Artist:Sophie Gault Hometown: Temple Hills, Maryland; now Nashville, Tennessee Latest Album:UNHINGED (released January 23) Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Soph, SMFG, Dimples
Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?
Gurf Morlix has been my biggest influence since I was a teenager. I used to spend hours late at night in the barn behind our house with my guitar, playing along to records and trying to figure out his parts by ear — not just the notes, but the feel of them. His sense of space and restraint really shaped how I think about music.
Before that, I was listening to a lot of pop-punk like Green Day. I loved that raw energy, but Gurf’s playing opened up a different emotional world for me. It showed me that subtlety can be just as powerful as volume, and that sometimes what you leave out is what makes a song linger. That influence never really left me–it’s still part of how I write, arrange, and listen today.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
Recently, I played a show in Dallas celebrating Twangville’s 20-year anniversary and it ended up being one of those nights that reminds you why you do this. I hired a pickup band, and we had no rehearsals, but they absolutely knocked it out of the park. It was Louis Balderas on drums, Emsy Robsinson Jr. on bass, and Michal Witek on guitar. There was this instant trust and musical conversation onstage, and it felt special.
The whole night felt meaningful, because it was such a strong bill. I was opening for Lydia Loveless, and J. Isaiah Evans & the Boss Tweed, and that hit me in a very full-circle way. When I was in my first year of college, I became a huge fan of Lydia’s album Indestructible Machine. Her songwriting – that raw, gritty honesty – really shaped what I thought was possible in songs. I’ve always looked up to her as one of the great voices of my generation, so seeing my name on a poster with hers felt like one of those milestones you don’t forget.
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
I’m drawn to short stories and mystical realism. Lately, I’ve been reading Haruki Murakami and Raymond Carver. There is a book called Kafka on the Shore by Murakami that is beautiful and strange and otherworldly. Ideally, that’s how I want my music to sound—like its own universe that doesn’t follow any set of rules.
Does pineapple belong on pizza?
Absolutely, yes. I’ve always ordered pineapple and black olives together. There is no other acceptable answer!
If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?
I love the idea of owning a wine shop with a carefully curated selection from all over the world. There is a great one already in Five Points in East Nashville called the Woodland Wine Merchant. They’re great.
The duo of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham have amassed an astonishing set of credentials, not only as exceptional soul, pop, rock, and country songwriters, but also as vocalists, producer (Penn), and session musician/sideman (Oldham). Both Alabama natives, they’ve maintained a successful professional relationship and close personal friendship since meeting in the late ’50s as teens. They’ve always characterized themselves as “country boys who love Black music.”
Penn initially viewed himself primarily as a singer. He was the lead vocalist for two local Alabama bands, the R&B group the Mark V Combo and a later one, Dan Penn and the Pallbearers. But he began to shift his focus in 1960, after his tune “Is A Bluebird Blue?” became an early hit for Conway Twitty. That song also reflected the joint musical influences that have always permeated the tunes co-written by Penn and Oldham. It’s country’s powerful storytelling edge combined with soul’s passionate energy and quest for personal salvation. Once the Twitty tune made it big, things changed in Penn’s mind. “That’s when I first decided that maybe this songwriting thing might work out,” he added. “After I saw some of the checks that were coming in, I decided to just keep going with it.”
Penn had already been working at SPAR Music studio, a place co-founded by Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill above a drugstore in Florence, Alabama. When Hall decided to open his own studio titled FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises), Penn became their first resident songwriter. He and Oldham began writing together at FAME, and both say they had a chemistry from the very beginning.
“Back in those days, co-writing wasn’t quite what it is today,” Penn continued. “But just from hanging out with Spooner and getting to know him, we had real good rapport from the beginning. I got to know and like him, and then things just kind of took off from there.”
“What Dan says is pretty much how it happened,” Oldham added. “We got a rhythm going and it’s never been one of those things where we’ve had any problems or issues.”
Interestingly, Oldham views himself as a musician first, then a songwriter. A prolific organist and keyboardist, he got his start playing in a traditional jazz band while in high school. The extensive list of top musicians he’s played with over the years includes Arlo Guthrie, Jim Croce, Gram Parsons, The Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Gene Clark, Ry Cooder, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Bob Seger, Maria Muldaur, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Womack, Albert King, Helen Reddy, Harry Nilsson, Stephen Stills, J.J. Cale, and Neil Young. But in his earlier days, he also made his way to the FAME studios and had the first of many collaborations with Penn. Among their notable FAME triumphs were Percy Sledge’s “It Tears Me Up,” James and Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet,” and Joe Simon’s “Let’s Do It Over.”
But Penn wanted to produce as well as write and he left FAME for Memphis in the late ’60s, moving to Chips Moman’s American Studios. Oldham would later follow him there. Penn and Moman would craft their own set of soul classics, notably “Dark End of the Street” for James Carr, and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” for Aretha Franklin. Penn got his first major production opportunity in 1967, with the Box Tops and then 16-year-old lead vocalist Alex Chilton. Penn produced their number one hit “The Letter,” then joined forces with Oldham to co-write the group’s second smash “Cry Like A Baby,” and the Sweet Inspirations’ “Sweet Inspiration.”
Oldham would eventually depart for Los Angeles and a prolific career as a session musician and sideman. He played keyboards on Young’s 1978 album Comes a Time, and continued to work with him on such other albums as Old Ways, Harvest Moon, Silver & Gold, and Prairie Wind. Oldham joined Bob Dylan during his Christian era, contributing to Dylan’s Saved album, the Saved Tour and the Shot of Love Tour. With Dylan, he played 79 shows, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and on the GRAMMY Awards telecast. Oldham also partnered with John Prine for the 1984 album Aimless Love and appeared on the 1994 release, A John Prine Christmas.
When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited for their Freedom of Speech Tour, Oldham played keyboards. He also worked as a sideman and collaborated with Steve Wariner through the ’80s. They teamed on the song “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers.” During the ’90s, Oldham was featured on Jewel’s album Pieces of You, which produced the hit “Who Will Save Your Soul.” In the 2000s, he appeared on a pair of Frank Black albums, joined the Drive-By Truckers for their 2007 The Dirt Underneath tour, and played with Amos Lee, Aaron Neville, Bettye LaVette and Cat Power in 2008. He contributed to Keith Richards’ 2015 album Crosseyed Heart and Sheryl Crow’s Threads in 2019, as well as the Mountain Goats Dark In Here in 2021.
Penn established his own Memphis studio, then subsequently relocated to Nashville in the ’70s. He would have some country success with songs written for Ronnie Milsap and Johnny Rodriguez, and he’d also produce a pair of Milsap LPs – his debut album Ronnie Milsap, and co-producing A Rose By Any Other Name with Moman. He contributed the song “A Woman Left Lonely” to Janis Joplin’s album Pearl (later covered by Charlie Rich) and he’d cut an acclaimed solo album, Nobody’s Fool.
Penn and Oldham had another reunion in 1991 at New York’s Bottom Line, appearing in the songwriter series “In Their Own Words.” They also contributed to Arthur Alexander’s 1993 album Lonely Just Like Me. Later the duo made an acoustic tour throughout parts of the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Japan. It yielded the live album, Moments From This Theater, that was released in 1999. Penn also made another critically praised solo LP, Do Right Man, in 1994. Both Penn and Oldham are members of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Oldham is also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a sideman, as well as the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Birmingham Record Collectors Hall of Fame.
Both men currently remain busy. Penn’s Christmas tune “One Blue Light” was released last November and it was a message of “remembrance and hope” to highlight the holiday season. It’s the first single from Penn’s upcoming album, Smoke Filled Room, which is scheduled for release later this year. “There’s a song on there that I worked on for 20 years and I finally got it right this time,” he said in discussing the upcoming album. “Billy Lawson mixed it and we finally got it sounding the way that we wanted.”
Smoke Filled Room was recorded at Penn’s home studio and will be available on various streaming sites. “When I started out as a singer in the studios I’d always pay attention to what they were doing on the boards, the engineering, mixing, all of it,” Penn added. “So it wasn’t that much of a shift for me to go to production.”
Besides playing dates last year with Neil Young, Oldham also played with the Scottish band Texas on the 2024 release The Muscle Shoals Sessions, a collection of soul covers that the group recorded at FAME studios. He will be playing on an upcoming Robert Cray LP, with the sessions set to begin the week after our interview. Together, Penn and Oldham are doing some select dates this year in both the United States and United Kingdom.
Unfortunately, Oldham suffered an injury early in his recent appearances with Young. “The first week out I fell playing basketball and just tore myself up,” Oldham said. “But I’ve moved from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane, so I’m doing alright.”
Neither man will commit to claiming any one of their classics as their favorite, nor will they cite any one artist as the greatest that has covered their songs. But Penn mentions some names he was particularly happy he worked with as either a producer or songwriter. “Alex Chilton, Aretha Franklin, Joe Simon – so many I can’t really name them all.”
“I’ll just say I’m grateful to all the wonderful singers that did our songs,” Oldham added. “I really saw myself starting out – and still do – as a musician first, and I approached songwriting from that perspective. Dan would work on getting the words right, if there was a problem, and I’d work on fixing the music if anything went wrong on that end.”
Penn added the name of one singer who’s not recorded one of his songs that he’d enjoy having cut one: “Tom Jones,” Penn said. “I doubt if that’s ever going to happen, but I’d love for him to do one of them. He’s got a hell of a voice.”
