“I don’t know when I became an activist,” MORGXN admits. “I’m just a human being who sings from the heart, but my heart is very broken by the world that we are currently living in.”
The singer-songwriter lived in Los Angeles for 10 years before moving back home to Nashville in 2022. “The minute I came back to Nashville, I ran into a guy once. He was like, ‘I only see you at the Capitol singing,’” he recalls. “When I moved back, they were trying to ban drag queens. They were trying to ban women’s access to health care.”
Most recently, he took to the Tennessee State Capitol to protest bills against same-sex marriage. “This is how rights get tested: one state, one bill, one ‘exception,’ and suddenly the floor moves under all of us,” he wrote on Instagram.
“I don’t even think about it as activism. I think about it as humanity. We are more alike as human beings than the media, the news, and politicians would want you to believe,” he explains. “It breaks my heart. If you have listened to this album, there are songs about love and the human experience. The album is for anybody bold enough to live as who they are in the middle of the heartland.
“That is what I hope people get from this album. I hope they feel less alone in their activism… I wouldn’t even use the word activism. I hope they feel less alone in their humanity, period.”
On March 6, MORGXN released a deluxe edition of his album, HEARTLAND, and while it pulls from country music, he wouldn’t exactly label it as such. “I don’t care what genre you tell me it is. I care that I’m speaking something that is true to me, and that’s how I make music,” he says. “I don’t make music outside in.
“I make music inside out. I find what’s inside, and I try to bring it outside,” he continues. “And the heartland is a place that is normally not reserved for people like me and you. And yet, living in the heartland, I see that everyone belongs in the heartland. The heartland is a space for everybody, and I want to reclaim the heartland for everybody.”
Good Country hopped on a Zoom call with MORGXN a week before the album’s release and chatted about collaborations with Tenille Townes and Maggie Rose, the meaning of community, the political divide in country, and the hardest lessons he’s learned since coming out as gay at 19 years old.
What are some of your favorite lyrics on the album?
MORGXN: “GOD CODED” is maybe the most important song I’ve ever written, whether or not most people hear the song – it’s not a radio song. But it is probably the most important song I’ve ever ushered into being. I have no problem with god or religion. I have a huge problem when people use god and religion as a weapon of their hate.
“WILLOW” I wrote for my friend’s daughter who has cerebral palsy, so that she knows that she is a bright light. Already that song has inspired other people, which really means that she has inspired other people. It’s hard for me to choose… “MIGRATION” is about losing my dog. I don’t have a favorite lyric – it’s like choosing a child. [Laughs]
Okay, here’s my funniest favorite line, “EVERGREENS.” The first line: “Tell me your sign/ And I’ll tell you mine/ And I’ll tell you if we’ll be okay.” I think that’s funny, because if I’m dating somebody, I will be like, “What is your sign?” And I’m going to decide right away if we’re even going to be compatible, which is maybe absolutely chaotic, but I love it.
With the deluxe edition of HEARTLAND you have several collaborators, including Tenille Townes, Ruby Amanfu, and Maggie Rose. How did you choose who you wanted, and what did they bring to the table?
Collaboration is like water to me. You know, I have many liquids here on my table. I am a gay man, so I have tons of liquid everywhere around – iced coffee is always a yes. Collaboration is also like breathing to me. When I think about making music, “the bible” to me is Willie Nelson and “On the Road Again.” The life I love is making music with my friends, and I can’t wait to get on the road again. That is how I think about music.
When I moved to Nashville, there were voices that I saw popping up that were saying really important things, like [Tenille Townes’] “Jersey on the Wall.” They were saying messages that really resonated with me inside of a space that is still not reserved for people like me.
I came here in 2022, which was 11 years after this manager told me I would never make it in music as an openly gay person. In Nashville, there was a thing bubbling up, but it was like you were reserved for this sideshow experience. You can be gay, but only during June, only when there’s a tent for you to stand under. That’s not how I believe in love or life or humanity. I reached out to several people wanting to create. Truth be told, I have people in my DMs who are massive artists, who love what I’m doing, but who can’t align with who I am because it will hurt their fan base. That’s insane. That’s 2026 for you.
But artists like Tenille Townes, Maggie Rose, Ruby Amanfu, Katie Pruitt – who’s obviously a queer beacon – and Langhorne Slim, they were people who were brave enough to collaborate outside of what is the norm for them. I’m really honored that they’re helping me create this version of the heartland where everyone gets to live.
With Tenille, “HEAVEN KNOWS” was the first song we ever wrote together. It was actually the day we met. The song has this sort of inner child: Why do we even keep trying in a world that feels so hard? Why do you love when your heart has been broken so many times? Why do you keep making music when it feels like the music industry is as crazy as ever? And why do you keep being a good person in a world that is hell-bent on trying to make you feel like you are an abomination? I try because I care. I love so deeply, you know.
Having grown up in Nashville, what did community mean to you then, before you came out at 19?
The one thing I’ll say about being queer in America – maybe anywhere in the world – is you’re forced to create community, and sometimes family, when that is not a given for you. I was very lucky that my family was… more confused and scared than they were not accepting. But my husband’s journey with his community – he grew up evangelical and his community kicked him out. He was going to be a pastor, going to seminary, and once he came out, he was kicked out of the church. I didn’t have that experience … but family to me widened the moment I came out. The idea that family was not just the people you were born into, but it is the people and friends and lovers who you collect along the way that were missing for me as a kid. Growing up here, I had a hard time fitting in, because everything I did stood out.
I played the Bluebird [Cafe] last night with Molly Tuttle, Maggie Rose, Liz Longley, and Ketch [Secor] from Old Crow Medicine Show. I’m sitting there singing “MY REVIVAL” – and I’ll cry thinking about this, but it’s like I’m sitting there singing [that song]. My husband is over here and the whole room is singing along with me. I have painted nails, singing my song at the Bluebird with legends. I’m the co-chair of the diversity committee for the Recording Academy in the Nashville chapter. I don’t know if I’ve “made it,” because I don’t think making it is even like the goal here. I want a career and a life, not a moment in time. That’s “making it” to me. For the closeted gay boy who was scared to ever reveal who he truly is, that’s my revival. There’s retribution. There’s deep healing, and there’s tons of gratitude, as well.
The divide in country music right now between people who are willing to sacrifice a fan base and those who aren’t is always widening. It’s cool to see who has come forward to make their voices heard.
Country music is three chords and the truth. That’s still the bible, but it has lost its way. There is a real ricochet happening where people are afraid to be truthful, because truth can sear and truth can be very quiet but very powerful. Nashville is at a breaking point. It’s a small town. We are growing by leaps and bounds. There’s a real deciding line between: do we make this a city for everybody or do we make this a city for the select few? That’s the same for country music, folk, Americana, and gospel.
“HEARTLAND,” the song, definitely pulls on gospel, folk, Americana, and pop, for sure, but it also pulls on country because it’s a story. I thought I’d see my name in lights. I thought that my life would be this flashy thing. It’s not. I fell in love with a man, and we have a farm, and we’re building a life together. That’s love to me. It’s a story. It’s my story. It’s real. So, it’s country; it’s folk; it’s Americana; it’s gospel. Now, will any of those genres accept me? I have no idea.
But the people on my album have accepted me for who I am and love me for who I am. And that, I think, is what the heartland is all about. You know, love thy neighbor. What happened to that?
You turn 39 this year, which happens to be 20 years since you came out. Was there any significance in releasing HEARTLAND (Deluxe Version) this year?
It’s funny. Titles of an album are like mystery buckets. I actually have a title for my next album and I’m so excited about it. Prince once said that he’s like two albums ahead of whatever’s commercially released. And I love that for him. I’m one album ahead of what is commercially released. Album titles visit me like a fever dream. Even HEARTLAND – the song, I gotta call out Josh Dorr, the co-writer on that song, who had a number one with Blake Shelton this year with “Texas.” He’s a legitimate country songwriter. Not even legitimate country songwriters would take a session with somebody like me and it takes guts to do that.
I haven’t thought about how it’s 20 years since I came out, but it makes a lot of sense. I have a song called “home.” When people were like, “Where is home?” I would be like, “Well, anywhere but Nashville, Tennessee, because that place would never accept a person like me.” Now, to be making a life here, building a farm, hosting Pride on our farm, there is something beautiful in that. It may have taken 20 years, but I’m home. It’s beautiful. I hadn’t really thought about time like that.
When we wrote “HEARTLAND,” I wrote it on the piano that I grew up on. There’s always ghosts in the bones of old instruments, but it’s safe where my heart lands. It’s the heartland, but it’s also where my heart gets to land safely. That’s the kind of love and belonging I wish for everybody. I’m not somebody who believes that you have to be in a relationship to be happy, or that you have to be married to be happy. That’s bullshit. That’s heteronormative, capitalist nonsense. You can find belonging amongst community, friends, and lovers. Does your heart have a place to hang its hat? That’s home.
What have been the hardest lessons you’ve learned over two decades?
