Asheville, North Carolina-based songwriter David Wilcox has been through some s-h-i-t. A difficult childhood in Northeast Ohio sent him seeking answers – mostly on his bicycle – in an attempt to get away. He has spent his lifetime leaning into his problems and digging into their roots at the source: his own heart. He decided to see what lessons his heart had been trying to teach him and, at 67 years old, he’s still listening and learning. He claims to have the answer of how to heal your heart and how to do it in two minutes; he lays it out in our conversation.
We also talk about his new album, The Way I Tell the Story. Our conversation continues his exploratory journey, through the lens of his wife’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, retelling the story of his childhood, and staying calm in an emergency and in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated his community. We discuss how David was able to walk the line of acknowledging his talents without getting too caught up in the hot-and-fast success he experienced at the start of his career. He explains when it’s best to feel the depths of sorrow versus disassociating, and he talks about his lifelong love of cycling and how it continues to be a meditation and a life-saver. David is full of gems and wisdom – I think I’ll be listening back to this edition of Basic Folk many times over.
While every country star knows how to tell a good story, it takes a particular strain of excellence to also be able to write one.
Songwriting is the gravitational center around which Good Country orbits. Lyrics that strike at the oceanic spread of human existence, chords that evoke its sprawling underbelly – the songwriter weaves both words and notes together, using each as a tool to explore the other.
Uniquely attuned to the value in lyrical narrative and authenticity, country music self-selects its fair share of multi-hyphenate talents who, beyond their performative prowess or instrumental skills, have a knack for setting pen to paper. From Willie Nelson to Kacey Musgraves, country carries an extensive lineage of talented songsmiths. The following collection merely scrapes the surface of the best country star songwriters. Unsurprisingly, this list is a tangled web with many superb songwriters covering, popularizing, and collaborating on one another’s songs in true communal country fashion.
Willie Nelson
With over 300 songwriting credits to his name, Willie Nelson is indubitably one of the most prolific songwriters of all time – not just in country. Having written his first poem at the age of six, Nelson has nearly nine decades of steadfast dedication to the craft under his belt. Patsy Cline’s 1961 recording of “Crazy” lifted his songwriting further into the limelight. His pen went on to produce such potency that it helped define an entire new subgenre in the ‘70s— “outlaw country.”
Prized for his rebellious and forthright lyrical attitude, Nelson values raw emotion over placative commercial appeal, ironically earning him one of the most successful careers in country history. Over the years, Nelson has delivered a seemingly endless stream of hits performed by both himself and countless other musical giants, including Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and Dolly Parton, just to name a few.
Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry is the keeper of a robust legacy of composing and performing. Having written her first song at age 7, Gentry taught herself to play a slew of instruments throughout her youth. When she attended college at UCLA, she began performing her songs out at the occasional nightclub, signing to Capitol Records some years later as an aspiring songwriter. In 1967, Capitol Records released “Ode to Billie Joe,” a song that Gentry had written and recorded herself. Gentry told The Washington Post that despite wanting to write songs for other artists, she only sang “Ode to Billie Joe” herself because it was cheaper than hiring another singer.
Despite her previous obscurity and the song’s dark tenor, “Ode” crept up the charts, surpassing the likes of Aretha Franklin and The Doors until it eventually pushed “All You Need is Love” out of the No. 1 spot. This astronomical success marked only the beginning of an industrious career for Gentry; she would go on to write and perform several other smash hits in addition to becoming the first woman to host a variety show on the BBC. She would later produce, choreograph, and write the music for her own nightclub revue in Las Vegas prior to retiring from show business.
Roger Miller
The King of the Road had range! Roger Miller’s songwriting legacy entailed chart-topping hits he wrote and performed himself, such as (of course) “King of the Road,” “Dang Me,” and “England Swings,” in addition to many that he wrote for other artists, such as “Billy Bayou” for Jim Reeves and Ray Price’s “Invitation to the Blues.”