Their opinions on the phenomenon of streaming aren’t as tinged with anger as some of their contemporaries, though they acknowledge that the compensation end has its problems. “Well, this generation has really gotten accustomed to getting its music that way, and you’ve got to be willing to adjust to that reality,” Penn said. “I don’t really have anything against it, but really, as a songwriter, [you] aren’t going to make a lot of money off it.”
“They definitely need to address the payment side of it,” Oldham said. “It’s definitely a way to get the music out to the public, but the musicians themselves aren’t really getting the benefits from it. That’s the area that they need to address.”
The exploits of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham are chronicled as part of the “Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising” exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. They will be appearing in concert at City Winery Nashville on January 18, 2026.
Courtney Marie Andrews’ story begins in Phoenix, Arizona. An only child raised by her mother, she found solace and an outlet for her creativity and imagination in music. She planted her music roots in a self-described “feminist punk band” and began touring while in her teens. Along the way, she recorded a number of albums – best known are Honest Life (2016), GRAMMY-nominated Old Flowers (2020), and Loose Future (2022) – lived in a number of cities, and worked and toured with a number of musicians, including rock band Jimmy Eat World.
Andrews eventually made her way to Nashville, where she now resides. There, she creates music and other art, fueling her soul and inspiration with long walks and her love of animals, bonding with friends’ dogs, and feeding an assortment of “porch animals,” mostly cats, who take up residence outside her door.
In addition to music, Andrews expresses herself through painting and poetry. She has published two collections: 2021’s Old Monarch (2021) and the recent Love Is a Dog That Bites When It’s Scared. Her music, writings, and artwork explore a broad scope of emotions and experiences: loss, grief, fearless love, deep darkness, pure joy, and acceptance of the entire spectrum.
These outpourings are at the essence of her new release, Valentine (out January 16 via Thirty Tigers). Written in the throes of anticipatory grief, the album plummets into the vortex of her trajectory. While the message is raw, the recording is anything but. Valentine is an unfiltered look into Andrews’ heart, filled with waves of sounds and layers of instrumentation.
Among the numerous instruments she plays on Valentine, Andrews is featured on an assortment of guitars and basses, including a 1973 Martin D-28, 1968 Gibson B-45 12-string, 1970s high-strung Japanese Epiphone, Gibson J-45, Epiphone Casino, 1972 Fender P-Bass, 1960s Kay K5915 bass, and 1960s Teisco six-string bass. Longtime friend and colleague Jerry Bernhardt joins her on various instruments, with drummer Chris Bear rounding out the trio. The album was recorded by Michael Harris at Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Bernhardt and Andrews.
BGS reached Andrews via Zoom for an Artist of the Month conversation.
Has Nashville changed you as a songwriter?
Courtney Marie Andrews: I thought it would deeply shift everything for me, but if anything, it made me want to do other things as well, maybe subconsciously. I started painting and focusing on poetry. But that core sense of self, that songwriter self, will always be with me wherever I go. It’s hard to say how it has shaped me until I’m looking back on my life 20, 30, 40 years from now.
But I will say the community I’ve found here is profound. I’m a Western girl. I’ve lived in Arizona and Seattle up until pretty much my 30s, and I didn’t realize how lonely the West can be. I think that’s apparent in my early work as a songwriter. That subject is throughout the work. When I moved here, I was almost overwhelmed by how much people wanted to hang out. It took a while to adjust and now I can’t imagine it any other way, not having that community to feel into and understand this work, because it is a strange career. So I think more [that] it has affected me personally, but I’ve always continued to write and been on this journey on my own and in my own time.
This is a stripped-down album – only three musicians, including you, and one of them is also your co-producer. Did you know, when the songs were written, that this is how it needed to be done?
I completely funded this album on my own, so if I’m being frank, it was an economical choice. Originally, we would have loved to have a band, but in hindsight, ultimately it created the record it created and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. There’s some power to it being a very condensed group of people, because the focus is a little bit more zoned in, and it becomes a vibe if it’s coming from a few core people, rather than everybody adding their stroke to what you’re doing – which I think is also valid. But looking back, it was probably the best thing we could have done, having Jerry and I playing all the instruments and Chris Bear, of course, on drums.
You played a number of guitars on Valentine. Do the songs determine the guitar, or does the guitar sometimes direct the song?
The songs ultimately lead the way on feeling and vibe. Jerry and I wanted to layer the record. There are a lot of different layers of guitars. We would varispeed one guitar up, so it’s super-high, and then we’d varispeed one guitar lower, so it’s super-low, to create the rounder sound, especially if you’re listening in headphones or on a high-definition speaker system.
But it’s definitely song-driven, whatever the feeling. “Best Friend” is just my guitar and Jerry’s twelve-string. We didn’t go much further than that, because the song was meant to be a bit sparser as far as the depth goes.
“Everyone Wants To Feel Like You Do” is about a certain type of misogyny where it’s, “I do whatever I want and I don’t care about the consequences, nor am I held accountable for the consequences.” The song was written with that feeling, and I thought it would be funny if I played guitar like that, where I didn’t care, so I over-distorted my guitar and played as crazy as I could to assert my power.
How do songwriting, poetry, and painting each fulfill a different side of your artistry and emotions? Is there ever some cross-pollinating?
I wanted to tell the same story with a different perspective, so there is cross-pollinating in terms of the source of the material, where it’s coming from, where I’m at in my life, whatever darkness or lightness I feel. It all sources from the same well of emotion and experience. But there are different ways of telling the same story. I found that when I was songwriting exclusively, I would write the same song over and over again. Whereas if I take a step back, do a different medium, and come back to songwriting, I feel fresher.
Ultimately and forever, I’ll always identify and feel the deepest connection with songwriting. That’s the first thing I fell in love with. It’s the thing I understand the most. But the mystery of these other mediums has really flourished.
There’s a natural through-line between poetry and lyrics. What about painting? Do lyrics sometimes inspire a painting? Does something you create on canvas ever become words in one of the other mediums?
There’s not a lot of crossover. I don’t look at painting like I would look at a page or a song. Painting is, for me, a place to describe emotions that are unexplainable. That’s why painting is so cool. It’s almost equivalent to jazz; it’s more of a feeling that you can’t describe. That was enticing to me. To express myself as a word person who ultimately values words so much, it was important to think outside of the box a little bit. Painting allows that. To not be confined by words is really interesting.
Tell us about your recent Artist in Residence at the Iowa City Songwriters Festival. You performed and did a reading from your new book, but what does “artist in residence” mean at this particular event?
Because Iowa City is a UNESCO World Heritage City of Literature, there’s a heavy college-funded element. I’m not sure if that was their direct funding, but they definitely have more of a collegiate approach to an artist in residence. I’ve done some residencies where they don’t want anything from you. They just say, “Come up and write whatever you want. We don’t care.” But this one was definitely a bit more mentorship-driven. I led a class, a songwriting workshop. I also had one-on-one mentorships with young songwriters, people who are just getting started. They had a packed schedule for me, but it was so lovely.
I think their ultimate goal is to prop up songwriting among the other literature of the world, having songwriting classes in college, and having it there with poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, memoir writing, and all that. I think that’s ultimately what they’re trying to attain with the residency program. So it was great.
I’ve found that I really love to talk about songwriting in that way. I think that, in our culture, it’s a dying thing, at least from where I’m sitting, to seek out opportunities to learn from elders, from people who’ve been doing it a long time. The more we can do that in our culture, the better off we’ll be. It’s an incredible festival, and I would highly recommend people going. The people who run it are just wonderful.
When you lead workshops and do one-on-one mentoring, is it as much a learning experience for you as it is a teaching experience?
Absolutely. I think to teach is to be a constant student. The moment you feel like you’ve figured it all out … I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Even as I speak about songwriting, I say things that open doors all the time to myself. It’s good to be endlessly curious.
Do you think being an only child contributes to your storytelling ability through songwriting and poetry? Living inside your head, escaping into your own head, in a way that might have been different if you had been surrounded by siblings?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because I was a latchkey kid, I spent a lot of time alone. If I didn’t have a friend to play with, I had to go into the inner landscape of my mind. That was my way of communicating in a deeper way that I couldn’t quite get in my home life if my mom wasn’t home. I can attribute a lot of my childhood to that. I was a deeply imaginative kid and would create stories all the time. So I think the loneliness also fueled what I do now.
Do you draw from those past emotions when expressing what you’re currently experiencing?
How it manifests is that it’s like a period of reckoning when I’m writing songs. I’m generally alone. I find it very hard to write if I know somebody is even in the next room. I’ve had weird moments in my life where I wrote at soundcheck and stuff, but when I listen back to those things that I’ve written around people, it’s not as dialed in. So when I’m writing, I’m alone and reckoning with the life that I’m leading, or the life of others. It feels like this very quiet thing that needs to happen.
Are you an old-school pen-and-paper writer or have you gone the way of voice memos?
I do both. I exclusively use a green book to write in. It doesn’t matter what color green. They all are green, though, green-colored notebooks, generally the Moleskine variety or that look. I have plenty of them in a pile. [And] I love Micron, the ballpoint art pens. I really don’t like the standard DMV pen. I’m a little bit bougie when it comes to my pens. I like the flow of a Micron. I write and then voice memo. Generally, once I’m done writing a song, I try and always get it down in its unproduced form. I think it’s important to have that, and the phone happens to be the easiest way.
Is playing guitar, just playing, as much a part of songwriting as writing lyrics?
