herself.

Instead, she respects her.

“I feel very resilient because of it and trust myself more than I ever have,” Mina says.

That perspective runs through Faultline. It begins with “Supervision,” a slow-burning introduction that carries the lyric that eventually gave the EP its name: “I’m living on your faultline / it’s making me sick.”

The song was also the first Mina made for the project, tracing the beginning of her struggle with addiction through an intense, dysfunctional relationship. In hindsight, she sees writing it as the beginning of something else too.

“Telling this story was the first step to healing,” she says.

Finding Charleston

Place is woven deeply into Faultline, too.

Mina moved from Nashville to Charleston while trying to make a significant change in her life. Music wasn’t what brought her there, and she says she didn’t even know Charleston had much of a music scene when she arrived.

What she found was a community.

“I’ve been lucky enough to be thrown into a community that is so welcoming and supportive,” Mina says. “I learned how to do those things through my peers in Charleston.”

That journey gives the geography surrounding Faultline an unusual weight. Kentucky. Nashville. Charleston. Long drives between them.

“letter to a garnet” was written at a remote cabin in Kentucky during an especially difficult point in Mina’s addiction. She ultimately called a rehab in Charleston and learned there was a spot available the following day. She drove through the night and made it there.

“Somehow I made it to Charleston in one piece,” she remembers.

Listening to Faultline now means listening to those memories from somewhere else entirely.

Mina says she has increasingly found herself hearing the project almost in third person. One tiny change while performing “Supervision” captures that distance better than anything else could.

The original lyric is “I try to get clean, I made it two days.”

Now, Mina sometimes accidentally sings “tried.”

Past tense.

It makes her smile.

What Comes After Faultline

That one changed word might be the clearest indication of where Mina stands today.

Faultline documents rock bottom, but it doesn’t define the artist standing on the other side of it.

“Through making this project I started to heal and became the most confident version of myself I have ever been,” she says. “Though I do hope that continues to grow as well. I have a lot more learning to do.”

And maybe that is why releasing these songs has become more meaningful than Mina expected.

By the time the EP finally arrived, she was relieved. She had made it for herself, and putting it into the world made her feel physically lighter. Then she started seeing people sing the songs at shows. Messages arrived from listeners telling her the record had helped them through something of their own.

Suddenly, a project about a chapter she wanted desperately to close had another purpose.

“It makes me feel like what I went through was important,” Mina says. “That there was a reason it happened.”

What comes next for Mina is still taking shape, but Faultline already feels like a dividing line. The artist moving forward from this record is not the same person who wrote it. There is more confidence now, more trust in herself, and a willingness to let these songs belong to the past without distancing herself from what they meant.

Whatever the next project becomes, Faultline feels less like a blueprint for it and more like the reason she gets to make whatever comes next from somewhere new.

Mina isn’t asking to stay inside this chapter forever. In fact, she seems ready to do the opposite.

“I think all I can hope for is that Faultline continues to give others what it did for me when I was creating it,” she says. “A sense of relief and understanding.”

Then comes the line that might best explain where Mina is now:

“But I’m also ready to close this chapter of my life for good and be proud of the body of music for what it is.”

Faultline by Mina Roth is out now.

Photography: Maren McGuire @marenmcgphoto