His imaginative impulse made him uniquely qualified for the projects he took on later in life, including writing the music and lyrics for several songs in the 1973 animated Disney film Robin Hood, in which he also voiced Alan-a-Dale, the film’s rooster narrator. His acting career was even furthered by another musical project – Miller wrote the entire score for Big River, a Broadway musical based on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The musical premiered in 1985 and earned a total of seven Tony Awards, including Best Score. Miller even played the part of Pap (Huck Finn’s father) onstage for three months following the original cast member’s departure for Hollywood.
Kacey Musgraves
One of the most influential women in today’s country sphere, Kacey Musgraves has sculpted a name for herself for both her instrumental/vocal prowess and her impactful songwriting capabilities. Her solo catalog is chock-full of compelling songs that explore the “nuances of being a human, alive and experiencing consciousness,” as she told The Cut. The thoughtful universality of her songwriting has attracted a distinguished array of performers, with Musgraves contributing her skills to songs performed and recorded by Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, and Deana Carter, among others.
Kris Kristofferson
This September marked a year since his passing, but Kris Kristofferson’s legacy continues to burn bright. His songs maintain a rugged, raw quality without sacrificing any of their vibrance. Though Kristofferson only landed one No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart performing his own original material, his songs were platformed by many others featured on this list, including “Help Me Through the Night,” which Sammi Smith, Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson recorded, and “For the Good Times,” a tune made famous by Ray Price that was later recorded by Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and more. Kristofferson also penned a fair number of tunes for The Highwaymen, the country supergroup composed of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kristofferson himself, including their titular hit, “Highwayman.”
Trisha Yearwood
Author, singer, chef, Food Network television show host – just when we thought Trisha Yearwood had done it all, her 16th studio album, The Mirror, arrived this past July to showcase yet another talent you may not know that she held all along: songwriting. In an interview with Billboard, Yearwood recounts that discouragement during her college years largely held her back from incorporating songwriting into her career over the past three-plus decades. “It made me think I wasn’t a songwriter and I just always downplayed it,” she says.
The Mirror boasts powerful co-writes with many songwriters who’ve contributed to Yearwood’s earlier albums, including Rebecca Lynn Howard (“I Don’t Paint Myself into Corners”) and Maia Sharp (“Standing Out in a Crowd”). Of homing in on her songwriting craft, Yearwood shares, “It was really something that clicked a couple of years ago. I started writing and it was really kind of therapeutic and really evolved naturally out of something I felt like I needed to do and I’m so happy with how it came out.”
Merle Haggard
Widely recognized as one of the most legendary singer-songwriters of the country canon, Merle Haggard was a staunch believer in writing from his own experiences – of which he had many worth writing about. After losing his father at age nine, Haggard wound up in all sorts of trouble, from several stints in juvenile detention to developing a strong hitchhiking and train hopping habit. His rambunctious tendencies followed him into adulthood and eventually landed him in prison after an attempted robbery and subsequent failed jailbreak.
In 1960, Haggard’s life changed forever upon attending a Johnny Cash concert while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, which deeply inspired him. Upon his release later that year, Haggard set out to forge his own country career, garnering unspeakable success. From “Workin’ Man’s Blues” (co-written with Roy Edward Burris) to “The Bottle Let Me Down,” many of Haggard’s songs have become perennial classics.
Jimmy Buffett
Of all the narrative-focused songwriters, Jimmy Buffet undoubtedly took the premise of “world-building” the most literally. “Margaritaville,” the hit song which Buffett claimed took him only six minutes to write, has a transcendent legacy. From hotels to casinos to Broadway musicals, Buffett’s profoundly popular songwriting grew an empire. Of course, “Margaritaville” was certainly neither the beginning nor the end of Buffett’s extensive songwriting career; having released 30 albums (8 of which are certified gold and 9 of which are certified platinum or multi-platinum by the RIAA), Buffett was credited on upwards of 350 songs over the course of his life.
Don Gibson
Responsible for the songwriting behind some of the most famous songs in country history, Shelby, North Carolina, native Don Gibson was such a force that he, in fact, penned two of his most influential songs in the same day. “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You” – which would go on to be recorded over 700 times by other artists including Ray Charles, Kitty Wells, and Loretta Lynn – were both conceived in a trailer park north of Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1957.