Oh, yeah. I love the guitar. I love open tunings. I love acoustic guitar music, Hawaiian slack key, and classical Spanish-style guitar on a nylon. I love to play and try and emulate that style. And so in certain works, it’s the first thing that happens. There’s many ways to come to a song, but one of them is [to] play a chord progression I like and sing gibberish, and that sometimes leads to a song. In that case, absolutely I need the guitar. But yeah, the instrument can definitely lead the way. It just depends.
When you spoke earlier about adapting to the Nashville community, it brought up the thought that growing up as “an only” maybe affects our social skills to a degree. It can make community something new, as opposed to something you’re used to having around you.
Yeah. I feel that. I have a hard time with small talk for this reason. I want to go immediately for the jugular, as far as intense conversations. I go from zero to a hundred. It’s really hard for me to be like, “Hey, how are you doing?” I feel like such an actor in those circumstances. Of course I’ve learned to do it by way of being a musician – you have to talk to new people every day. But small talk doesn’t do it for me. I have a hard time going in a simple, surface level.
In the bio accompanying this album, you said, “I was in one of the darkest periods of my life and songs were the only way I could reckon with it. I felt cursed and the only mental cure felt like songwriting and painting.” Have you always felt that darkness?
Obviously, as a teenager, I went through a pretty wild part of my life where I felt dark, but I think I actually denied my darkness for a very long time. I lived in a haze of denial and hope, which is a beautiful thing. It can do wonderful things for your mental health. But you also can’t really grow if you’re living in that state.
When I was younger, especially in my early twenties, I always had this hope – “Oh, one day things are going to change.” That denial, that hope, kept me in this holding place, which for a time was really nice, and as a matter of defense and self-preservation, I stayed there for a long time. It wasn’t until I started therapy that I realized I always had this underlying darkness. When I had that, we worked on that, and real things started to happen. Things in life that are so hard that happen to all of us – it became deeply dark and profound to experience that in a more awake state.
How did that help with writing this album?
During a lot of writing this, I was caretaking for my family member who was terminal. If you’ve ever been in that situation, it is all-consuming. The only way I could turn my brain off from that was to write. It wasn’t “I need to write an album.” It was “I need to get back to myself for a moment.” I wouldn’t say it was a conscious decision. It was just I know how I am, and I know that songs are my only way of regulating in these crazy times.
You once said you felt embarrassed by the vulnerability of your songwriting. Where do you draw the line, or do you draw one, between what needs to be said for yourself and what needs to be said for listeners for whom you are the voice? How do you do this and protect your mental health when performing these songs every night?
I’ve always said that once the song is written, it’s not mine. It also transforms for me as I sing it. There are songs I wrote fifteen years ago that I still perform, that have taken on completely new meaning and feel different to me when I sing them. I honestly can’t remember the headspace I was in when I wrote them, or the origin of them, or who I was thinking about, to a strong degree, but I feel differently about them.
As far as what needs to be said, ultimately I try to relate to people, or first myself, and then you put the song out and it becomes a different thing. I try, in an artistic space, to be as true to myself as possible. I try not to put up any walls in that space. As far as my life where I’m not playing music, that’s a different thing. But music is a safe space to say whatever the hell I want to say. That’s the reason it’s such a powerful thing. It’s a safe place for me to communicate. Whatever walls are up in a song are walls that I have up with myself. That’s always very apparent when you write a song. It’s not quite clicking and you’re like, “I’ve got some walls up to my subconscious, clearly.” So the extent to which the boundaries, the walls, are up is truly only the stage at which my heart is at in that moment.
Did that happen with Valentine – the walls, maybe the fear of the vulnerability? It’s deeply personal and powerful, going deeper and deeper into those emotions as your journey is sequenced.
I hate to say it, because I don’t want to sound trite, but making albums, making bodies of work like this, fear is the last thing on my mind. Obviously, natural fears come up: Is it going to be what I wanted, what I envisioned in my dreams? But as far as songwriting and being vulnerable in a song, that’s not the fear. In fact, if I got very close to the heart in a song, it’s generally the ones that I’m like, “That’s a good one. I got there. I got to the essence of this thing I was feeling.”
Being vulnerable in life can be really hard in my personal life, in some ways, and I think that is more where the fear is. But, for whatever reason, the way I direct it is okay in a song, and I’ve made up my mind for that to be true. I don’t know why; I guess it just makes sense to me. Human emotion makes the most sense to me in the backdrop of music.
As far as sequencing, Jerry and I argued quite deeply about the sequencing, but ultimately it did go to a place where once we got the sequence, it was undeniable. Side A and Side B are completely different frames of minds. Side A, you’re fighting for love and you’re desperate. Side B is a resignation – this is how it is, this is how it’s always been, and this is my childhood. By the end, in “Hangman,” you’re just “This is how it is, and you can fight for it or you can walk away.” So the sequencing was purposeful. I wanted it to be a journey. I think records should be like that. They shouldn’t be all one color or palette the whole way through.
Explore more of our Artist of the Month content featuring Courtney Marie Andrews here.
Welcome to The Working Songwriter, the show where today’s best songwriters come to talk shop. Each episode we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, their process, and the general ups and downs of making a life in music. Whether you’re a grizzled veteran picking out custom chrome trim for your tour bus or a scrappy upstart, trying to determine whether your Toyota Tercel can make it through a three thousand mile tour, this is your show. Because, ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most. An ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.
Our guest this week on The Working Songwriter hails from Tobias, Nebraska, a town of about 100 people. Evan Bartels is a singer-songwriter who with his 2017 debut, The Devil, God & Me, burst onto the national scene. More recently, Bartels has expanded his audience with the release of his EP, To Make You Cry, recorded after relocating to Nashville and reflecting on a period of personal upheaval and renewal.
Bartels has toured with American Aquarium, The White Buffalo, and John Moreland; he records for MCA/Universal; and he’s performed at Mile of Music, Americanafest, and the C2C Festival. No Depression calls him “a haunting new presence in Americana,” while Americana Highways praises his “unvarnished, soul-bearing songwriting.” Glide Magazine notes his “ability to turn bruised experience into stark, resonant beauty.”
I caught up with Evan Bartels a few months ago for The Working Songwriter to hear about his musical journey so far.
For anyone cheering on the mainstream country return of classic roots musicianship, Spencer Hatcher is a name to remember. Joining the likes of Zach Top and even Billy Strings, he’s a new country artist with some decidedly old-school tendencies and a deep foundation in bluegrass.
Having dropped his debut EP, Honky Tonk Hideaway, in November 2025, the Virginia native planted his flag for two-stepping rhythms and hot-blooded twang. Hatcher got his start in a family bluegrass band; over six tracks, his rich Shenandoah Valley vocal stands center stage, flanked by boundless barn-dance energy and timeless emotional heft. But with a thriving TikTok fanbase and a steamy, slow-dancing debut at country radio (“When She Calls Me Cowboy”), his style goes beyond nostalgia. It marks a shift in possibility, with room for roots artists in the commercial country space.
Speaking with Good Country a few weeks into his first promotional radio tour, Hatcher filled us in on his bluegrass beginnings and why they will always be his baseline. Plus, he opens up about the mainstream return of roots country, TikTok-ing back when it was “a dancing app,” and where he sees his music evolving.
Lately it seems like the foundational stuff from bluegrass and classic country is making a mainstream comeback, and you’re part of that. Do you have any sense of what is driving it?
Spencer Hatcher: I think that it’s like anything, I do believe in a full-circle moment – everything comes back into style. In this case, I’m overjoyed that the traditional sound is coming back. I’ve always called that “real country music,” and that’s just the stuff that all my heroes played. Growing up, I didn’t even know what modern country music was. I thought George Jones was modern. I thought that Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings were modern, and then I found out that stuff was 30 years old 20 years ago.
You grew up on a farm in Virginia, right? Shenandoah Valley?
Yes, sir.
How did you get your country education?
A lot of it was just literally how I was raised. It’s what I lived by. I don’t know if everybody lives by what they sing, but I certainly do. I remember at a very early age, probably 6 or 7 years old, I learned how to drive a tractor and I’d be out in the fields every day working with my dad and running cows, and we had some goats. That’s just been my lifestyle. It’s what I love, still today. Growing up on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley right there at the Blue Ridge Mountains, and coming from a small town, that’s what home is to me. I had a lot of bluegrass around me, of course, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and a lot of old-style country music. So that’s what we listened to, and sang, and jammed to on Friday nights.
You had a family bluegrass band. What drew you all into that music? I mean, this would’ve been in the 2000s. It wasn’t really in fashion.
It’s a fair statement to say that, in the 2000s, bluegrass was probably at an all-time low as far as popularity goes. But in my hometown, you wouldn’t really know that. There were jams, and what attracted me to it was definitely my dad. I can remember my dad sitting there watching me and my brothers play, and he’d be either playing the guitar or playing the banjo and singing. Growing up, I wanted to be like my dad, and so I picked up the banjo at 12 years old and started playing that, and I was just absorbed in it. That was the moment that music really took me over.
I just wanted to play the banjo, and so that’s what I did for three years straight. Friday night wasn’t spent with my friends at football games. It was at the local jam session where the average age was probably 75 years old. … Then my younger brother Connor decided to pick up the bass fiddle and that was history. From there, we started a band and we started playing everywhere we could.
Early on, you and Connor made bluegrass and country life seem fun on TikTok and you ended up with a pretty big following. What made you want to start posting?