The thing that comes up in my head is: it’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings. I’ve been a fat lady so… [Laughs] It will fall apart, and that’s okay. The true story is what happens when you pick yourself back up and keep going.
I’m far less interested in talking to somebody who’s never moved across the country once. I can’t really relate to you. If you’ve never sold all your belongings and moved somewhere at least twice, we might not have a lot of similar things to relate to. It doesn’t have to be grand moves. My husband has lived in a bunch of places in Nashville, has not left Nashville, but he’s lived a lot of life. You have to have lost everything once, probably twice, and hopefully that’s it. But it’s really about how you pick yourself back up at the bottom, and keep trying again.
Whether you think it’s good or not, it won’t last, and that’s okay. There’s beauty and grace in that. I have a friend, Kristen Griffith[-VanderYacht], who’s a [floral designer] – I think he’s now in Detroit – and he’s gone through a lot. He was on the Drew Barrymore Show, and the guest host was asking, “How do you keep flowers alive for longer?” Kristen grabbed his hand and he was like, “Here’s the thing, lean in close, I want you to hear this: they’re not meant to last. They’re meant to be beautiful for the moment that they’re there, and you’re meant to appreciate them in all their glory, and then you’re meant to let it go.”
That is really hard. That is maybe [informing] some of the themes about my next album, actually. It’s loving and letting go. Life is not linear. It’s not meant to be. Cherish all of the beauty, because nothing lasts forever. And there’s a ton of freedom in that sentence.
When Good Country spoke with award-winning singer-songwriter Tenille Townes in 2024, she had severed ties with Columbia Nashville and claimed her autonomy as a recording artist. It was a tremendous, liberating step into the unknown.
This month, Townes releases her first independent project, The Acrobat. Over the course of its 10 songs, she transparently and hauntingly channels the healing journey of the past two years – one that intertwined heartache, isolation, a plunge into depression, and the long road back.
She recorded The Acrobat at home, in the company of her beloved dog Sam, played all the instruments, and produced and mixed the tracks. This wasn’t the original plan, but as the work tapes progressed, she found catharsis in the honesty of the stripped-down vocals and guitar. This, she decided, was the album, and the best way to bring it to audiences was to perform it the way it was recorded.
She is now on The Living Room Tour, again with just her vocals and guitar, for intimate performances across the U.S. and her native Canada – with one exception: two dates with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra on April 23 and 25.
“I’m working with Dave Pierce, who’s arranging the shows,” she says. “He has written musical interludes between the songs that will accompany the storytelling pieces of what I’m doing and connect it all together. Hearing these songs in a completely different light has inspired me. Thinking about the magnitude of that many people onstage, it’s going to be emotional hearing that wall of sound all around me. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done.”
You moved from Alberta to Nashville in 2013. Who were you then and who are you now? How has Nashville changed over 13 years and how has Nashville changed you?
Tenille Townes: I still feel that the spark for music, the love for it, the complete joy is intact, and I’m grateful for that. Nashville, as a community, has obviously grown so much and taken on lots of different lives in those 13 years, but the heart of the community feels the same to me.
What drew me to Nashville initially was the creative community, the writers, the songs that are created there every day, and this group of people that creatively have each other’s backs. I still love the heartbeat of that town so much. It’s a little harder to get in to see rounds at the Bluebird [Cafe] these days, or things like that, but the spirit’s the same.
When I first got to town, I was so wide-eyed and just [full of] complete optimism. I had this belief that anything’s possible, everything to prove and nothing to lose, and that tenacious… maybe naivete helped me kick down some doors and get things going.
A lot of the dreamer’s expectation is to show up in town, get the deal, and try to find a tribe of people who believe in what you’re doing. I had such an amazing experience finding wonderful people who believed in it with me, and we had a great run. But the deal is not the finish line. It’s where the whole new page of the dream begins, and I feel like a different person now experiencing the other side of that.
There were a lot of beautiful highs and a lot of hard parts in that journey and losing myself for a while. I feel this return to that same “everything to prove, nothing to lose” situation I started with 13 years ago. So it feels good to be getting back to that feisty energy.
How did the cumulative effect of those years and experiences bring you to this point professionally and personally?
I think it’s just life lived. It’s the experiences of finding out that sometimes the picture we paint in our minds of how we think it’s going to be is completely different than how it turns out. Sometimes that’s for the better and sometimes that’s way harder.
Also I think about cumulative experiences, and about the places I got to travel because of music. Touring around the world, playing shows for people in the U.K. and Australia, and they know the second verses to songs I’ve written. That’s such a crazy thing to think about. My experiences on the road have definitely grown my capacity for seeing a community of music that’s bigger than your own backyard, and I love looking at music like that. It makes the world feel smaller in the best way.
It’s been a lot of experiences. It shaped this record I’ve just made, because for a while I lost my footing a little bit in going, “What artistically is my vision, and what do I want to say in these songs and talk about?” I had certain expectations that were like a moving bull’s-eye, and I got a little lost for a while. When I let that rest, I got back to the art of the truth of the matter, just songs I love that tell stories that are important to me.
I ended up making this record sitting in this spare room of my house, next to my dog. It’s this return to creatively tuning out all the noise around me and getting back to the truth underneath. All the experiences led to my hunger for that sparseness and return to self and that feels good.
You pursued every artist’s dream of a record deal, captured the dream, and walked away from the dream – which can be done in this DIY era. Still, it’s a breakup of sorts. Two years later, what are the lessons learned from being signed and from now being independent?
It really is a breakup of sorts. It’s this group of people that were working towards the same common goal beside me. We had such great experiences together and we moved a lot of mountains in our time together. But it got to this point of, “I think I’m losing myself in this.” It is such a unique opportunity right now, the power being back to the people, and being able to post something and have people get excited about it. There is the opportunity to have that freedom to make my own green lights for releasing music anytime it feels creatively right for me.
It took me a few years of unwinding from that structure and that system of how things used to be. There was a lot of heartache in that, a lot of feelings of failure for a while, and eventually busting out of that. I feel like I’ve gotten to this other side, where it is freedom and liberation and, “I get to do whatever I want now.”
With the label, we’d done vinyl before, but never this way. We launched this album online and I had this feeling in my gut that it needed to be a vinyl project. People got excited about it and it blew past all my expectations. I had planned to try to sell 300, which would have beaten my past goals. We launched it and I told the fans, “I’m doing this independently. Make this leap with me. You guys have been believing beside me for so long.” They totally embraced it. They took the leap and we sold over a thousand copies in one weekend of announcing the record. Feeling that support, I was like, “Wow, I feel so much more capable and able to take the leap into the unknown without the safety net of that system.” Feeling this supportive community behind what I’m doing, it was incredibly encouraging.
The Acrobat is obviously a deeply personal album, as are all your albums. You’ve spoken openly about your battles with mental health challenges, but as relates to this album, how was your mental health going into the creative process, during the process, and now?
I made this record in the heart of the mess and a lot of these songs were written in a really dark place. But I do feel, even though it’s a cliché to say this, the more I worked on this project, and the more I felt the liberating side of the freedom coming back to me, the better my mental health got.
This record was quite healing for me and the fact that I produced this myself and played everything on it was a moment of going, “I’m capable of doing this. I got this.” That feeling was really helpful in my mental health space. I didn’t seek out producing my own record and doing it this way. I started just making guitar vocals of some of my favorite songs that had never seen the light of day, so I could decide which ones to take into the studio for the next record. I got a handful done and I was like, “Wait. I really love these just like this. What if I did this myself? What if I recorded it here and made a record that’s really sparse and vulnerable and messy?”
I’ve never done that before. I’m not a master engineer of any sorts. A lot of the imperfections of this record, the truth that people can hear through it, are due to my limitations. None of these vocals are tuned, because I don’t know how to do that. It was a lesson in letting things be not perfect and that was helpful for my mental health, too. Coming to this place of, “I like this as it is,” and finding that strength on my own two feet again to be okay with that.
All in all, this record was a healing experience. I finished it and had this feeling of an exhale. So much of what I’ve walked through in the past few years is very much in the theme of these songs. There’s also this passage of time that I have a new appreciation for. Stepping back and looking at things from a different way and getting back to more vulnerability helped me see. I think that through line thematically is connected to being in a better state of mind as well.
Whatever happens to this record, I’m excited that people will get to hear it, and hopefully these songs will take on entirely different lives and meanings to other people. What I love about music is it’s so open for everyone’s own experiences, but the thread of emotion that runs through them is the same, and that’s something we can all hold on to together. I’m excited for the invitation of that, and whatever life it takes on beyond is great, but just the experience of making this record was so healing for me. That is a victory in itself, and I’m really grateful for that.
Is it paramount to find co-writers who understand your work from lived experience? What is your vetting process for opening up this way to someone who is going to have their input in your material?
Lived experience is so much a part of that, but also I have to feel safe around those people, to show up and be exactly who I am. There’s something disarming about a great co-writer who’s happy to sit with you in whatever you’re processing, and vice versa. Being a good co-writer means being a great listener. A lot of empathy has to be present, to me, in co-writers.