Bonnie Raitt
In addition to being the utter powerhouse musician that she is, Bonnie Raitt also knows her way around some lyrics. Having written most of her own music and with artists like Stevie Nicks and The Chicks covering her songs, Raitt’s songwriting has left an indelible mark on the blues, country, and Americana scenes. She’s known for her thoughtful and emotionally dynamic posture; for instance, her song “Down the Road” was inspired by a New York Times article Raitt read about a prison hospice program. Another, “Just Like That,” earned her a GRAMMY for Song of the Year and was inspired by a news segment featuring two families experiencing either end of an organ donation. Written from heartful depths, Raitt’s lyrics are both inspired and inspiring.
Cam
Best-known for her Grammy-nominated 2015 hit, “Burning House,” Cam (AKA Camaron Ochs) is one of the most prominent songwriters in the contemporary country scene. Another star and composer, in addition to her own four studio albums, Cam has writing credits featured on work from some of the largest industry giants in any genres. She has composed material for artists from Sam Smith to Miley Cyrus and 2024 saw her songwriting, backing vocals, and production lending a hand in several songs off of Beyonce’s chart-topping, culture-shifting country release, Cowboy Carter.
John Hartford
John Hartford’s talents truly knew no bounds. In addition to his multi-instrumental expertise, he was a fleet-footed clogger who could tear up a rug while he played. And he sure did know how to write a song. His most successful songwriting credit, “Gentle on My Mind,” (popularized by Glen Campbell and henceforth covered over and over again) earned him three GRAMMY awards and a listing among BMI’s Top 100 Songs of the Century. With covers from folks like Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, and many more, it’s safe to say Hartford was one of the most respected – and most recorded and most covered – roots songwriters of his time. And of our time, too, as evidenced by this I’m With Her performance of “Long Hot Summer Days,” a Hartford original fiddler Sara Watkins once recorded on her own solo project.
Chris Stapleton
A fav of Good Country and our audience alike, Chris Stapleton has had a tremendously successful performing career in both bluegrass (via The SteelDrivers) and country (as a solo artist). His guitar prowess and smoky vocals aren’t his only claims to fame; even before his rise to stardom, Stapleton had written songs for some of the most commercially successful names in country and beyond. He’s been the pen-power behind songs for industry giants such as Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, and more. Adele even recognized the potency of Stapleton’s powers back in 2011, having recorded a version of his smash hit SteelDrivers song “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” on a deluxe version of her album 21.
Dolly Parton
They don’t call Dolly Parton the queen of country for nothing! Illustrious and industrious, Parton estimates that she’s composed nearly 3,000 songs in her lifetime, with somewhere around 450 of them recorded. Her ability to world-build through dynamic characters and narratives has set the modern country standard for story-songs, with “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and, of course, “Jolene” being just some of her most chart-topping successes. She’s also written plenty for other artists – think Merle Haggard, Kenny Rodgers, Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris, and Tina Turner, just to name a few. And of course, we’d be remiss not to mention that Parton penned the biggest hit of Whitney Houston’s career!
Darrell Scott
In 2007 Darrell Scott was named the Americana Music Association’s Songwriter of the Year, and this year, 2025, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the organization, too. In short, Darrell Scott is a songwriting powerhouse – in addition to his status as one of Nashville’s premiere session musicians.
Similarly to many other artists on this list, albeit with his own stylistic flares, Scott champions the narrative song, writing tunes full of dynamic characters and story arcs that mesmerize. Outside of his own successful solo work, songwriting for others is the bedrock of Scott’s career. Among countless other contributions, Scott wrote the Chicks’ “Long Time Gone” (later to be sampled in Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons”), Travis Tritt’s hit song, “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive,” and the ever-relevant “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” which has been covered by Patty Loveless, Brad Paisley, Chris Stapleton, Kathy Mattea, Luke Combs, and many more.
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It is no news that Madison Cunningham is among the top tier of artists and musicians doggedly pursuing their craft; her newest record, Ace, casually echoes this. Soberly confronting a mountain of grief at home and transmuting its impressions through her open-minded, mature songcraft, the record encourages listeners through a seamless track list whose performances take on the form of open letters to its subjects. She treats an album as the dignified platform it once was and should be and this stance feels radical in today’s streaming-focused world.