I’d seen some friends do it in college and I admired their confidence. I was never into social media. I had it, but I didn’t post. It wasn’t an interest I had. But after I graduated college in 2019, I decided to move back home in March as COVID had hit, and I said, “I’m going to go back home and see about just playing country music.” I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I had a business degree. I was maybe going to be a financial advisor or something, but music was what I wanted to do. It’s what I did all through college, too. I was in four bands in college, and I just had this infatuation with becoming a country performer. I wanted to add that into my bluegrass shows.
So, I did the only thing I thought I could, and I decided to turn on a camera and sing a song. It took about six weeks for me to work up the courage to finally post that video. … And the fifth one is the one that went viral. It only took five videos and it was insane.
Wow, that’s pretty fast. And I think it’s cool that something so modern as TikTok can have so much fiddle playing and traditional lifestyle on there.
Back then in 2020, TikTok was still a dancing app, and I hadn’t seen any [country lifestyle] stuff on there yet. I was like, “Well, I’m going to show people how we live around here and just be myself.” I would oftentimes just turn the camera on and just let it roll.
Let’s talk about where you’re at now. You’ve got this country career going and it’s a little different from the bluegrass stuff, right? I mean, do you see a difference?
Yes, sir. There definitely is. But I guess you could say [I take] a very bluegrass, old-fashioned approach. I play as many shows as I can, just like the guys in bluegrass do and always have. … Of course, yes, the music is different, but I do believe that you can hear some bluegrass influence in my country music. It’s real country music. What we do in the studio, we can directly replicate on stage, and that’s how it is in bluegrass music. That’s how I wanted my country music to be.
I’ve got a fiddle, I’ve got a pedal steel, I’ve got guitars. Every single show I still play bluegrass. And maybe the difference between country music and bluegrass is that country is a little bit more polished, a little bit more produced. But I don’t like a tremendous amount of production. I don’t have anything faking my songs like bass loops or autotune or anything like that. If you come to a show, you get what you hear online.
Honky Tonk Hideaway is your debut EP. What did you want it to be like?
There was definitely a lot of thought and planning that went into the EP. And the song itself, “Honky Tonk Hideaway,” was a very exciting song. I’ve been calling it a barn burner. It’s one that makes you want to get up and dance, and that’s one thing that I hold pretty highly at my shows. I want people to just have fun and dance and have a good time. They did back in the day – you watch Urban Cowboy and everybody’s dancing, everybody’s cutting up and having fun. I don’t know if that’s been lost over the years, but I know that at my shows, a lot of people feel like they can get up and be themselves.
Did you have much of a hand in the songwriting, or are these outside cuts that you fell in love with?
All of these songs right now have been outside cuts, because basically I came to [Nashville in] July of 2024 and it was immediately like, “We need to get to the studio, let’s start getting some music.” There have been songs floating around Nashville for 30 years and they’re just stacked up – things people wrote years and years ago. There’s a song that I’ve not released yet, but it was written in 2009, so for 16 years it’s just been laying in a folder and nobody’s cut it until I came to town. And I’m like, “Man, I love this. This is country music.”
That’s a lot of what these first couple songs that people are getting to hear are. But since I’ve been in town, I’ve been doing a lot of writing and we’re very excited about the songs that I’ve gotten to write. I think we’re going to see a lot more Spencer Hatcher songs coming in the future.
There’s a lot of gold out there that’s still yet to be mined, I suppose.
Yeah, I mean, it was amazing. My producers would reach out to some of the really big companies and say, “Hey, we’ve got a new artist in town that’s looking for songs like George Strait would cut, or Joe Diffie or Keith Whitley or Merle Haggard, so send us what you got.” And we would get these folders of 50 songs and you just go through it and listen and listen.
Tell me about the single, “When She Calls Me Cowboy.” It’s got some of that Keith Whitley thing going on, in my opinion. Why did you want that to be the first single at country radio?
To me, that’s a very special song. … If anything, I compare it to maybe a Conway Twitty song, because it’s pretty intimate, but it certainly isn’t a Conway Twitty song. … It’s very country, very traditional. I love the melody, I love the words, and it’s relatable. I would say a lot of people can relate to a song like that.
I was thinking the same about “Cold Beer and Common Sense.” I feel like everybody has been saying they wish for more of that these days. What’s the sentiment behind the song?
Man, that message is just so powerful and it’s one I wish the entire world could listen to and live by – and not necessarily the cold beer part. As far as common sense and everybody getting along, regardless of what side of the fence you stand on, regardless of your political party, that’s one thing a lot of people want – to make it about politics. It’s like, “This is not a political song.” You’ve got to listen to the words. It’s about no matter what your beliefs are, everybody should be able to sit at a table and laugh and have fun and get along. I’ve always believed that there needs to be so much more of that in the world. And that’s honestly why I’m in music, is because music spreads joy. It spreads smiles.
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As one of Nashville’s key classic-country connoisseurs, fiddle maestro Joshua Hedley has long been a musician of many hats. In 2018 his first solo album Mr. Jukebox tapped 1960s-style countrypolitan. 2022’s Neon Blue embraced the lush warmth of the ‘90s-era format, and he regularly thrills crowds with cover sets from across time at the famed Nashville honky-tonk, Robert’s Western World. Yet with his new album All Hat, Hedley dons the metaphorical cap he’s long obsessed over – the wide-brimmed stetson of his Western Swing heroes.
A titan of twang and perhaps Broadway’s finest down-home devotee of the traditional arts, All Hat finds the lifelong Bob Wills fan going back to his roots. Produced by Western Swing icon and Asleep at the Wheel founder Ray Benson, the album captures the upbeat joy of an eminently danceable (yet often overlooked) country style, which Hedley has been loving and learning since he was 8 years old.
Over 11 tracks of old-style originals, he celebrates a genre defined by jaunty rhythms and euphoric solos meant to keep a crowd dancing long into the night. With an already-respected resumé, Hedley still calls All Hat his “pièce de resistance,” and feels Western Swing deserves its due in this era of cultural callbacks.
“It’s definitely not seen the renaissance that say bluegrass or the outlaw country sound have,” he laments.
Joshua Hedley spoke with Good Country about the new album, the differences between Western Swing and other country styles, and what it’s like to be produced by one of your heroes. Plus, he explains how “getting stoned and playing country music” is the best cure for creative burnout.
Your new album is called All Hat. But that term is famously used to describe posers – and you don’t fit that bill when it comes to country. So why are you calling it All Hat?
Joshua Hedley: Well some people disagree, man. [Laughs] I don’t know what constitutes “not a poser.” I would think playing country music since you were 8 would take care of that, but apparently not.
Really?
It is what it is. I don’t really give a shit, but it was just kind of poking fun at myself and those criticisms. I just think it’s funny. But honestly, for the album, I was working on a different album. I was writing for something else and I was on the road with Asleep at the Wheel and Brennen Leigh – we were doing a package show tour together – and I was just hanging out with Ray. He was like, “You ought to let me make a record on you.” I’ve been wanting to do another Western Swing album for a long time and I was just like, “This is it.” When Ray Benson wants to make a record on you, you make a fucking Western Swing record.
It came out really great. I’m enjoying it for sure. I wonder, how are you feeling about your craft these days? Like you said you’ve been doing this since… well, your whole life really.
Man, I’m feeling good about it these days. This album in particular has been just a joy all the way around. Writing – it was really fun. Recording – it was really fun. Playing these songs live is super fun, and it’s something I’ve been needing. You get pretty burned out when you do it this much. I come off the road and I go back to playing music just at home. When you play like that, you get burnt out hard – and I was really burnt out. This record is kind of pulling me out of the burnout.
That’s interesting. I’ve been watching you at Robert’s Western World for years and it’s always felt like you had that dialed in. I mean, you’ve earned the respect of everybody in the field, and you could probably be making a more commercial play, but it seems like you’re more inspired to make music with your friends and do small residencies. Is that a more satisfying life?
Definitely. I’ve done a lot of touring and all of that, but when I’m really having fun is when I’m down at Robert’s or Dee’s [Country Cocktail Lounge] or Skinny Dennis. I’ve been playing these solo acoustic shifts at Dee’s, it’s just two hours a week and I just sit there with my guitar and get stoned and play country songs. It’s kind of empty in there, and I get to do whatever I want. I forgot how much fun I have doing that, so I’ve been leaning more towards playing at Robert’s and doing the honky-tonk thing lately, just because at the end of the day, you got to do what makes you happy. If I was going to do something I wasn’t enjoying, then I could get a desk job and probably make a lot more money than I make doing this.
Maybe.
I wonder, do you ever feel like you know a secret that some of your peers are missing? I mean, when you talk about that burnout phase, and being able to sit down and just get stoned and play country music, is that a secret hack of the lifestyle?
I don’t know about a hack or anything like that, but for me, I am having the most fun when I am playing covers and just singing old songs that I really love. You hear a great song on the radio and the feeling that you get from hearing that song? Imagine the feeling you get from singing it. That’s my jam.
You’ve been calling All Hat your “pièce de resistance.” And I cannot speak French, so I can’t say that phrase. But how do you figure?
I love country music in all its forms – well… maybe not all its forms. But most of its forms. Western Swing has always been my very favorite thing to play and sing, and I actually made a tribute to Bob Wills when I was 15 with Buddy Spicher and his band up here in Nashville.
What? Really?
Yeah, it’s all Bob Wills covers, and a lot of ’em, I think probably I learned them from Asleep at the Wheel. … It’s just always been on my mind that I should write one of these instead of just doing Bob Wills songs, and always wanted to do it. And then getting to do it with somebody like Ray and with the players who are on the album – guys I’ve looked up to my whole life. I don’t know, it’s just the vibe was in the room and this record came out better than I could ever imagine.
