After writing with Dan Auerbach for her 2021 debut, Real Me, and with Sturgill Simpson on 2023’s Kentucky Blue, Brit Taylor instead looked in-house to bring her latest effort, Land Of The Forgotten, to life.
Cue up her husband, Adam Chaffins. Taylor not only co-wrote seven of the album’s 11 songs with Chaffins, but asked him to produce the record, as well – his second straight after doing the same for Kentucky Bluegrassed (2024) as well. Together the two homed in on tunes rich in working class and Appalachian themes that push back and occasionally lean into narratives about the region and its people.
From the hillbilly manifestations of “Broke No More” to throwing all your ex’s possessions out on the curb (“All For Sale”), to the resilience of mountain folk (“Land Of The Forgotten”) and infidelity with the bottle (“Warning You Whiskey”), Taylor shows that Appalachia is much more than just a footnote or only worth mentioning when things go sideways.
“It puts a lighthearted spin on some of the tougher things about life,” says Taylor. “Not to make light of difficult times, but to remind us two things can exist at one time. And, [remind us] not to forget to take a look at the bright side too, and to not take it all so seriously.
“There’s a lot of awful things happening in the world that we need to be aware of and need to do what we can to change, but dwelling on it and ignoring all the good things around us in the process doesn’t help anyone.”
On the eve of the album’s March 6 release, Taylor spoke with BGS about motherhood, outsider perceptions of Appalachia, black sheep, and more.
Leading up to Land Of The Forgotten’s release you mentioned achieving a sound with this project that you’ve been trying to attain since first moving to Nashville in 2007. What was it you captured and how were you able to do it?
Brit Taylor: Just that bluegrass influence on country, particularly the late ‘80s sound of The Judds, Ricky Skaggs, and Patty Loveless. When I go back and listen to those things I noticed they’re all very acoustic driven. At some point all of that became really unpopular – fiddle, steel, and mandolin all went out of style for a while. We had a lot of fiddle on the last record, but [we’re] incorporating those instruments more than ever before on this album, which gave it a very “back to my roots” feel.
Everything, down to how this record is mixed, turned out just the way I wanted it to. A lot of it’s because Adam grew up [just over an hour away] in Louisa, [Kentucky] – so we listened to the same radio stations and the same types of Appalachian country music. Us understanding each other so well musically is what made this all click.
I know that most of the album wasn’t written with bluegrass in mind, but I find it interesting that you say this album is more bluegrass-y than Kentucky Bluegrassed. Are there any key differences between the two?
Even those bluegrassed versions weren’t “actual” bluegrass songs, because they still had drums on them. We made that record to showcase bluegrass versions of those country songs. We weren’t really shooting for a country record with that one, but the goal with Land Of The Forgotten has very much been to make a country record, but one that’s heavily influenced by bluegrass instrumentation similar to anything from Patty Loveless to Lee Ann Womack when she sings “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger.” On those songs you could strip the drums out and they would feel right at home as bluegrass songs even though they all come from country-leaning records.
You just touched on Patty Loveless (Emory Gordy) and Lee Ann Womack (Frank Liddell), both of whom recorded frequently with their husbands as producers as well. Tell me about that connection, both with them and your husband Adam, and how each informed the project?
It started out with me just making a giant playlist of songs I love that were all over the map with no goal in mind. But as I started listening to it I began noticing a lot of similarities between the songs on it, whether they were from Willie Nelson, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight [Yoakam], Patty [Loveless], or Lee Ann Womack. Then I noticed that a lot of them were produced by Emory Gordy or Frank Liddell, whether it was Lee Ann Womack or the Pistol Annies.
From there, I went to Adam and told him, “These are the things that I love – I need you to be my Frank and Emory.” [Laughs] They’re two of my favorites, and just so happened to have worked with their wives, so it made so much sense for me to do the same. Adam knows me better than anybody else and hears me sing in a billion different places. He just knows me, just like [Emory and Frank] knew their wives and knew what they wanted and how to get it as well as pushing and encouraging them at the same time.