I’ve gotten to write songs with so many people through the years, and I’ve learned something new from every person. I’m always trying to be a sponge and soak in what somebody’s habits are, how they get past the little blocks that pop up in your mind, or how they keep diving in and not settling until you have complete peace about a line. Everybody’s got their own ways of doing that.
But, to me, it’s just feeling safe to really share the truth. That’s the vetting process. Sometimes that takes a few times and sometimes it happens on the first time. Music is such a magical mystery to me. I could sit with someone I’ve never had a conversation with before, but there’s something unspoken in the room, where you’re like, “Here’s what I’m going through,” and the other person is like, “Yeah, I’ve been there. Let’s talk about this. How can we unpack it?”
The song has its own agenda in the room, too. It’s this thing you can’t quite articulate, but when a song is supposed to be written, I believe it will be. I love getting to find out the characters that will help me pull out those songs. Sometimes it’s trusted friends and sometimes it’s complete strangers. It’s all such a magical thing.
On the Bobby Bones Show in 2024, you said every full record gets a new “time capsule” guitar. What’s your newest?
This album is an LG-2, and I love it. I’ve not had a Gibson before and it’s been so fun to play. I got this guitar a couple years ago, thinking that new music was a lot closer than it ended up being, so this guitar has been waiting in the wings for its moment. I wrote a lot of these songs on this guitar because it was on standby.
After I got to the point of “I think this is an album,” I was like, “I need to tattoo this guitar. It’s a match.” I met up with my friend Lewis Lavoie, who’s an incredible muralist painter in Alberta. I brought it to him and shared the different symbols and themes of the record. It was like, “There needs to be hands letting go.” There’s some azaleas from one of the lyric lines. “The Acrobat” is represented by a petal that turns into a bird, and that leads into “In Love With The Sky.” Every song has its moment on the guitar canvas. It’s a trilogy of the guitar time capsules I’ve made. I’m excited to take that one on the road.
How many guitars do you have?
I have two Martins that are tattooed as well. One was for The Lemonade Stand and one was for Masquerades, and the back was for Train Track Worktapes. I also have a Gibson electric that I love to play, an old D-28 that I love playing at home, and a Taylor 912ce that I got for my high school graduation. My family all wrote their names on little pieces of paper and tucked them into the case and I felt like I headed out into the world with this guitar in hand and all their love and support with it. My grandparents bought me my first guitar. It was a parlor size, not a Sears catalog guitar, but something close to that. It’s at my parents’ place in Canada. That was the first guitar I ever played. The stories that come with the guitars mean so much to me.
Does the guitar play as much a part as the lyrics in terms of expression and what you need to say?
Yeah. It’s really hard for me to separate the two. A lot of people will write the music and then write the lyrics. I respect that process, and I’ve written a couple songs that way, but to me, they really feed each other. I can’t hear the space for the melody and how many words need to make sense for it without the guitar laying that out. They’re like threads completely woven together. I enjoy taking away all the noise to leave space to hear how the guitar and vocal would interpret a song. That’s always the truest form to me. That’s the way I started as a kid, just playing songs in my room.
How do you protect yourself mentally and emotionally when you perform these songs?
There’s an exhale once the song has been recorded, and in the live experience it becomes so much more communal. I feel like my job up there is to hold open doors. Songs have ways of helping us sit inside the rooms in our hearts that are terrifying to go into alone, and the live experience is very much part of the exhale. It doesn’t hurt to relive it onstage as much as I might think it would, because it’s a part of something bigger.
I’m very nervous for these shows because there’s nothing else to fall back on. I’ll miss my band very much. I love those guys, so it’s going to be very different. But it feels timely for this creative season I’m in right now, and I think it will help me continue to build that intuition back even stronger. These shows are more of a living, breathing thing because it is just me up there. It’s going to be a two-way street with the audience and it will be a way for us to maybe chat a little bit, take some requests, and be less locked to a grid that five or six people are working towards the same goal on. It’s just me and the audience, so I’m pretty excited for that.
You posted a video last year in tandem with Mental Health Awareness Month, in which you said that you “came to a whole different low” the previous year and “depression doesn’t care how much you had a grip on positivity and gratitude.” What was different about that low, and how did you claw your way out?
It’s a process. There were a lot of personal changes in relationships for me, career shifts, and feeling a different kind of alone. The unending joy that music has always given me – it was such an indication that something was off, because that light was really dimmed. That was scary, because that has never gone away.
I consider myself a pretty positive person. I grew up learning tools of how to stay looking on the sunny side and all those things. But there’s also an avoidance of the truth that builds up over time, and that all caught up to me in that space, a lot of the people-pleasing tendencies and this realization that I was taking matters into my own hands again.
There’s such waves to it. Everybody’s experience with depression is different, but it’s this big scary thing to talk about because it is really scary. It’s dark. It’s so lonely and isolating and hard. I love when I see other people talk about it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m not the only one. Okay, good.” This is a part of the human experience, and we have to lean on each other to be able to know that it’s okay to feel that low sometimes and you’re not the only one.
I tried medication that helped and got me to a base level where I could go, “How else can I keep chipping away at this?” It’s not easy. It was an incredibly slow return of every day waking up and trying to have the right intention to take a step in a better direction for myself. So going for walks, trying to hit a certain amount of steps every day to keep my body moving, eating healthier foods, and being able to have friends that I force myself to check in with and be honest with.
Those things are not easy for me at all, but it’s part of the process and it definitely helps get me to this place. At that time I wasn’t creatively doing anything. Once I got a little bit better, I was able to start working on this record, and that really helped me continue the mental health journey.
How long were you in that dark place?
It was probably six to eight months of really dark. But I think it had been brewing for a long time and I had been denying its existence and covering it up. So it was a buildup, and then a slow, gradual return from there.
Was this your first experience with depression?
It was my first time acknowledging it for what it was. I think I’d experienced it before, but I hadn’t given myself permission for that to be okay, to be the truth.
Was it tough to record that video and say it publicly?
It was tough, for sure, but it also was part of the exhale. It was scary to make the video and press the button to post it. I didn’t want to do that, but after I did, the encouragement from the community and people reaching out going, “I have dealt with the same thing,” or “This helped me because I have been feeling the same way,” or whatever the responses, it’s like we give each other permission, and that encouraged me to do it, because I do love the community of people. It’s been a long ride, and I felt like I needed to be honest with what I was dealing with. It was powerful and encouraging to see that other people felt the same. It made a really lonely and isolating time feel a little less lonely.
Your awareness of and empathy for youth shelters, food banks, homelessness, the ills of the world, and now mental health, goes back to your school days, when you wrote a song from the perspective of a daughter whose father was in Afghanistan. Feeling so deeply for so many about so much, it’s easy to overload and spiral when you’re carrying everybody else’s struggles along with your own. How do you take care of yourself and find balance?
I don’t think I balance that very well at all, which is why I struggled for a long time. To me, it’s always keeping a connection to something greater than all of us. There’s different phases of what that’s looked like in my life, but that is what intuition is, just listening to that guiding force. If I keep that in check, then my compass tells me what to hold on to and what to let go of. When that “check engine” light is on, I know I’ve got to pay attention and get back to that.
I’m still learning what that balance is, and I don’t have all the answers at all, because I do feel things quite deeply. Maybe that’s an empath thing. I think that’s also part of being a creative and part of being a writer. You have to soak things in and feel them to a certain degree for it to become real in your own interpretation, so that you can write about it. Keeping those channels open is important to me, but I’m still learning ways to protect my own heart in that process.
Music is a big part of your healing, but dog lovers also understand canine therapy. Tell us about Sam.
Sam is 6. He is a pandemic baby. I found him on Petfinder and got him from a rescue in Illinois. He’s been my buddy ever since. He’s coming with me on tour. Because it’s an acoustic show, it’s a smaller crew – just my tour manager, my sound guy, and Sam and I – so Sam’s able to come on his first tour. I’m pretty excited about it.
Sam gets an unwritten executive producer role on this project, for sure, an emotional support credit. I’d be lost without this little guy. He brings me so much joy, but also a dog will force you to be present and in the moment. They need to go outside right now. They need to go for a walk. They need to get out of bed in the morning because they’re hungry. This beautiful creature is a constant reminder of showing up as your most authentic self in every moment. Sam is the perfect example of that.
They’re also such intuitive creatures. In some of those really dark times, he just knew. He would come snuggle right up beside me and put his little chin on my knee like, “Hey, I got you.” I’m so grateful to know and experience that kind of unconditional love from this beautiful little guy. There’s nothing like it.
When people listen to The Acrobat, what do you hope they learn about you, and maybe also about themselves, through your songs?
I hope they hear the courage it took to get to this sort of honesty, and that they feel permission to stand on their own two feet as well. This returning to autonomy, and this ability to let things go and embrace change, even when it’s hard and feels like the worst thing in the world, I hope they feel comforted that somebody else knows what that feels like and that they’re not alone.