Tell me a little bit about your songwriting on this one. What do you do differently when you’re writing a Western Swing tune?
Oh yeah. It is actually quite different because a lot of those melodies come out of the pop world. And when I say pop, I mean like ’30s and ’40s pop.
Like the original pop.
The original pop. Big band music and stuff like that. Country’s very structured, at least the classic kind that I do to where you’re verse, chorus, turnaround, chorus, outro, something like that. It’s real regimented and formulaic and it’s a different approach to writing Western Swing. A lot of those songs are just one verse, and then you play a bunch of solos, and then you just repeat that verse and take it home, which is a very jazz standards thing to do.
I guess I never thought of that.
Like on “Fresh Hot Biscuits.” I kind of approached that how Bob and them would approach “Ida Red” or something, which is really just a fiddle tune that he wrote words to. I leaned into borrowing old lines from old blues songs and tried to find some of those old lines. Like in “All Hat” – “I know a gal up over the hill/ She won’t do it, but her sister will.” That line’s as old as time.
Right. So the structure, is that because it’s made for dancing?
Yeah, the vocal is secondary a lot of the time, and the lyrics certainly are. It’s more about dancing and the whole thing evolved out of square dance culture and callers where there weren’t lyrics to the songs. It was just a guy telling you what to do on the dance floor. The lyrics are kind of secondary to the overall vibe, and the musicianship is really a big part of it, too.
I did want to ask you about “Stuck in Texas” because that one’s got Ray on it. It’s got that jumpy beat, and a little bit of yodeling in there, too. Where did that one come from?
I had wrote several songs that had really similar chord progressions at that time. I had written them in a row, and I was trying to get out of that. And I’m also trying to push myself on guitar to write outside of three chords, four chords. I just kind of came up with that. I was thinking about the Sons of the Pioneers when I wrote that song, wanting a real good guy, cowboy-movie cowboy. Thinking about Gene Autry and stuff. Then it was just a no brainer for Ray to step in on. Mr. Texas.
What’s it like to be produced by a guy like Ray Benson? Is it different than playing in his band?
It is different than playing in his band because his band is his brainchild and he knows exactly what he wants it to sound like. I think he recognized that this was my brainchild and we all kind of did it together. Ray, he kind of choreographed a lot of it being like, “We should throw the ensemble part here and twin this,” and “We got to have fiddle on the intro,” that sort of thing. But a lot of it was just a group of guys that play together all the time getting together and playing these songs. And what happened was just natural.
You said somewhere in your bio that you grew up playing fiddle with guys who were in their 50s and 60s, and learning from them. I just wonder, is that what you aspire to be one day?
Yeah, definitely. There’s actually this kid Nash [Grier] that comes down to Robert’s whenever Brazilbilly plays and it’s always a treat. He’s like six or seven years old and he’s a really great fiddle player. He comes up and he sings “Hey, Good Lookin'” and he plays “Orange Blossom Special” behind his back – all the little things I used to do when I was his age. Now that I’m 40 years old, I’m like, “Man, look at that little guy.” It really brings back memories. I was that kid and I love seeing a new generation embracing all this stuff. It’s really special to get to pass it on.
What you hope people take away from this one. I know it’s a labor of love for you and a lot of fun to do, but what do you hope people get from this thing? Do you want to spark a revival?
I don’t know about any revival, but I hope people have fun with it. I hope that they don’t take it too serious. Music can get so heavy these days, and I get it. But I want to remind folks that you can just keep it light and make a great record. Sometimes it’s nice to just dance, to just do some two-stepping, learn how to polka and not be so serious all the time. It’s all fun. That’s why we got into this. So I just want people to remember to enjoy themselves.
Evan Honer opens his new album, Everything I Wanted, with a charge of electric guitar – an unexpected twist for a singer-songwriter who has mostly recorded with a stripped-back sound. And after commanding attention with that blast of energy, Honer carries the listener through a range of emotions familiar to any twentysomething (and beyond). There are breakup songs, of course, but also entanglements with loneliness, self-doubt, and even the relationships that seem to be going well.
Recorded in Honer’s garage studio just outside of Nashville, Everything I Wanted documents a creative moment where sonic exploration may be the biggest priority. However, the fans who discovered Honer in 2022 through a TikTok cover of Tyler Childers’ “Jersey Giant” will likely embrace the songwriting on the new album, with lyrics that reflect a day in the life of someone who’s still figuring things out.
Honer was raised in Surprise, Arizona and excelled in competitive diving at California Baptist College in Riverside. Although a spot on the U.S. Olympic team was within reach, Honer turned instead to a career in music and established his own label, Cloverdale Records. From his home office, Honer called into Good Country to talk about his new album, his relationship with fans, and the road ahead.
I listened to your catalog, and this album seems more electrified than your previous work. Why it was important for you to show another side of your musical approach?
Evan Honer: I felt like the first two albums were… I guess it was what I was into and the production that I was a fan of at the time. I was so new to everything, too. I just thought, “I’m gonna record the guitar, then maybe we’ll have drums.” But I hardly had any drums at all with my first two albums. I guess I just didn’t know the possibilities. And the more I grew as an artist, and thankfully, with the resources that I have, the more things I can do. If I want this exact sound, I know I can do it and I can do it in my garage. My taste has changed. I grew as an artist, and I realized, why not? I can do whatever I want literally.
Are you pretty consistent with your writing routine?
Yeah, most of the time I’m working on something. And it could be one line the whole day, but I sat there for three hours. That’s very common. Now I’m writing with other people more – with artists that I am inspired by. And when I’m back home, it takes a long time. Sometimes it’s sitting with my guitar for hours, and I don’t get anything except a couple words. Or I go backwards and I change everything, then I don’t even have lyrics anymore. I try to do some type of writing every day, but on the road it’s a lot more difficult.
The song “Curtain” captures your relationship with your fans. What does that relationship between artists and audience look like for you personally?
It’s such a difficult thing for me. Recently I’ve been able to enjoy a tour more and not be so affected by it emotionally. On my first tour, I was so not used to how you’re running on no sleep at all and you’re around the same people for a month. You have a bad show, and it feels like your life is over. That is sort of what I wrote [“Curtain”] about, just the ups and downs of being on tour.
I still am upset after a bad show and I don’t know if I ever will not be. In my opinion, a bad show could be, like, one person talking for one song. It was tough for me to realize – and it still is tough for me to realize – that I have such a different perspective on it. There’s my perspective, and their perspective. I felt like I needed to write that song where it’s like, “I’m looking out at you, and I’m just grateful that you guys bothered showing up to hear me scream about my problems.”
And it really helps me, now that I let it. They’re constantly telling me, “Oh, your music means the world to me,” and that is the greatest thing to hear. But them being there is like the whole reason and it means so much to me. That relationship is not one-sided at all. It’s completely: “I need you as much as you need me.”
Listening to “Not There Yet,” I can remember that phase in relationships where it’s like, everybody wants me to be all in, except I’m not sure myself if I’m ready. When you finish a song like that, who is the first person that gets to hear it?
Most of the time, my best friend Blake Abernathy. He was a big reason why I started doing music. When I graduated high school, I went to go sell AT&T Internet and DIRECTV. I moved out to Minnesota with Blake and that’s where we became best friends. We worked together and he shared his music tastes. Tyler Childers was the first person he showed me and I’d never had felt that feeling before, from hearing a true songwriter, someone that makes me feel something.
And from that point, I went down a rabbit hole with my favorite songwriters, like Benjamin Tod, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and so many that I can’t even think of. And that’s how I started and fell in love with writing. From then on, I sent every single song to Blake and he always shoots me straight. He’s always such a big supporter in anything I’m doing, and he always gets it. He’ll tell me, “This is very different, I’m not sure if I like it yet,” or stuff like that.
For the record, can you explain how the “Jersey Giant” video took off?
The first song I ever posted on TikTok was the first song I released, called “How Could I Ever.” I had a good reaction to it and that was literally one of the only songs I had finished. At that point I was like, “Holy crap, I have to write another song because I don’t have any.” Maybe four months later, I was like, “All right, I got a new one.” So, I released “Comfort the Fall” and then “Foolin’ Ourselves,” and maybe a couple other ones, I’m not sure.
Then I released “Jersey Giant” as a cover and it went crazy. Then a bunch of label people were in my email! That was so funny. “Jersey Giant” was a big moment, for sure, but I think the songs that made people come to the shows were from my first and second album, rather than “Jersey Giant.”
I saw you playing banjo and singing a Noah Kahan song, “Dial Drunk,” on a TikTok video. When do you find yourself reaching for the banjo? Is there a certain mood where you think, “Banjo is going to make this better”?
Yeah, there’s a good amount of banjo that I played on this album. I don’t know, I just love the banjo. It’s always so interesting to me to have a song like “Long Road.” It’s not super country. And then you throw in a very country instrument, like a banjo. I love having really country instruments in songs that are not country and have very different melodies than what a traditional country song would normally have. It’s always fun to just throw in a banjo, whenever it feels like it needs it. Maybe I overdo it sometimes. [Laughs]
Do you remember when you first reached for the banjo, or what led you to it?
My grandma actually got me that banjo. I just wanted a new and different instrument to write on, to create new ideas. I think that’s always helpful with piano and banjo. Just writing on a different instrument to hopefully get a different outcome, because sometimes I’m writing on the guitar and it feels like “I’ve written this song already” and I don’t feel excited about it. Now I’m trying to explore every option to write a song, even if it’s writing and producing at the same time.