Another family tie to this record is that it’s released only a few months after the birth of your first child, Beulah. What was it like bringing this project to market while also going through that experience?
We cut the record last January, and at that point I was not pregnant yet. We’d been talking about wanting a kid for a really long time, and this record came out exactly the way I wanted it to. When we found out about the pregnancy I was like, “I need to be as fearless about the personal decisions in my life as I am about music, and stop letting the stigmas about what the industry thinks of women with kids dictate the way that I live my life.” Or else I’m going to run out of time to get the things done that I want. So we just decided to take a leap of faith and it’s all worked out, as it often does when you trust the universe, that it has your back, and that everything’s going to be okay.
It was so much fun starting out the year cutting that record and then going on tour with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Adam was with me. It was while in St. Augustine, Florida, doing that when we found out we were pregnant. I started back with them on another leg of the tour in July and showed up with a big belly, and it was so fun! I did that entire tour with no shoes. Jeff Hanna was always cracking up because I was just barefoot and pregnant on tour. [Laughs] It’s been really empowering to know that you can have it all, you just have to be brave and stop listening to the limitations that other people would like to put on you all the time.
Of all your albums so far, Land Of The Forgotten has some of my favorite wordplay. A prime example is “Warning You Whiskey,” a drinking song disguised as a ballad about an unfaithful lover. How did the idea for that one come about?
I love when songs have a twist or they’re not quite what you think they are. I also love a good story, so when my husband and I sat down with Adam Wright and he started telling us about this idea for a song called “Warning You Whiskey,” that sounds like you’re talking about a woman at first. I loved it from the beginning. We worked out the music and got that first verse and chorus written so fast that it wrote itself.
When we got to the second verse, I remember sitting there looking at both of them saying, “Man, I really want to kick this whiskey bottle’s butt!” [Laughs] Then my husband blurted out, “I’ll grip my hand around your long, skinny neck” and I just lost it. I jumped out of my chair because I was laughing so hard. Then Adam Wright popped out a line, I did the next, and within five minutes we had the entire thing written.
It reminded me so much of something Loretta Lynn would write and makes me think of women in my family that I’ve observed growing up. My mamaw really fought hard in the beginning of her relationship with my papaw, with him drinking, and she stuck by his side. Sometimes all he needed was a butt whoopin’. She’d just stand by his side and helped him through everything.
In the past you also haven’t hesitated to write a catchy song about getting through the daily grind, like “Rich Little Girls.” This album has two: “Lately I’ve Been Thinkin’” and “Around and Around.” Is there anything beyond that ties the ones on this record together?
“Around and Around” is just about life in general. It’s funny because everybody expected us to tie a really pretty bow on it in the bridge, but we just didn’t, because sometimes that’s how life is – we just keep spinning and spinning. Sometimes we figure out how to get out of the rat race and sometimes we don’t. The song is an observation of this girl who is finally becoming self-aware enough of her circumstances to stand outside of them and decide if she wants to change them or not.
As for “Lately I’ve Been Thinkin’,” it’s definitely inspired by the music industry. We were actually writing a different song that’s going to be on Adam’s record, but in the middle of writing [we] began talking about one of the award shows taking place that week, how much we hated it and all of the butt-kissing that goes on at them. Then [my husband] said, “Lately I’ve been thinking, I don’t like much stuff” and Adam Wright started cracking up. It was so funny because it all just started from a conversation. By the end of it, we all were like, “Well, it’s really not that bad. We get to sit here and write songs. We actually have it pretty good.”
It seems like many of the songs on Land Of The Forgotten originated from spontaneous writing moments. Is that a regular occurrence for you?