That’s always the greatest mission of my music. I hope it helps people feel a little less alone, and that’s definitely one of my hopes with this record. I think there’s a lot more humanness when we talk about these things. That’s what I love about music. It opens the door for those conversations.
Continue exploring our Artist of the Month coverage of Tenille Towneshere.
Our guest this week on the Working Songwriter resides in Los Angeles, but spent many of his formative years in St. Louis, Missouri. Ricky Montgomery first built an audience on Vine in his early twenties before releasing his self-titled debut album in 2016. That bedroom pop album was a cult favorite until 2020, when several of its songs exploded on TikTok, leading to a deal with Warner Records.
Montgomery’s singles, “Line Without a Hook” and “Mr. Loverman,” are RIAA-certified platinum and, all told, his catalog has collected more than a billion streams worldwide. That grassroots support has led to headlining tours with stops at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, Irving Plaza in New York City, and the Pageant in St. Louis, to name just a few.
This interview was recorded nearly 18 months ago and has been delayed due to a snafu on my end, but I’m so glad we get to hear it now. I think you’ll very much enjoy hearing about Ricky’s musical journey through his own words.
One of the things I really enjoyed about interviewing Toronto-born singer-songwriter Julian Taylor is his relationship with the truth. He has a really peaceful attitude towards learning and sharing new information. For example, at the beginning and the end of our interview, there were biographical facts about him that I had gotten wrong in my research. Gently and matter of fact he fact-checked me and we just moved on. It was such a cool example of, “Oh, you’ve got this a bit wrong and it matters that we get it right,” but nothing about that is personal. In an era of misinformation and alternate facts, it feels really grounding to have an hour-long conversation with someone who really cares about getting it right. That shows through in his songs and in his storytelling.
Julian experienced an eclectic musical upbringing thanks to his classical-and-gospel musician father, his mother’s love of Motown and folk, and wide influences from pop to blues. Oral tradition in his family shaped how he tells a story. Especially on his mother’s side with his Mohawk grandfather, a pastor who told incredible stories. He also discusses being pigeonholed by race and genre. Oftentimes, people will think that he performs a certain type of music because he looks a certain way. He mentions that audiences can be shocked when he pulls out a country song while sporting hair that looks more reggae than Johnny Cash. Taylor discusses his breakthrough 2020 album, The Ridge, he talks about his writing process (often starting with lyrics), and the intent behind his latest release Anthology: Volume Two – including “Hunger,” “Don’t Let ’Em” (with Jim James), “Dedication,” and “Weighing Down” – addressing mental freedom, identity politics, and self-forgiveness.
(Editor’s Note: This article originally published on Good Country in December 2024. At that time, Good Country content was available exclusively on Substack.
Townes was included as part of our end-of-year coverage in 2024, examining how many country artists across the continent have blurred genre lines to connect with new audiences and plumb greater depths of self-expression. Jewly Hight spoke to Townes about her recently becoming an independent artist at that time and together they examined where she stood and where she was headed.
Now, on April 10, 2026, Townes will release the first full-length album of her independent era, The Acrobat. To celebrate, we’re naming her our Good Country and BGS Artist of the Month. And we’re re-sharing this piece from the archives to kick off the month. Below, enjoy an excellent interview on our website for the first time and check out our Essential Tenille Townes playlist. Dive into our brand new feature interview with Townes on The Acrobat and a special bonus article of Townes in her own words.)
“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Linda Martell poses rhetorically during the spoken intro to “Spaghettii,” roughly halfway through Beyoncé’s western epic Cowboy Carter.
“In theory,” Martell goes on with sly poise, “they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.” Martell knows what she’s talked about. She endured all manner of efforts to hem in her musical sensibilities and diminish her agency back when she was country music’s most visible Black, female talent.
And now, because she lent her voice to a track where Bey and Shaboozey go hard with down-home boasts over a lurching beat, she’s up for a GRAMMY for Best Melodic Rap Performance. Other tracks from Cowboy Carter are in pop, country and even Americana contention, a staggering range of styles for one project to cover.
That’s the kind of boundary-blurring year it’s been, with Shaboozey translating country gestures and imagery to broody, contemporary hip-hop cadences with tremendous savvy and both Jelly Roll and Post Malone furthering their paths from rap origins to ever more fully embracing – and being embraced by – the country music industry.
Things haven’t been any tidier on the rootsy side of the spectrum. After being treated like a pop prodigal during her Star-Crossed era, Kacey Musgraves’ shimmering, urban folk revival-echoing ruminations on Deeper Well have been received as a country homecoming of sorts. Noah Kahan has helped bring on a resurgence of cozily folk-forward, singer-songwriter sensibilities in pop music.
A major country record label snatched up the Red Clay Strays, the type of crowd-pleasing, Southern blues-rockers that have long been celebrated in the Americana scene, where many other pivotal voices – first Allison Russell last year, then Sarah Jarosz, Amythyst Kiah, Adeem the Artist, Kaia Kater and others – experimented with lusher or more polished arrangements and production aesthetics in their latest work.
Tenille Townes offers us a particularly compelling example of an artist charting her course against the background of that extreme slippage between genre lineage, stylistic markers, and industry affiliation. She tried the major label country route in 2018, greeted as a promising new voice at a moment when the broad appeal of Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour ruminations made the industry a little more receptive to artists with a personalized, writerly bent, and she’s emerged independent on the other side. In her mind, being unfettered in a time of great genre fluidity is cause for optimism.
Townes began her tenure on Columbia Nashville with spare acoustic recordings, and concluded it this year in similar fashion. She was, and remains, an ardently openhearted singer-songwriter, bent on tapping deep veins of empathy whether she’s in observational or confessional mode. When I first interviewed her, it made all the sense in the world to hear her say she felt a kinship to singer-songwriters like Patty Griffin and Lori McKenna. It also struck me that Townes’ singing – curling syllables and stretching out lines with feeling, a style sometimes called “cursive” singing – was far from the hearty enunciation for which country music has been known.
In between then and now, Townes dropped an album that bore a super-producer’s digitally sharpened touch, won a pair of ACM awards to go with the pile of honors she’s received from the Canadian Country Music Association – which began to recognize her promise when she was a teen with dreams of pursuing music beyond Grande Prairie, Alberta – and she toured with big country names like Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley. Townes also faced enough professional hurdles, and observed enough changes in the landscape around her, to reconsider where her songs might belong. And I very much wanted to hear about that.
You’re presently on tour in Canada, aren’t you?
Tenille Townes: I’m having the best time on this run. It feels like a community at these shows. We’ve done a few tours through Canada at this point, but this was our first time going as far east as we did. I feel like live music in general is a little bit more scarce over there. They don’t get as many people making the trek. And so [I could feel] the appreciation.
They sold out the shows so fast and they’re singing all the words. And very quietly listening intently and leaning in a really vulnerable way. And then also having a blast and being loud, which is so cool to me, for it to feel like a living room and a rock club at the same time. That’s been such a big part of my vision.
I don’t know how far out you planned this tour, but I wonder if it’s become an important chance for you to return to your home turf, regroup and get reinvigorated.
Yeah, it honestly feels really essential in my creative journey. I could not be more grateful for the way the timing has aligned this year for this moment on the road. It feels like the ingredient that I’ve been craving. In January, I’m going to be so ready to dive in with my whole heart and make [the music] I’m going to share next. I don’t think that the recipe could have ever been complete without this tour in this moment. It feels so timely, because so much of this past year has felt terrifying.
And just standing on my own two feet as an artist again, pretty much entirely, I feel so excited and grateful to be making this leap into the arms of these people showing up at the shows who are so excited about this new chapter. And it’s such a wave of encouragement to go, “Oh yeah, I think I’m on the right path, doing the right thing.”
How is it different from when you’ve toured the U.S., in terms of headlining versus being an opener, the size of venues and how you’re engaging with the audience?
There’s been a lot of theaters for us on this run, which have a bigger capacity than some of the clubs that we’ve played in these towns before. It’s our first time playing a handful of these [places], but this is our third headlining tour in Canada.
What I noticed that’s different is when it’s our shows and our community, it just feels like people show up with open arms and they’re requesting songs that I haven’t played in so long. They know the deep cuts. They’re showing up excited for a night of feeling whatever they need to feel. And I think that emotional permission feels different at our shows than it does at a show where we’re a guest [in the opening slot] going to make some new friends. And it’s been really cool hearing from people that were like, “I saw you on the Dierks [Bentley] tour and this is our third Tenille show.”
One thing I always say at the top of the shows is I want our time together around my songs to be a place where everyone who walks in the door feels safe to show up and be whoever they are and to feel embraced and welcomed for that. And I thank everyone for buying a ticket and for showing up as that community. And I really feel like they’re embodying what that means.