That’s a scary thing to me. It’s like, we’re writing this song as we’re making it. Normally you have a whole song, or at least how I do it, and you produce it out, and the creative part is producing it. But it’s kind of scary when you don’t have the lyrics. You don’t even know what the chorus is going to be, but you’re already starting to produce it.
Is that because you’re on deadline or just trying to stretch your boundaries? What leads you to a situation like that?
There’s no deadline at all. [Laughs] I’m a fully independent artist, so it’s all up to me when I want to release stuff. I think that’s why I feel like I’ve released a lot more than maybe somebody that kind of started the same time. Three albums in, it’s just me trying to make something different.
I read you released an album the day you graduated from college. Was that like a mission statement? Like, “I’m gonna do this. I’m a musician from this day forward”?
Yeah, pretty much. It’s called West on I-10, because I would go west on I-10 driving back from home to college. Funny enough, the navigational voice would always pop up in my voice memos with, like, “I-10 West.” I had already decided that I was going to do music full-time. I was a diver in college and I originally made plans with my coach to do my fifth year and go for the Olympic trials. That was tough, making that big change. First, my dad was very much like, “Wait, are you sure you want to do this?” But now he’s the biggest supporter ever. There was just a lot of uncertainty and releasing that album on the day I graduated just felt like the most normal thing for me. All those songs I’d written in college are now on that album, and I felt like then I can move on to whatever else.
What goes through your mind now when you hear this new album in its entirety?
This is always tough for me. In January when I recorded it, listening through the album, I’m, like, incredibly stoked on it. And I still am, but it’s a different type of stoked now. I’m stoked that it’s out and I don’t have to sit on these songs anymore. I can move on to what I’m liking now. Because right now, my taste has already changed, where I’m into different production styles, I’m into different, really weird lyrics, or whatever it is. I’m in a different spot now.
That’s always an interesting thing to see how delayed the music industry is. Even if I’m independent, it still takes time to do all these things. So that’s always a hard thing for me, but I’m so happy that it’s out, and I’m so happy that we recorded that way, just 18 straight days of recording. That helps with the cohesiveness of it. I’m really proud of it, and I’m really proud that it’s my third album, and I’m excited to make something else.
During the 1992 CMA Awards, Kathy Mattea had a decision to make. The singer-songwriter and 1989 and 1990 CMA Female Vocalist of the Year had opted to wear four red AIDS awareness ribbons, which had become prominent at award shows such as the Tonys, the GRAMMYs, and the Oscars. In ‘92, the Country Music Association decided to hand out green ribbons to promote environmental protection. According to a Billboard article, reports of the CMA’s decision sparked controversy and the organization reacted by offering to distribute red ribbons to artists backstage.
But there was no plan to publicly address the disease on the broadcast. After a local columnist wrote that country fans may not know what the red ribbons symbolize, calling for Mattea to publicly speak out on AIDS – which had become the number one cause of death for all Americans ages 25 to 44 – Mattea realized simply wearing the ribbon was not enough.
“We went to the CMA and said, look, we’ve been called out and I don’t wanna grandstand and I don’t want to go against you guys, but can you help me?” Mattea says. “We basically got no response. So the night of the show I had to decide what I was going to do. I didn’t want to be sanctimonious… How do you stand up in a moment when you feel called to do something bigger? I just went backstage during the commercial before and searched my heart.”
When Mattea took the stage to present, she spoke the names of three of her friends who had died from AIDS. One of those names belonged to her dear friend Michael, who had died without ever telling Mattea he had the disease.
“The problem was he couldn’t tell me,” she says. “You didn’t know who you could talk to and who you couldn’t back then. It’s hard to fathom now, but that’s the way it was.
“Something in me just kind snapped and I thought, I’d like to do something to help. I had a long talk with my manager and I was like, these people in New York who are working on this, they don’t even know that I’m down here in Nashville and we’re dealing with it, too.”
Mattea got in touch with the Red Hot organization, which was founded by Leigh Blake and John Carlin in 1989 to raise awareness and financial support around the AIDS epidemic. Carlin, who got his start in the New York art world, where he curated shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art and befriended artists such as Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz, had already experienced immense loss among his friend group.
“Being in New York in the 1980s was at the start this kind of paradise liberation. There was all this creativity. If you think of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in New York, it’s when hip-hop, punk art, music, the East Village arts scene, graffiti, all these things were really being born culturally,” Carlin says.
“Then by the mid ‘80s, the specter of HIV and AIDS turned what felt like a paradise into an inferno. All of a sudden people that you would see at parties or at openings – you’d go, ‘Where’s Nicholas?’ and people get that kind of quiet look and say, ‘Oh, he’s sick. He’s in St. Vincent’s.’”
Carlin, who had since left his job as an art curator to work as an entertainment lawyer, began working on Red Hot’s first project, 1990’s Red Hot + Blue, a compilation album featuring pop and rock artists such as Sinead O’Connor, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, U2, David Byrne, and more covering the songs of Cole Porter. The album was a smash hit, raising money for AIDS organizations, including ACT UP, a grassroots protest movement which successfully pushed the government and pharmaceutical companies to release drugs that now allow people to live with HIV.
Despite its success, Carlin had no initial plans to release more Red Hot compilations. He left the law firm where he was employed after the partners gave him an ultimatum. (“My reward for [organizing the project] was basically the partners of the law firm said, ‘stop doing that or leave,’” Carlin says.) Then he received a phone call that would change everything.
“I got a call from George Michael’s manager saying George was a big Red Hot fan. He wants to contribute a song to your next album,” Carlin says. “At the time, we didn’t have a next album. But, in 1991, if George Michael says he wants to give you a track, we were like, ‘Well, we better get an album together.’”
In 1992, the organization released Red Hot + Dance, featuring Michael, Madonna, Sly & the Family Stone, Lisa Stansfield, and more. The album cover featured artwork by Keith Haring. No Alternative, featuring Nirvana, Soul Asylum, Pavement, Patti Smith, and more, followed – and even spawned an MTV special with live performances. AIDS awareness was becoming a key issue among the MTV generation, but the country music industry was still mostly silent.
“I don’t think the seriousness of the problem has hit home yet with the country audience,” Mark Chesnutt, who co-chaired the Country Music AIDS Awareness Campaign alongside Mary Chapin Carpenter, told Billboard in 1992. “Most of the people who speak about AIDS and participate in the awareness programs have been in the pop business, movie stars and rock stars.”
Starting the Conversation
If Nashville’s music industry was slower to respond to the AIDS epidemic, it certainly wasn’t because the community hadn’t been impacted.
“If people found out you were HIV positive, there were landlords who threw people out on the street,” Mattea says. “There were medical facilities that would not take them in. I had a friend who worked on my crew for a while who was legendary in Nashville for taking people in during the AIDS crisis. If you had nowhere to go, you went to his house and he had an army of volunteers. There were lots of stories like that. But there was also a lot of rejection and a lot of stigma.”
After Mattea’s statement at the 1992 CMA Awards, she was quietly approached by people who had been impacted by AIDS. At an event the morning after the award show, Mattea was approached by a man named Bubba who worked at a large radio station in the Deep South who had lost his high school best friend to AIDS. Later, a man who worked for The Nashville Network’s hit talk show Nashville Now told Mattea his son was diagnosed with HIV. Another, a Nashville radio DJ, told Mattea that he had AIDS, but didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else in his workplace.
“There were all these people in our community who couldn’t talk to each other about it,” Mattea says. “That’s what I was wanting – some compassion and support and for people to be able to speak up about what they were struggling with and hear each other.”
In 1992, Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen and Jo Walker-Meador, former executive director of the CMA, co-chaired the city’s first AIDS Walk. Mattea and Chesnutt performed at the event. With Red Hot + Country, Mattea set out to help expand country music’s AIDS outreach beyond Music City, leaving nerve-wracked answering machine messages for anyone she thought might be interested in taking part in the project.
“Kathy was very brave. I think it’s almost like a heroic gesture for her to take a stand at that moment,” John Carlin says. “Let’s just say [there was] a lot of homophobia in the South and country music in general, and AIDS-phobia. It was not a topic people wanted to talk about. It was really difficult. I think she made it her business so that people couldn’t ignore it.”
Hunter Kelly, a country journalist who hosted Apple Music Country’s Proud Radio from 2020 to 2024, says, as a gay kid growing up in Alabama, artists who championed LGBTQ+ causes felt like a safe place. He remembers Mattea’s speech at the 1992 CMA Awards and attending Reba McEntire’s 1996 tour and seeing her bring a replica of the famous AIDS Memorial Quilt, an ongoing community project to honor the lives lost to HIV/ AIDS.
“I definitely knew on some level I was gay, but I was also in a Southern Baptist church, so I was drawn to those things,” Kelly says. “I was drawn to that mainstream representation that was more open to queer people.”
“Teach Your Children Well”
Carlin says the original idea for the Red Hot + Country album was to have country artists cover John Lennon songs. He even met with Yoko Ono, who granted the organization permission to use Lennon’s songs for the project. But when that idea didn’t come to fruition, the theme shifted to the Laurel Canyon folk-rock scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the songs of Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Bob Dylan. The album would be produced by Randy Scruggs, a GRAMMY-winning musician and songwriter whose own father, Earl Scruggs, had played a significant role in the cross-generational Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album Will the Circle Be Unbroken two decades earlier.
“Randy kind of wanted to recreate that spirit of bringing generations together and, obviously, because of his dad, he had access on a level that I never could get,” Carlin says.