A most striking feature of Ace (released on October 10, 2025) is the presentation of her vocals in a more expansive and spacious light, putting aside her much-associated – and anticipated – guitar for the piano, a more than suitable vehicle for this new terrain. Cunningham returns to her native instrument, the keys, as a “lost sojourner,” using it to strip away all but the most critical aspects of the record’s narrative, while highlighting its grooves and timbres.
All the songs played on piano started on guitar and later migrated to it. This practice seemingly grew out of her fascination with embracing the uncomfortable, like the open tunings she is known to use in her celebrated approach to the guitar as an instrument to be challenged and played with. From a new-to-her tuning, to the piano, and then to her band, this game of telephone still allowed Cunningham to sound more like herself.
The game doesn’t stop there. At a lair in Woodstock, New York, in the fall of 2024, Madison and her band committed themselves to a few simple principles: No demos. No vocal comps. “Do the thing that feels most musically true and curious.” And, “Don’t give a shit about what people have known you for.” These rules, in many ways, allow the anthropology of the moment in time during which this record was made to speak loudest. It goes without saying that this path is impossible to tread without a rigorous knowledge of oneself, trust in the folks around you, and, most centrally, the chops to back it up. The consequence of these choices is a record with a narrative “spine” throughout, animating what Cunningham likens to a ballet in its transitions – something she has been working toward both in the studio and on the road since her triumphant, full-length debut in 2019, Who Are You Now.
The song “Wake,” a duet with Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, evokes the kaleidoscopic nexus of Alison Krauss & Robert Plant’s Raising Sand, the orchestration of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, and the cinematic flair of Gustavo Santaolalla on top. More stripped-down performances, such as “Take Two” and “My Full Name,” demonstrate Madison’s subtle confidence as both a devoted curator and a fearless innovator. Woodwinds underscore and bookmark this collection’s ethereal climate, thanks to the work of Jesse Chandler. Taken as a whole, Ace brings the listener into the same trenches Madison found herself in and onward toward truth in the face of its hardships.
BGS reached Madison Cunningham via Zoom in mid-September to discuss Ace, its making, and the guidelines and rules by which she brought these songs into the world.
I noticed that you described the record as “light” when making it, despite its sober depiction of difficult subject matter. Which aspects were light to you?
Madison Cunningham: That’s a great question. The mission for making the record was really clear and all the “guidelines” were set up well in advance, which was something I had never done before. In the past, my process has been more about figuring it out as we go. This time, my band and I were very prepared. I used the touring band that I’ve been with for the last five years, and the deep collaboration and shared language we’ve developed over that time made everything feel so fluid.
We were all “cracked open” in this special way and we laughed the whole time. That’s probably what I mean the most about the record being “light,” how joyful it felt. I didn’t feel much fear while we were making it. I just had a picture of how I wanted it to sound, and it already was sounding like that. That felt like a relief.
Did you feel like you had less to prove in a superficial sense?
I guess there’s always something to prove. I don’t mean to erase the feeling that I had, which was, of course, a certain amount of pressure or wanting it to level up in some way. But, in light of being quite devastated in my personal life, everything else felt so small compared to the mountain I felt like I was climbing at home.
And maybe that was the gift and that’s why everything felt like it. For whatever reason, everything felt like green lights. It just couldn’t have been easier. Also, I’d never had a more fluid relationship with my label; there was no argument about how this was going to happen. It just was like, “Go. Do it.”
How would you describe the guidelines you had in place for this record and how did they differ from your usual process? Also, did playing the piano more for this record affect your writing style, perhaps making it more expansive in some ways?
I started as a kid on piano first and it had a resurgence in my life in the last three years. I fell back in love with it and I enjoyed the feeling of being a lost sojourner on it, just being like, “Oh, I’m finding all these things that I now am – I found a style here that I’m injecting into my guitar playing.” I wanted to play guitar more like a pianist.