Years back, I took note of the fact that Corb Lund had what was considered fairly mainstream country success in Canada, but he played Americana events when he came to Nashville. I’m curious whether you’ve seen folk, Americana and country are treated as separate genre categories in the Canadian market, like they are in the U.S. How do you tend to get categorized in Canada?
At least from my experience, it feels different to me. Because in Canada, I have been really grateful to have felt super embraced by the country community, by the CCMAs, by country radio, by the community of people listening to country music. And we have fit in that bubble there. And I don’t know that we fit the same way in the States.
I relate to what you’re saying about Corb Lund. I think maybe the lane is just not as narrow in Canada. And I think that they’re just more in it for live music of any capacity. I think most fans [who come see me] would be like, “Oh, I’m at a country show.” Which is funny because when we play shows here, that doesn’t necessarily feel the same. I do feel like the Canadian country music community definitely jumped on board with what I’m creating. And the music [I release in both markets] is very much the same, so it’s so strange.
I will say that the people coming to our shows, our headline club shows that we’ve done in the U.S., they feel very similar, like-minded people to me.
You’re a little more than a decade into your Nashville tenure at this point. Why is it important to you to stay?
Even though this town has a lot of jagged edges or hard things about it, I really do still feel inspired here. I feel like there’s a tapestry of artists who have come to this town with their dream and worked at sharing their art and building a group of friends and people around them who support that. I have a front row seat, you know, going to an Emmylou Harris fundraiser at City Winery and watching all of these people that she’s embraced in her life that she’s written with or jammed with that’s really a legacy.
I love this community, and I do feel inspired musically, having access to so many songwriters and musicians and producers. There is a heartbeat to this town that I want to continue to be present in and be a part of for sure.
I can picture the show that you were just describing. The atmosphere was very similar at the tribute to Mary Gauthier during Americanafest, a multi-generational gathering of Nashville’s singer-songwriter community.
When we first talked all those years ago, you described being an astute student in Nashville, paying particular attention to singer-songwriters like Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin. At the time, you considered them touchstones because of how they used the language of the heart in their storytelling.
In terms of their career arcs, their material’s been recorded by big names in country, but as respected as they are among songwriting connoisseurs in that world, they’ve had contemporary folk careers as performers. They’ve often released their music on independent labels. Were you also taking note of what their professional paths have looked like? Or are you now?
I honestly don’t know that I was conscious of it back then. It was just the music that I loved. I don’t think I even had an understanding of the choices made on an artist’s path to stay true to that route.
I’ve learned a lot in the last handful of years: “Oh, that makes sense why a certain path, like Patty Griffin’s, unfolds in a certain way.” I never thought of it as a ceiling or an alternate route. It just was where the music had taken her. That’s been inspiring to me.
I never want to look at any options of teams to work with or whatever with any closed-doors feelings. I would love to play the music that I make in stadiums. That’d be great if that still unfolds that way. But I also just really want to tell my stories and my truth, and whoever is going to come as the audience, that’s amazing to me. The idea of seeing it as a wider horizon than maybe a stereotypical path, that doesn’t seem scary to me. I think that’s because I’ve looked up to people like Patty or Lori, people who have always stayed true to what they’re doing and figured out the path there regardless. But I don’t know if I’ve ever actually intentionally thought about it that way.
Your intention has been clearer than ever this year. It wasn’t lost on me that the final two songs you released earlier this year, before you parted ways with your label – “As You Are” and “The Thing That Brought Me Here” – each were expressions of commitment to staying the course. What did you want to communicate?
I love that you noticed these themes. At the end of that journey, “As You Are” felt like such a great theme to end that season on. There was lots of resistance [from the label] in several years of working on music and getting to a point of actually getting to put it out. But that song always had a green light from them, which I really appreciated.
I wrote that song thinking it was about showing up and being a support system for someone. I had friends in mind that I was thinking of. It was just like, “I will be that safe place.” And then listening back to the demo after the [session] on the drive home, I was like, “No, I wrote this ‘cause this is what I want to hear when I’m struggling to let somebody in.” That’s been something that I’ve felt even in my professional journey for sure, just wanting to feel seen.
It really seems like you’re the one communicating on your own TikTok. In recent months, a lot of your posts have been about celebrating your professionally “single” era. When you shared the news that you were no longer in your major label deal, you framed it as a breakup that you were happy about. What felt right about striking that tone?
It felt honest. It was a lot building up to that decision, and it was not easy, and it was terrifying. All of those emotions were a part of it. I just felt like, “I can’t continue to share the music I want to make if I’m not letting people in on my process of that vulnerability, even when it’s hard.” Making those videos felt scary, for sure. But that just feels like the kind of artist that I want to be, to walk the walk.
Also part of my intention was, “This is something that creatively feels really empowering to me, to take back the ownership of my music.” And for any young girls out there, I want them to know, “That’s a possible feeling for you, to stand up for yourself at any moment in any kind of career, or on any path of your life.” It’s brave to take that step. And I guess I just want that invitation to be there for anyone following along.
And I want to bring together the community of people. Like, it is an “independent artist,” but I think it should be called a “community village artist,” because you can’t get your stuff out there without people believing in what you’re doing and coming with you. I wanted it to be very clear that we’re in this together. We’ve always been in it together, but it feels very defined to me now. And I wanted to make sure everyone knew that.
And now we have the benefit of accumulated perspective, so I want to reflect back. At the beginning of your label journey, what was in the atmosphere at the time in Nashville or the country music scene in the U.S. that contributed to a sense of possibility for you?
At the beginning, it was excitement. And [I] look back and think, “How crazy cool that I got to be a part of a major label deal that let me put out a debut single about homelessness, and then follow it up with a song called ‘Jersey on a Wall’ about losing someone in a car accident?” I’m so glad they gave me a chance to put out songs that were different and that sonically didn’t sound like a sure bet. I will always appreciate that. And it set me up with so many people who heard this record and the songs because of the way that they helped lift it up.
So I have nothing but love for that season. It might not have hit the thing over all of the world’s fences by any measure of what you measure as success. But to me, it’s a win to think that I got to share that art and that people found it and that they get to keep finding it because of that.
Years back, you told me that in one of your initial meetings, when you played some songs in a boardroom, the head of the label compared you with Jeff Buckley, which was a funny thing. In hindsight, I think that kind of speaks to the fact that you were bringing a sensibility as a singer-songwriter that might’ve been a little bit outside of their frame of reference.
And maybe the Jeff Buckley comparison – as much of a stretch as it was – was a gesture of someone who lacked the frame of reference or language for what they were hearing. Because the way you elongate your vocal phrases and hold onto lines is more akin to the “cursive” singing style that’s been a thing in indie music, folk, pop and R&B than in country, with its crisp enunciation. What kinds of conversations did you have about what you were doing, how they heard it and how they thought it fit into that world?
It is really fun to reflect on that. I definitely think from that initial meeting, they were going, “This is something that doesn’t necessarily fit in what that normal trajectory would be.”
I think that has been the compass that’s directed it a little bit left of where things would traditionally fit coming out of the system that they’re used to. I think they knew that all along. And at moments, that definitely made things a little bit bumpier or harder, because it wasn’t something that naturally made all the sense in the world, I don’t think. And I’m totally great with that.
I revisited the body of work that you released on the label, and I didn’t hear you bending your songwriting approach, singing style or artistic identity to any kind of mold that was really popular in country music at the time. What did it take to maintain that?
There was never an intention of, “Okay, that’s mainstream, so I’m closing the door to that.” I’ve always felt very openhearted in the writing room. It’s just what was coming out of what I was making that I loved the most. The Lemonade Stand came out in 2020. Then I wrote the songs for Masquerades all on Zoom in my house by myself. It was a time when I didn’t feel as much outside influence of commerciality. I was just honestly writing to express something and feel better.
We certainly, production-wise, had moments of trying to be strategic about what kind of things might — I don’t know — reach more people or something, or sonically be something that could be more mainstream. So there wasn’t a lack of strategy in that. I just had to follow the songs, I think.
On TikTok, you’ve shared clips of songs that you’ve had in the can for years that you said the label didn’t want to release. How did the disagreements over your artistic direction begin to emerge? And what was at stake for you when they did?
I think the biggest rub maybe was being able to plan far enough down an artistic vision, because it was just like, “We’ll see how this one does.” And the targets just kept moving. Mentioning putting out an EP or a record was scary. They were like, “No, we can’t. We gotta just take it one step at a time.” So I think that became the hardest thing, and where a lot of songs fell through the cracks, because we didn’t hit certain measures to be able to go to the next. We still found ways to push through and get music out. It just didn’t happen in a guaranteed, planned-out manner, necessarily.
What brought you to the place where you were ready to part ways?
I could feel it building for a while, for sure. And when it came to the point of putting out “As You Are,” there was a group of songs that were ready, and we were just getting resistance on putting out more than one or two out again. And honestly, they came to us and [said], “I don’t think we can put out the rest of these.” And it was like, “Okay, I think it’s time to go.” It wasn’t like I’d arrived at this place of courage. Circumstances were like, “Okay, I think the arrows are really pointing that this is the moment to take the leap, and I’m just going to do it.”