Alongside renditions of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Teach Your Children Well” and Jackson Browne’s “Rock Me on the Water,” the album featured covers of country classics, such as the Carter Family’s “Keep On the Sunny Side” that had inspired California folkies of the ‘60s.
The album also features the first recording by the band Wilco, which was formed by Jeff Tweedy in 1994 after the breakup of his former band, Uncle Tupelo. The group teamed up with singer-songwriter Syd Straw to perform “The T.B. is Whipping Me,” an Ernest Tubb song inspired by his hero Jimmie Rodgers, who died of tuberculosis in 1933.
Carlin says he wanted to highlight that Rodgers, known as the father of country, had also died from a disease that weakened the immune system.
“What is the difference between tuberculosis and HIV? Really nothing other than homophobia,” Carlin says. “It’s a disease; it doesn’t choose people.”
Other standouts include Nanci Griffith and Jimmy Webb’s “If These Old Walls Could Speak,” Patty Loveless’ “When I Reach the Place I’m Going,” and Marty Stuart and Jerry & Tammy Sullivan’s cover of the traditional gospel tune, “Up Above My Head/ Blind Bartimus.”
Perhaps the most stirring song on the album is Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Willie Short,” which was written by Carpenter’s producer and guitarist John Jennings after seeing a Newsweek feature called “The Faces of AIDS.” There, he spotted the photo of a Houston dishwasher named Willie Short.
“I was looking at the pictures, and under the picture of Willie Short, there was a very affecting caption and it just got to me: ‘Don’t forget me. From time to time, mention my name’,” Jennings told The Washington Post in 1994.
Red Hot also produced a Red Hot + Country television special, which aired on CMT. The program featured Mattea, Griffith, Earl Scruggs, Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings, Vassar Clements, and more performing at the Ryman as well as interviews with rural and Southern folks impacted by the AIDS epidemic.
“Three Chords and the Truth”
In many ways, the early ‘90s seemed to usher in a new era in country, where queer issues were concerned. Kelly points to Garth Brooks’ song “We Shall Be Free,” which includes the line “when we’re free to love anyone we choose.”
“You also had Bill Clinton, who was a Southerner, but also a Democrat, in office,” Kelly says. “Culturally, in ‘94, there was a lot going on that dovetailed – I really see the Red Hot + Country album as country music being a part of the mainstream at that time.”
None of that translated to radio play, however. Despite the Red Hot + Country’s wealth of talent, Carlin says the album was “dead on arrival,” a huge contrast to the compilation album Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles which was released the year prior and was certified Platinum three times by the RIAA. Red Hot + Country peaked at No. 30 on the U.S. Billboard Top Country Albums chart.
“Sadly, it was pretty clear it was homophobia in country radio,” Carlin says. “At that time, if you didn’t get played on radio, you couldn’t get arrested.”
Though Red Hot + Country didn’t gain the listenership of previous Red Hot releases, Carlin and Mattea both remain extremely proud of the project.
“It’s a beautiful cross section of musicians and music. Many of these people I know and love, and I feel proud of my community for stepping in and stepping up and doing something to try to contribute in this situation that just felt so impossible back then,” Mattea says. “I’m more of a ‘fraidy cat than it might appear, and I’m happy with my younger self that I could listen to my heart and step in.”
In the years since Red Hot + Country, LGBTQ+ representation in country music has grown tremendously. Queer artists such as Chely Wright, Brandi Carlile, Brandy Clark, Orville Peck, T.J. Osborne, and the Kentucky Gentlemen have opened doors within the genre. But Kelly says when he launched Proud Radio in 2020, he faced many of the same roadblocks Red Hot + Country faced 25 years earlier.
“There were artists whose publicists would be like ‘We don’t want to make [being gay] the main focus or we don’t want to belabor it,” Kelly says. “With the anti-DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] thing [from the] Trump administration coming in, we might as well be in 1994, as far as the mainstream country space.”
Kelly champions LGBTQ+ country artists Adam Mac and Chris Housman’s recently released “The Outside” as an anthem for queer country artists who’ve never felt embraced by the industry.
“I keep going and keep hoping for progress, but it’s disheartening,” Kelly says. “But also I look to artists like Chris and Adam who keep making great music and purposefully [making music] in the mainstream.”
Earlier this year, singer-songwriter David Michael Hawkins, an openly gay and openly HIV-positive country artist, released his song “Sin,” which addresses the stigma around HIV.
“When I started to look back on the emotion surrounding primarily the stigma attached to the diagnosis, that’s where the emotional well ran really deep,” Hawkins says. “Stigma is rampant in a lot of LGBTQIA identities. For me, the HIV diagnosis was a big part of it, which was also surrounded by poverty, which was surrounded by substance abuse. They were all in this weird cycle of feeding each other. The healthier I got physically, mentally, and emotionally, the more I was able to put words to that deep well of emotion.”
Hawkins says he wants to expand the conversation around HIV/AIDS by helping more artists feel comfortable with sharing their personal connection to the disease.
“Sin is not the first country song written about HIV. There are probably hundreds or thousands, but up until very recently and maybe up until my song, there’s no one that’s been transparent about that being the root of why the song was written,” Hawkins says.
“I think if the industry is doing our job, which is to offer a safe space for artists to come up with inspiration from anyone or anything, then the artists should feel comfortable saying, ‘Yes, this is about HIV, or this is about drug use, or this is about domestic violence,’ and however closely it’s attached to them as an individual. I think we could probably do a little bit better about letting artists know that no matter the subject matter or the inspiration, if it’s a good song and if it helps people – if it’s three chords and the truth – then we’ve done our job as country musicians.”
Normally, when singer-guitarist Nick Hexum plays a gig, it’s fronting legendary hard rock band 311, performing for massive audiences in huge venues around the globe. But, on a recent evening in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was backed by Americana/bluegrass act Water Tower in front of a small crowd at the Open Chord, a cozy space on the west side of the city along Kingston Pike.
“I’ve always been drawn to music that has energy, and there’s so much energy in flatpicking, the banjo, the tremolo picking of the mandolin,” Hexum tells BGS backstage. “This stuff has rock and roll energy that predates rock and roll.”
For Hexum, this deep dive into bluegrass, country, and Americana of late has become something of an intrinsic mission from within. It’s the current soundtrack of a 55-year-old rock star carefully aiming to dig up and examine the melodic roots of his past – these existential anchor points needed to move forward.
“This whole experience is just bringing it really full circle, like a home,” Hexum says. “My mom is from Nashville, so this is me getting in touch with [memories of] when we used to go to visit my great aunt Margaret in Gatlinburg and she’d play the autoharp.”
Retracing old routes, both geographically and sonically, was no more apparent for Hexum than when he and Water Tower appeared at Americanafest in Nashville. The stop in Music City was part of a larger tour throughout the Southeast in an attempt for Hexum to not only reconnect with his past, but also create an opportunity to break new ground for his craft – especially outside of the hard rock juggernaut that is 311.
“I’m just grateful that fans are showing up and are open to seeing me do something completely different,” he says.
During the intimate set in Knoxville, Hexum and Water Tower crowded around a single microphone, weaving in, out, and around each other in a whirlwind of acoustic instruments and Hexum’s signature vocals. The show ran a gamut of material, whether it be classic 311 numbers or selections from Hexum’s latest solo record, Phases of Hope and Hollow.
“The intimacy [of the show], it’s wonderful to be so up close. It’s totally different [for me] from a technical situation – it takes silence,” Hexum reflects.
This project is the brainchild of Hexum and Water Tower’s Kenny Feinstein. Water Tower is a rising ensemble from Los Angeles, one which initially started as an old-time/punk group, only to lean further into becoming a high-energy string band. They raised more than a few eyebrows when they performed at the recent Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado.
“We’re walking into another side of Nick,” Feinstein says. “311 is all about bringing people together through unity and different styles of music, so this is another slice of Nick’s personality.”
For Feinstein, working with Hexum has been this surreal experience, personally and professionally. As a millennial growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Feinstein was a huge 311 fan, so much so he vividly remembers their video for the smash hit “Amber” and seeing 311 guitarist Tim Mahoney sporting a mohawk haircut.
“My friend and I saw the video and [decided] we needed mohawks,” Feinstein reminisces with a laugh. “So, all three of us went to a party [that night] and got our heads shaved into a mohawk.”
This latest musical chapter for Hexum and Water Tower happened serendipitously through the sober community both Hexum and Feinstein are part of in Los Angeles. Leading up to their crossing paths, Hexum had been heading down the rabbit hole of an Apple Music playlist that featured singer-songwriter Faye Webster. His ear perked up.
“I really like her songs, the pedal steel [sound], and the beautiful arrangements,” Hexum says of Webster. “And then, I reached out to Drew Vandenberg, who produces her music. We started talking about working together and one of the things I wanted to do was learn some of those instruments. So, I bought a pedal steel and took some lessons.”
Making space in his studio for the pedal steel, Hexum wanted to add a few more instruments into his creative arsenal, including the mandolin. Cue Feinstein. Meeting him through the sober community, Hexum asked Feinstein if he would teach him how to play the mandolin.
“I had [Kenny] over and I was like, ‘Let’s do something that sounds like [Faye Webster],’” Hexum says. “And he was just a cornucopia of ideas.”
At that juncture in his career, Hexum “mostly had played six-string guitar,” with these other instruments “a new world” for the artist. And yet, even though he was just learning how to play them, he was already well-versed in the sounds of bluegrass and country.