Those are my favorite songs. When the three of us write, we never sit down and think we’re gonna write a song for a specific person today. We just write what’s in the room, what’s moving us, and what we’re feeling. That usually ends up being something out of conversation and is oftentimes funny, because the three of us have the same sense of humor and [same] kind of outlook on life. I know a lot of people can get a bad taste in their mouth about co-writing and how like “white-coat” it can be, but when you find your tribe and you find your people, it’s awesome. It’s so much fun.
Earlier you discussed how distinctly Appalachian this record is. In my opinion, one of the best embodiments of that is the title track, “Land Of The Forgotten.” Was there a specific moment or place that inspired it?
I don’t remember if I wrote the song around when the floods happened, but I remember writing the hook down when all the floods happened back in my native Knott County in 2022. I feel like that’s the only time that we’re remembered, when tragedy strikes, and then we’re just kind of forgotten again until somebody can make fun of us. A lot of people have negative perceptions of what they think Eastern Kentucky or what hillbilly is, but it’s nothing like what people think. It’s about resilience, and strength, and honor, and family, and beauty, and folklore. Appalachia is so beautiful and so misunderstood.
I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to write a song as good as Darrell Scott’s “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” I don’t know if I did that with this song by any means, but that’s always the goal when trying to write about home. I think that’s probably why I’ve never had a song about Appalachia. I’ve had a song about Kentucky in general, but it was more of a love story. I’ve tried to write it a million times, but I finally did one that I’m proud of, and that’s “Land Of The Forgotten.” When we put all these songs together, it quickly became a lot of stories about blue-collar life, surviving, and just how hard it is right now in this economy. Through that, “Land Of The Forgotten” became the theme of the record without even trying.
One of the album’s more lighthearted moments comes on “Crazy Leaf,” which sees you ruminating on that one black sheep we all have in our family. How did that one come to be?
When we sat down to write that – my husband, Jeremy Bussey and I – we started talking about all the crazy people we had in our families. It was Bussey who had the idea for the title, “Crazy Leaf,” which is a combination of these characters from our families into one song. But we didn’t want to pick on anybody too hard or put too much truth in there that you hurt somebody’s feelings.
My favorite thing was when I played it for my mom, and there’s that baptism line – “He got baptized for the fifth time, because the first four didn’t work” – where my mom said, “Your mammy used to say that if the water was too cold in the creek, the baptism wouldn’t take.” [Laughs] But in all honesty, it’s probably me – I’m the crazy leaf in my family.
From “Crazy Leaf” to motherhood and bringing this album to life with your husband as producer, Land Of The Forgotten has a whole lot to do with family. That won’t change anytime soon either with you and Adam going on a co-headlining tour together this spring. What are you most excited for about that?
I could not be more excited to be able to travel with Adam and for both of us to be able to do our own sets. We both work together a lot, but we’re still two individual artists as well, which I think confuses people sometimes. People will ask, “What’s your band name?” I’ll have to say, “No, I’m Brit Taylor and this is Adam Chaffins.” Maybe we’ll do a band thing eventually.
I’m also nervous because we’ll have the baby on the road for the first time, but that’ll also be really fun too. I can’t wait to show her pictures one day. I’ll be taking her on tour with me this summer out west with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, too. She was in my belly through all those tours last year, so it’s gonna be so fun to have her on the road this time. My goal is to one day be touring bigger venues on a bus with my entire family there so we can travel the world together – that’s the dream.
What has the process of bringing Land Of The Forgotten to life taught you about yourself?
It’s a continuation of what everything keeps teaching me, which is that I just need to trust my gut and stop second-guessing things all the time. Adam has been a huge help with that. I feel like I can be hard on myself and always assume that somebody else knows better than me because they’ve got more experience. I don’t know if the creative process works that way. I think it only works when you’re true to yourself, and that’s something that isn’t always easy for me as a people pleaser and somebody that doubts herself a lot. So just learning to stand in my own truth and stand in my power and be confident in myself.
Photo Credit: Sammy Hearn