What did you see yourself as leaving behind and moving towards instead?
The idea of taking back ownership of what I create and jumping into this place of freedom in the sense of less hoops to get through to actually get songs to people. I think creatively, I needed change as well.
I’m so proud of that whole journey. I have no regrets, but in a lot of ways, it’s like the metaphor of having a [limited] number of crayons in your hand and trying to make a picture out of that. I felt I wanted the whole box back. I never felt like I was trying to create something to fit within [the industry], but I do feel like that kind of a system can’t not have an effect on what you’re doing creatively. I feel this freedom in my hands. What do you do? That’s a whole other process that I’m in the middle of right now, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say and how I want to sound next. It’s so liberating, and it’s also just, “Oh, this is up to me now.”
When you look back on it, do you think that label partnership was no longer the right fit for you, or that the mainstream country marketplace that it exists in was not the right fit for you?
I don’t know. I think maybe a little bit of both. But mostly, I think the major label system just ran its course for me. And I feel open to whatever team there may or may not be in the future. I wouldn’t write that experience off ever again. I think it just depends on the season I’m in creatively and what people are behind it.
What’s funny to me is looking back on the history of country music, the things that have [at certain moments] laid on the outside have actually [become] pillars of what’s created the format that we love and know. So it doesn’t scare me to [say], “I don’t actually feel like I belong in what we call right now the mainstream of country music.” I’m just going to do my thing and whatever we want to call it later, looking back, it’s fine with me.
Earlier we were talking about the singer-songwriter ecosystem that’s long existed in Nashville and has amorphous boundaries – those songwriters play their own intimate shows and write for bigger names in other lanes.
But there’s been far more visible crossing of boundaries than that this year. We’ve had pop superstars going country, and Kacey Musgraves – who never fully left her country label, but was viewed as drifting towards pop – made a folk-pop album that’s gotten her country awards nominations again. And then there are artists like Noah Kahan. I know you’ve expressed admiration for what he does. He’s been having great success with songs that are grounded in folk, but he exists in the pop world – and yet he’s also gotten Americana and country nominations. Have you been looking around you and taking note of how other artists are transcending genre boundaries?
Yes, and it feels so encouraging to be like, “How about you just make what’s you?” And then, what if there are different categories of music lovers who want to listen to stories and songs and voices and actually don’t care what sticker you put on it?
[As for] Noah, that’s just songs that are speaking to people at such a loud volume. I don’t know what you call it, and it doesn’t matter. Longterm-wise, I think Brandi Carlile’s path is a flashlight, to have something that’s just evolved with her as an artist and fit in so many different places. And I think about Patty Griffin. Even somebody like Billy Strings, Marcus King, I think is incredibly inspiring looking at all of these people who are not sticking to one lane.
You are actively narrating the decision-making process for your audience and frequently discussing what it looks like to be an independent artist, what that means, what your aims are, what challenges you face. From what I’ve read, you’ve kept some important parts of your team, management and publishing, but other aspects of the model have changed. What do you feel are the most significant differences in how you’re operating at the moment? What do you most want people to know about your present reality?
I think the biggest shift is how much making videos is a part of actually getting a song to be heard at all. And the creative output of just trying to make noise in a place that’s got way too much noise going on, the internet. That’s the most overwhelming thing that’s very different than what I thought it meant to be a singer-songwriter and write songs and tour.
I’m trying to balance the creative output of constantly being like, “Hey, I’m over here. This is what I’m working on.” And also making sure that my soul is in a good place, not just spinning on a hamster wheel, so that I can make something that I’m really proud to stand on in my life.
I’ve heard that you are working on new music. Are you broadening your circle of collaborators?
Yeah, definitely. I’ve been reaching out to people I’ve not written with before, people I’m just fans of their music and [asking], “Hey, let’s write or let’s get together and just jam.” And then I’m in the stage [where] I’m always writing. I’m at a point where I have a lot of songs and I’m trying to just zoom out and go, “Which ones are speaking the loudest to me?” The theme for me right now is very much about betting on yourself and getting to the heart of the matter without everything feeling too heavy and serious.
I’m at the spot of taking song inventory and trying to make some new friends and keep writing, and working on what might be next.
Won’t it be wild if you have an album that is on a Canadian country chart and then in the U.S., is on Americana and folk charts, the same collection of songs?
I think it’s possible. I believe it is. I love you putting that out there. I’m declaring it right now.
The expression of music is going to fit differently in different places. And I think that’s more possible in the landscape we’re in now than it ever has been.
Read our 2026 interview with Tenille Townes on her brand new album, The Acrobat, here.
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Photo Credit: Lead image by Madison Rensing; inset image by Robert Chavers.
GRAMMY-nominated songwriter AmythystKiah has performed with Moby and Billy Strings and is a member of the supergroup Our Native Daughters. She joins us for a startlingly honest look at the “farce of surface-level success.” After a label debut and a whirlwind of global exposure, she found herself “barely hanging on for dear life” amidst the pressure of a rat race industry. We explore her journey to achieve detachment from outcomes, writing for sync licensing as a creative recharge, and the ancient wisdom that helped her trade the self-improvement doom loop for a slower, sustainable creative life.
Welcome to another edition of our weekly roundup of new roots music! You Gotta Hear This…
First up, country singer-songwriter Erin Gibney gives us a preview of a brand new version of “Risk It,” one of the first true love songs she had ever written. In this iteration, it’s stripped back to a more simple and acoustic approach, but still with a pop country sheen and plenty of big, energetic moments. Also in country, Carly King has announced her upcoming album, Loving You Is Easy, with a lovely and tender lead single, “Three Martinis.” King wrote the song about a fated trip to New York City where she fell in love with the man who would become her fiancé. It’s full of memories, nostalgia, and lush with imagery of falling head over heels, all wrapped in a cozy and gauzy folk-country package.
In the bluegrass world, North Carolina’s Unspoken Tradition highlight their working-class bluegrass bent with a new single, “Company Man,” which celebrates and interrogates the reality of blue-collar, hard working folks in this day and age. As they describe it, “The song tells the story of a man who seems to live to work, not work to live. There’s pride in that, but also a sense of stoic sadness.” Also speaking to the social and political climate of today, folk artist and singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell has released her own version of Woody Guthrie’s important and sadly still applicable song, “Deportee.” Jewell’s rendition is twangy, honky-tonking, and plaintive, drawing inspiration from the first time she ever heard the song as a teenager. She tells us that story – and about how the number has “haunted” her since – below.
Roots music fans will also enjoy watching singer-songwriter Adam Klein perform “Burnin’ Love,” an original song, in a brand new music video. Previously released in 2015, Klein returned to the track with collaborator Adam Poulin for a simple duo, acoustic reimagination of the song, which Klein wrote while on a Peace Corps mission in Mali in West Africa. And be sure you don’t miss a brand new single – and live performance video, to boot! – from West Virginian Americana troubadour John R. Miller. “If You Could Only See Me Now” is Miller’s take on a song written by a dear friend and musical compatriot, William Matheny. It’s another two-stepping, honky-tonk ready track perfect for sliding across the shiny floorboards or leaving a tear in your beer. Miller inhabits the lyric intuitively, with languid and laid back phrasing while the lyric, fiddle, and pedal steels pull him along.
There’s plenty to listen to and love. You Gotta Hear This!
Erin Gibney, “Risk It (Stripped)”
Artist:Erin Gibney Hometown: Southington, Connecticut and Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Risk It (Stripped)” Release Date: April 3, 2026 Label: Rock Ridge Music
In Their Words: “I wrote this song after meeting my now-fiancé and it is one of the first true love songs I have ever written. ‘Risk It’ really describes the feeling of falling in love knowing that it could either end in marriage or the greatest heartbreak of your life. During the beginning of the relationship, I felt all the fears and excitement that come in the early stages of love. I brought this experience to Kipp Williams when we began working together and this became the first song we created. It was so much fun to not only try something new with my sound, but explore new themes in my music. This song is so close to my heart and I can’t wait for the world to hear this reimagined version of it!” – Erin Gibney
Track Credits: Kipp Williams – Producer, songwriter, all instruments Erin Gibney – Vocals, songwriter
In Their Words: “I first heard ‘Deportee’ when I was a teenager. I can’t recall which version it was, but I remember I was babysitting a little girl who was about six years old. She put it in the CD player, cranked it up, and started singing along loudly in a sweet and mournful tone. I could tell it really resonated with her so I listened closely and realized it resonated with me too – the grief in the sudden separation of friends, the ripping away of a shared humanity – it’s haunted me ever since. I’ve heard just about every version of it there is, searching for one as anguished as the one in my memory of that night with the little girl howling along.