“Nick saw a dulcimer on my wall and I was really impressed that he knew what that was,” Feinstein recalls. “He told me about his heritage and [growing up] in Omaha and how he loved country and bluegrass. Then I said, ‘We should jam sometime.’”
That initial jam session between Hexum and Feinstein resulted in the duo writing five songs right out of the gate. Soon, Feinstein brought in Water Tower banjoist Tommy Drinkard and wrote several more.
“And now we’re on tour. It’s so special to see the humility that [Nick] carries, the gratitude and appreciation for all of his fans after so many years of doing it,” Feinstein says. “It just inspires us to have gratitude for where we’re at now, and to know the journey we’re on is about continuing to lessen the suffering [of others through music].”
“There’s so many people out there in the crowd crying, really taking it in,” Drinkard adds. “These are very intense subjects and Nick does a good job of explaining where he’s coming from with the songs he’s writing.”
For Hexum, this recent journey into the bluegrass realm has become this incredibly cathartic experience. He found himself not only dissecting his past and that of his parents, but also that of his ancestors going back generations.
“My mom is from Tennessee and my grandpa was a Southern Baptist minister,” Hexum notes. “Half of my family does have these southern roots, so when I hear bluegrass, it just feels like part of my DNA.”
Beyond the new music itself, Hexum views this ever-evolving project as part of his ongoing quest to find himself through this vibrant kaleidoscope of sound and purpose. It’s about stripping everything down, focusing on the essence of a particular melody, and always being aware of the beauty of the sacred platform that is live performance. Turn off the amps, pick up the acoustic guitar and huddle around a lone microphone, together.
“It has gotten to a point where I’m like, ‘All right, time is limited here, and I want to make the most of the time that I have now,’” Hexum says humbly. “I mean, when you see your kids get older and get their driver’s license and stuff like that, you just feel this passing of an era. And so, for me, it’s getting into a different mode of songwriting – really focusing on sincerity and simplicity.”
Brennen Leigh says she’s been a goner for country music since she was a teenager. But when it comes to her discography, she hasn’t been gone for long. Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love (released October 3) is the musician’s fourth album in five years, and it continues a creative streak that matches her love of traditional country arrangements with clever, well-crafted songwriting.
Recorded in Dayton, Texas, where Leigh now lives, Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love is a mostly up-tempo collection that should appeal to anyone who loves country from its golden eras. Catching up with Good Country, Leigh talks about the turning point in her love of country, her fondness for bluegrass, and how she really feels about one of Nashville’s most famous phrases.
I was curious about the title track, “Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love.” It’s got such a positive feel. Why did you choose that one to put on the cover of your record?
Brennen Leigh: I love the title of it, for one, and for two, I wrote that with a dear friend named Elijah Ocean. He’s a great writer and a player and we kind of came up through the mud together, I’ll say. He told me, “I just was thinking about you as I was writing it.” And not even about me singing it, but me as a person. He sent me the first verse – and I’m a procrastinator and I won’t read people’s texts and I won’t return phone calls – but he knows I love him, he doesn’t care. That’s how songwriters are. But about a month later, when I finally went and listened to it, I said, “Elijah, I hope you haven’t finished that, because I would love to participate.” He said, “Yeah, of course, that’s why I sent it to you.”
So I finished it. And it’s just two verses. That’s the whole song. I love that thing about songwriting, and specifically country music, where it’s just a quick statement and out. So many of the best songs are just a verse and a chorus, or even just a verse. We wrote it in the midst of recording this album and then we recorded it down in Dayton. And it’s like, well, that’s an obvious choice for the album, because it is so positive. I really like performing it.
It’s encouraging, too. Have you had a good response from the crowd with that song?
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from people. On the surface, it’s a love song and it’s a relationship record, but to me, it’s really more of a “Don’t ever give up on yourself” message. Because people come and go, sadly, in our lives, and for me, it’s more a story of resilience.
I think it’s similar to the song “Dumpster Diving,” where it gets the point across in a pretty cool way. You filmed that video for “Dumpster Diving” at the Sagebrush in Austin, right?
We did, and it was hot! It was like 90 degrees in April or something. We brought one of our favorite videographers, Oceanna, down from Nashville, and I just kind of threw her into this situation in Austin, but she rolled with it. She really has a wonderful eye. And we dressed me up and put me in a dumpster. [Laughs]
Then some of the other videos for this project look like ‘60s Nashville country. I love the vintage eyeglasses and that cool yellow-and-orange shirt in the “You’re Finally Hurting” video.
Those are my real glasses! [Laughs] I really have a prescription in them to drive with. And the thing specifically about the “Tell Me” video was that we wanted to make it look like we were the Nashville A-Team in the ‘60s. We were just going to work, like country business casual or Western business casual. Like, how an Anita Kerr or Chet Atkins would show up to work in kind of fancy dress, but casual. Read their charts, put the song down, and smoke a cigarette. You know, we weren’t smoking, but that’s kind of the idea.
“Tell Me” is a simple title, but that song says a lot. What was on your mind as you wrote it?
I was imagining calling somebody in a sweaty panic, like, “Oh, I heard something, I’ve got this feeling, and I need you to confirm my suspicions.” And not getting the answer that you want, but sort of trying to demand this answer. I love country songs that are one-sided conversations. There are so many good ones throughout history. For some reason, the one that is popping into my head is “I Met a Friend of Yours Today.” You’re feeling like a little bit of a psycho, like you’re losing your mind a little bit, and you confront somebody. That’s the sort of song that that is.
People often say country is “three chords and the truth.” Do you like that phrase?
I do like it, but I think in a way it’s not 100 percent accurate. We’re splitting hairs here, but for me, a lot of my writing is at least semi-fictional. Maybe I’m doing myself a disservice as an artist by saying that. But fans want to believe, and I think the listener wants to believe, that this is my story, and this came from me tossing in desperation on my bed and grabbing my notebook.
Well, you know, I’m a songwriter and it’s my job to make up stories. While this record has some truth on it, some of these stories are just straight made up! That doesn’t mean that there’s not feeling behind them, or that I haven’t experienced something similar, but I’m also a private enough person that I’m not going to just air things of a certain nature for the public. I do have lines that I won’t cross. Now, I’ll say some of these are true, word for word, and some of them are not. But that’s what imagination is for.
I think the song is not for me, it’s for the listener. So, if somebody gleaned something that they feel personally in one of these songs, I love that. And probably, as a Western swing person at heart, I should say we have a few more than three chords. But I do really appreciate and love that sentiment of like, “This is just no BS, I’m gonna sing this.” I mean, I like that saying, and I think at its heart, it’s pretty true.
How old were you when country music kind of sparked your interest?
I grew up hearing it around the house, but I was maybe 14 before I went headlong into it.
Was there a song or an artist that pulled you in?
There was one summer when my brother and I were already budding musicians. We were already playing gigs. He was heavily into Robert Johnson. I had gotten into that stuff, too, and I liked oldies. I liked ‘50s and ‘60s rock and roll and soul music, like Buddy Holly and Bessie Smith, and I liked some show tunes. We got into country one summer, courtesy of our parents’ record collection.
Then we got a free ticket – via donating a canned good to the radio station – to see Dwight Yoakam. I think I was turning 15, and I kind of flipped my lid. It was our county fair in Fargo, North Dakota and it was probably September or August – and it was probably 40 degrees. I stood there for that whole concert and went, “Wow!!” [Laughs] Then one friend gave me a box set of Hank Williams and that was huge. I already had heard him, but that Bear Family box set is like six or eight discs. I dubbed it onto tapes and that’s all I listened to.
Somebody else gave me a Smithsonian Folkways set that had Bill Monroe on it and it had Lucinda Williams on it, because it was more of a folk label. It was like, “Wow, there’s all these tentacles to country music.” And my family was into it, too. So, I was pretty well immersed, except geographically. I wasn’t around any live music, but I was around a lot of good recorded music.
Are you a fan of bluegrass?
Oh, yeah! Very much, and I grew up with it. My favorite guitar player is Norman Blake. I get asked all the time, “When’s your bluegrass record?” I would love to do something. I just need to get the songs together, because the bluegrass community, they’re the best fans in the world. Bluegrass fans are so loyal, and they know what they like and they don’t care what you look like. It’s a great culture and it’s diverse, and that’s a beautiful thing. So, yeah, that’ll happen.
You know, I wish there were two of me and I had double time. I’ve been loving East Nash Grass and Thunder & Rain. I love the Kody Norris Show. They’re so poised and so good. I’ve been feeling the influence to do something with bluegrass again, because it’s been a long time.
We can maybe wrap it up with this. What are you looking forward to the most coming up?
I just got off a three-week album release tour that was great fun. Before that, I was everywhere. [Laughs] So, to be completely honest, I’m looking forward to being home for a bit. But I’m also working on another project that’s even weirder than all the other ones I’ve ever done. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it feels like a spiritually important album for me to do. I’ve also got some songs in the can with my other band, Wonder Women of Country. We have a couple singles we’ve recorded and I think we’re going to be out together some next year, too.
You’re so collaborative and you’re not just off doing your own thing. It’s like a luxury to have such a great, rich community around you.
Well, thank you. And it is a luxury. Honestly that’s how I’ve gotten by and kept it sane, because I know it’s not about me. I know it’s about the art, and the art can be more fun than when you involve others sometime. Also, I’ve noticed a lot of the good things that have happened in my career are because I’ve worked with other people on musical collaborations. It’s just so much stronger together.
Photo Credit: Lyza Renee
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