“My search never yielded one that quite fit so I altered the song a bit by putting it in a minor key and choosing only the verses that felt closest to the bone. It’s disheartening to think that Woody Guthrie wrote ‘Deportee’ nearly 80 years ago and it still rings true. What can I do but join him in fighting fascism the only way I know how? With my conscience, with my guitar, with my voice.” – Eilen Jewell
Track Credits: Eilen Jewell – Acoustic guitar, vocals Jason Beek – Drums, vocals Jerry Miller – Electric guitar Matt Murphy – Upright bass
Carly King, “Three Martinis”
Artist:Carly King Hometown: New Jersey and Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Three Martinis” Album:Loving You Is Easy Release Date: March 25, 2026 (single); May 15, 2026 (album) Label: First City Artists
In Their Words: “I wrote this song about the first time I went to New York with my fiancé, who at the time was my boyfriend of one month and my brother’s best friend of 15 years. We stayed in a tiny hotel room and spent the whole day wandering Manhattan, falling in love, and ducking into dive-y music shops. I found a guitar I fell in love with and bought it and we carried it around the city all day – well, mostly he did. I remember feeling how simple and lucky everything was. Later, over martinis at the Carlyle Hotel (my namesake), guitar beside us, we talked deeply about our past, our families, and our future, and I knew I wanted to build a life with him around music. This song is the first date – it’s the taxi cab that takes you into the album.” – Carly King
Adam Klein, “Burnin’ Love”
Artist:Adam Klein Hometown: Tucker, Georgia Song: “Burnin’ Love” Album:Live at Leesta Vall Sound Recordings Release Date: April 3, 2026 Label: Cowboy Angel Music
In Their Words: “This album is a mix of previously released and unreleased songs. ‘Burnin’ Love’ was originally released on my 2015 album, Archer’s Arrow, with a full band presentation. Here, like all the songs on this new record, it’s stripped back to just acoustic guitar, vocals, and violin. But it still feels like it packs a punch. It randomly occurred to me to play it on tour in this duo format a couple nights before the session at Leesta Vall, so it’s fresh and a bit off the cuff. If the Archer’s Arrow version gave a nod to Neil Young & Crazy Horse in the sound of the electric guitar, somehow Adam Poulin’s fiddle playing here achieves something similar in its abandon.
“The song itself was written on my first full day in the village I lived in for two years during my Peace Corps service in rural Mali in West Africa. I was listening to the metal roof of my two-room mud house crackle from the blistering sunlight and questioning all my decisions – did I really want to spend two years here on my own in this curious land? It all loomed before me like a joke. I remember thinking of the feeling of solitude and emptiness that accompanies the end of love, and channeled it into this two-chord song.” – Adam Klein
Track Credits: Adam Klein – Acoustic guitar, vocals Adam Poulin – Violin, vocals
Artist:John R. Miller Hometown: West Virginia Song: “If You Could Only See Me Now” Release Date: March 27, 2026 Label: Rounder Records
In Their Words: “I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with William Matheny for a majority of my musical life at this point. Probably 15 years or so now, definitely in the widest variety of musical situations. The first time I saw him play at 123 Pleasant Street in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 2004 I passed out on a bench and somehow remembered his set that night. I’d get to meet him a few years later and we’ve been playing shows together ever since.
“William’s been playing in bands since he was in the single digits, and his body of work as a songwriter is huge and detailed, with recurring motifs and great riffs. His way of zooming in on the minutiae of viscerally familiar settings in his writing is something I have always admired, and his songs are imbued with literary and philosophical references that reward repeated listening.
“This is my take on a country song of his, one that we recorded some years back for his album That Grand, Old Feeling. I’ve always loved this song, feels like some unearthed forgotten classic country gem every time I hear it. It’s an evocative, tongue-in-cheek ode to the gutter that reads like a drunk postcard to a lost loved one back home.” – John R. Miller
“I’ve played a lot of music with John R. Miller over the years. Sometimes it was my band, sometimes it was his, and sometimes it was something else entirely. When the subject comes up, I usually tell people that we’ve been giving each other the same hundred dollars back and forth for 15 years. I say that completely in jest, of course. We’ve only recently started making that kind of money. When John played [the song] for me, I was incredibly flattered. I mean, it’s certainly not as if he’s hurting for material. On a completely selfish level, I got a huge kick out of hearing such a great singer interpret it and the Tulsa players putting their own spin on it.
“I love songs that bury the lede on the listener a little bit. Stuff like Tom Waits’ ‘Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis,’ Tom T. Hall’s ‘The Homecoming’ or ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ by Tom Jones. I didn’t want to let guys named Tom have all the fun, so I wrote this.” – William Matheny
Unspoken Tradition, “Company Man”
Artist:Unspoken Tradition Hometown: Western North Carolina Song: “Company Man” Release Date: March 27, 2026 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “When Unspoken Tradition first started trying to find our niche, we branded ourselves as ‘working class bluegrass.’ Though we’ve grown and evolved, that is still very much who we are. ‘Company Man’ perfectly exemplifies this slogan. Our nation was built by folks just like the man portrayed in this song. I’ve known and was even raised by a few of them. I’d like to think that the men and women this song was written about would appreciate our music.
“The song tells the story of a man who seems to live to work, not work to live. There’s pride in that, but also a sense of stoic sadness. The lines, ‘Only thing waiting is a watch and chain’ and, ‘Old men are really what the company makes’ hit so hard, and could have only been written by Tim Stafford and Mark Bumgarner. These guys are two incredibly talented songwriters and we’re honored they shared this song with us. Evoking images of the hard-working people we all know and love, this song is a bittersweet reminder to work hard but not make work your master.” – Audie McGinnis
Track Credits: Audie McGinnis – Acoustic guitar, lead vocal Sav Sankaran – Upright bass, harmony vocal Tim Gardner – Fiddle, harmony vocal Ty Gilpin – Mandolin Zane McGinnis – Banjo
Photo Credit: John R. Miller by Larry Nieuhes; Eilen Jewell by Damu Malik.
Irish folksinger Joshua Burnside has always shown an affinity for expressing grief, once calling it the reason he began writing songs as a precocious 13-year-old. He’s 36 now, and that sense of grief has never felt as overt as it does on his latest music. Burnside’s It’s Not Going To Be Okay is absolutely shattering, an album that more than lives up to its title. Written and recorded in the wake of the death of Burnside’s best friend Dean Jendoubi, who died of a drug overdose in August of 2024, the album is a bittersweet requiem.
Burnside’s previous albums combined Irish folk with electronic flourishes, worldly rhythms, and elements of sonic collage. His multi-layered experimentation reached a peak with 2025’s Teeth of Time, a record that felt like a major statement and milestone. Barely a year later, It’s Not Going To Be Okay could almost be his Nebraska move – bare-bones stark with minimal embellishment, focused on unadorned voice and guitar in the service of deep, deep mourning.
It’s a state of mind where everything brings back memories of the departed, like the opening of “The Last Armchair”:
Oh, the last armchair you ever sat on Before you overdosed Is the one I sit in every morning To eat my egg and toast…
Ahead of the album’s release on March 20, 2026, we caught up with Burnside for a Zoom interview about his musical past, present and future plans.
It’s Not Going To Be Okay is quite a title. How did that come to be the name of this body of work?
Joshua Burnside: These songs are about the inevitability of pain, suffering, and death, which is what I was dealing with while accepting the loss of my friend. But it was at least a little bit tongue-in-cheek, too, such a ridiculously depressing statement to make. I thought it would be funny in a way. In Northern Ireland, we have a very strong sense of gallows humor. So I was drawing on that a wee bit. I don’t think it’s supposed to be taken literally.
Our paths crossed briefly in school and then we met playing music. Formed a band with a few other people. He and I were maybe 14 and got on immediately. Then there was a trio when we were 16. He played drums, I played guitar, and another friend played bass. We didn’t really gig, just played for the fun of it at his parents’ house. He was a great musician and songwriter himself. His music is amazing and beautiful and weird and dark, like him in many ways. He released a few EPs. The last one is called Skin Hunger and I sing on one of those tracks. Recorded in his mum’s greenhouse, our summer shed 10 years ago.
Since it’s been not much more than a year since Teeth of Time was released, when did you make It’s Not Going To Be Okay?
My sense of time has been so terrible the last few years. It was maybe a few months after Dean passed away in 2024, which is strange to say now. So, end of 2024 is when I started writing and recording and I finished it up autumn of 2025. I was recording it as I was writing it, and the last song I wrote was “It’s Not Going To Be Okay.” It was in the last month of making the record that that one happened.
Is it unusual for you to be working ahead like that, on the next record before the last one was even released?
It’s not typical. It was five years between Teeth of Time and Into the Depths of Hell. That one was a similar dark-humor title, but then COVID hit not long after I’d written those songs. That was some strangely perfect timing. So no, it’s not really normal for me to write and record this quickly. But I just felt an urgency, because one of the main ways I’ve always processed painful feelings is writing and singing about them.
The songs came quickly and easily. I had not planned to focus on just one topic, but most of what came out happened to be that. It felt natural to have them all together like this, almost like a grief journal. That’s the story. A lot of people thought some songs on Teeth of Time had been about Dean’s passing, but they were all written before that. Some of those songs seem resonant with this new record. That seems to happen to me a lot, I’ll write a song and then it seems like life imitates it. If I were not of sound mind, I’d start to worry about ever writing anything tragic or sad.
Was it your intention from the start for this one to be so sonically spare?
Absolutely. I’d been listening to Bill Callahan and Smog, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love. I love how sparse his records are – guitar and cymbal and voice – and they’re still so alive and rich. So sparse, you hang on every word. His voice is so clear. I wanted to do something like that.
Teeth of Time had a lot going on, so I wanted to go with more of a less-is-more principle. See if I could make the songs simpler, almost minimalist, and keep attention with straightforward and very to-the-point lyrics. So I challenged myself. Before that, I was almost hiding behind production and layered instruments. I’d maybe felt a little insecure. But after all these years, I’m feeling more confident.
What has the response been to this record and these songs?
It’s been interesting. I’ve already been playing a lot of these songs live, and so many people come up afterward to say how they lost a friend, dad, uncle, and how much it means to them to connect with my music in a time of grief. That’s powerful, makes me think it’s worthwhile to make music and do this at all. It’s special. I feel a great responsibility not to take this lightly.
I did send the album to Dean’s family, my family, his closest friends, to make sure it’s okay and wouldn’t upset anyone to put this out in the world. My brother and dad knew Dean as well and they told me they couldn’t finish it at first. Just too painful. It took them a while to come around to it. It’s so raw for people who knew him. A bit of an emotional whirlwind in general.
Touring with a record this intimate and personal seems like it would be challenging. Does it feel like you’re delving into difficult feelings every night?
Actors have an ongoing debate about performance technique, whether you should act an emotion or actually feel it. I think it’s similar to performing as a musician. I don’t know what’s more correct or authentic, but the main thing seems to be to stay present in the moment. Playing these songs does make me revisit those feelings a little bit. But I have to be careful with that because I only have so much emotional bandwidth. In performance, I try to remain as present as possible with the feeling of the song, the melody, sound of the words, and craft of the song, as opposed to tapping directly into the original emotion. Sometimes I’ll do that and it’s powerful. But I can’t do that the whole gig or every night, because then touring would be too much.
How many of these It’s Not Going To Be Okay songs will be in your every-show setlist this go-round?
I’ve been toying with the idea of playing all of it start to finish. I was thinking of it that way while writing these songs, how I wanted to play every track and have it hold up even if it was just me. I need to get into the rehearsal room with my bandmates to see if we can crack it. Would be nice to make some different arrangements with electric guitar and cello. We’re a three-piece most of the time.
What were you listening to while growing up?
Lots of heavier stuff, hardcore and post-hardcore, new metal, funk, grunge. Nirvana, Offspring, Fall of Troy. An endless list of screaming, shouting, loud bands, which I still love. But alongside that, I also got a heavy dose of what mom and dad were listening to – Simon & Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Alanis Morissette. Jagged Little Pill was a favorite of my mom’s and I still love that one. Great pop record.
You’ve often cited the experimental duo The Books as a major influence and the source of some of your experimental tendencies.
I saw The Books playing when I was a student in Manchester 15 years ago and they just knocked my socks off. It did not sound like any music I’d ever heard before. All the sampling and found-sound collaging was just eye-opening, a completely different way of making music. I loved the aesthetic, the sound, the folksiness of banjo and cello with all that. It was just inspired.
I would not think about music the way I do without The Books. I still listen to them all the time, and you can hear their influence on loads of my tracks. “Under the Concrete” has city noises I recorded in a park in Belfast, sirens in the distance. I wanted that song to have the feeling of being set in that park in that city. It felt like that’s where it had to take place emotionally.
After two such vastly different records back to back, what’s next for you?
I don’t know yet. I need a bit of time for gestation and recalibrating why I make music and to try to come at it from a different angle. I’m very excited at the prospect of making something new that goes away from what I’ve done before, something a bit more experimental. That’s where my head is at now. Maybe someplace percussive. At the moment all I’ve got are loose imaginary mental soundscapes, but that’s enough to keep me happy for now.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
Seeing my parents play music when I was little. I loved watching my dad play guitar – we’d sit together, he’d let me strum the strings, and it felt like magic. I got the same feeling when my mom would sing, too. I loved her voice. That was really formative for me. My parents weren’t working musicians, so I wouldn’t see professional musicianship modeled for a while longer, but those experiences made it clear to me that I wanted to hold that magic feeling as closely as I could.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
Maybe not the toughest, but the most intentional. I wrote one song on the album, “Bow River,” one day at a time on a road trip through the Canadian Rockies. Every day I wrote down a couple of lines about what we were up to on this insanely beautiful trip and the song came out like a memoir of a long journey. It made that song feel very special, like it’s a little snowglobe where I can see myself and my Canadian friends frozen in time.
What’s the most difficult creative transformation you’ve ever undertaken?
Making this record, I think. Prior to this record, which I recorded about a year ago now, I really only performed and created music that was a lot more traditional in nature. I had joined a band called Bill and the Belles during the pandemic and in that band I played mostly three-finger banjo, sometimes clawhammer. Making my own record was a big departure from that. I intentionally didn’t play any banjo on this record. I was in such a post-breakup headspace – I was totally grieving the end of that band and the connectedness to that creative world. I leaned into fingerpicked guitar for these songs instead.
I wrote all of these songs on a lovely little ’20s parlor guitar given to me by a dear friend. When I brought that guitar to the studio to make the record, though, it wouldn’t behave. Not sure if it was temperature or age or humidity that pushed it over the edge, but it was a disaster. It was buzzing and bridge pins kept flying out. Maybe the guitar was telling me it was happy to be a songwriting guitar, but it didn’t want to be recorded with. Maybe it marked the symbolic ending of that chapter of grieving. The guitar I ended up using on the record was a beautiful Waterloo guitar, made by Collings, which was lent to me by my sweetheart Anthony da Costa. I think that was symbolic, too.
What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?
I’m not sure if this would surprise anyone that much, but I love the Mountain Goats and have for a long time. I think I’ve listened to The Sunset Tree enough times that it’s just baked into my subconscious now. John Darnielle is such a fantastic songwriter – the way he writes characters and imagery is so compelling, he just pulls you into these different worlds. It’s amazing.
What would a perfect day as an artist and creator look like to you?
Honestly, my ideal day has a big grandma vibe. I’d wake up at 6:30 in the morning on a farm somewhere and let out my chickens and ducks. I’d throw a stick for Russo, our dog, then have an enormous breakfast. Afterwards, I’d write some songs and head into the studio for the afternoon. In the evening I’d make some pottery then play at a cozy little wine bar or late-night coffee joint. I’d get home and go to sleep by 9:30pm, and that’s the dream.
Editor’s Note: Each issue of Good Country, our co-founder Ed Helms will share a handful of good country artists, albums, and songs direct from his own earphones in Ed’s Picks.
We loved Cat Clyde’s 2023 release, Down Rounder, and on her brand new album Mud Blood Bone the Canadian singer-songwriter turns the dial a few more clicks toward alt-country, indie, and rockabilly. There’s a raw, gritty quality to the collection that’s remarkably refined for how unhinged it lands – and very country, too.
Ella Langley’s megalith hit, “Choosin’ Texas,” has brought her to the top of the charts, but we’re zooming in on a new single she just released a little over a month ago. “Be Her,” one of four tracks unveiled so far from her upcoming April release, Dandelion, might end up being the best mainstream country song of the year. Delightfully coy, jealous, and longing, it’s a bop that’s as deep and thoughtful as it is fun.
No one is making mainstream, crispy, hyper-stylized country like Megan Moroney. Her new album, Cloud 9, is certain to lift you up. With a lyric video showcasing beaches, palm trees, and Los Angeles sunshine, the title track perfectly illustrates how Moroney combines pop and twang, city and rural into a country style all her own. Right at home on Top 40 radio, but certainly Good Country, too.
Kacey Musgraves ended her post-Deeper Well dry spell with “Dry Spell,” a hilarious, catchy, and craveable song to bridge eras and albums. Her next LP, Middle of Nowhere (coming May 1), will expand the rat-race-opt-out universe Musgraves began building with Deeper Well. And we’re more than happy to see dashes of the wit and wordplay of Same Trailer, Different Park and Pageant Material infused in the lead single.
An Americana, Southern rock, and modern blues supergroup, Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 12-person ensemble returns with another no-misses album, Future Soul, released Friday. The project is strikingly diverse sonically and while it features some more genre exploration and subdued moments than you may expect from their stage shows, it’s still an absolute banger. The group kicked off their album release tour beginning a 10-show residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York City that runs through March 28 before they take the show on the road in the spring, summer, and beyond.
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Photo Credits: Cat Clyde by Julio Assis; Ella Langley courtesy of the artist; Megan Moroney by Cece Dawson; Kacey Musgraves by Kelly Christine Sutton; Tedeschi Trucks Band by Chapman Baehler.
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