One of my guidelines was, “Just don’t give a shit about what people have known you for, what they might expect. Do the thing that feels most musically true and curious.” And that sounds a lot like permission, but it was also a guideline. Another guideline was, “Make sure that there’s emotional delivery over anything that sounds too perfect. And don’t compromise on that.”
The other set of guidelines were between me and my band: we did a lot of rehearsal beforehand, but we didn’t record anything, so there were no demos. That was a huge rule. I also said, “I don’t want to do any vocal comps. I just want to sing the songs live.” That was helpful. It was another way of being like, “Okay, focus, and be in the room for the moment that these songs are being captured.” So, yeah, there was no previous, “Ah, but shit, we gotta out-beat that one demo we made.” Because that slate was so clean, I think everything was clearer.
During the recording process, do you listen to other music for comfort or do you stay entirely within the feedback loop of your own project? I’m also curious if the recording period was a continuous block of time, which would obviously influence your ability to listen to music.
We did record it continuously, and I don’t usually listen to music while I’m making a record. Honestly, destination recordings help so much with that, because you’re just immersed in the physical and spiritual environment of the whole thing. We were up at a lair and it was fall – it was this time last year – and there’s this beautiful hike that allowed you to look over the reservoir and the golden, brown, red leaves. I felt so romantic that whole time. Even if there was something that wasn’t working, I just had such faith it was going to get there.
We also had a crazy sort of work cycle, which was [that] we would start the skeleton of the song in the morning and then we would record until 2:00 AM and finish it. Again, I think because we all had the guidelines, we were like, “We want every song to have woodwinds pretty much, unless it doesn’t call for it, so we’re going to try and flesh it all out in the same day.”
Jesse Chandler did all that. He’s a genius. We would both talk through things we were both hearing, and then he would just play it all. It was like building a puzzle in real time, and it felt so wonderful to be able to see it all and to feel moved by it. We barely did any overdubs. We did another session in LA a month later after those two weeks up at Woodstock and did a few little overdubs, but we had mainly done everything while we were there.
Ace feels like a return to the “record” as a dignified format. In the lead-up to making it, did you think about the songs as individual tracks – as it relates to streaming culture – or did you focus on creating a cohesive narrative for the entire album?
There are so many examples of records that feel like a full statement and we’ve lost that. That feels radical now. I feel like I’ve made records that have been molded to the current format and I was so disinterested in that this time. I am so over the, “Hey, let’s just do what everyone else is doing,” and, “It’s guaranteed to work.” I really mistrust people when they say that to me, and that mistrust has usually been right.
Even if I see the “format” working for someone else, I’m like, “But that’s not me. That’s not my music, so we can’t say that’s the target, that’s the answer.” I was so interested in making the record feel like a ballet and feeling like the transitions were seamless. It was the first record I felt like I made that had a spine that connected the whole thing and I still find such value in that.
To be honest, we also made efforts to make sure that the songs were not too long. They were separated from their instrumental tracks so that it could work for playlisting. We weren’t, like, fully in protest.
When working on a song like “Wake,” where did that start? How different does it look from when you’re playing it on the couch, versus sitting down with Robin [Pecknold] to record it? Could you walk me through how that song got made? I love how active the guitar parts are, the closeness of the vocal harmonies, and how relaxed everything feels in the recording.
MC: I love that. I really appreciate that it comes across that way. That was the goal and the way that it was written. I wrote it with another songwriter named Will Taylor and we were both just playing these counterparts. And that’s where the seamlessness of it kind of took place; on the recording, that’s the direction I wanted it to go in. Then I just added some different flavors.
All those guitar parts you hear were added and layered, but I didn’t do very many takes of them, so that’s how it might feel live. I didn’t get in there and try to overly correct things. I wanted it to breathe. That has to be one of my favorite songs on the record because we wrote it in a Nashville blizzard and it sounds like that. The guitar part sounds like snowflakes falling in different directions to me, and Robin’s voice is just like a warm fire.
Did you record that in Nashville, or did you just write it in Nashville?
Wrote it in Nashville, recorded it in Los Angeles a year later, and we did all of that, everything that you hear, in one day. I recorded the main guitar and sang at the same time and then Robin sang in the other room. And once we figured that out, we added all the guitars, then Daniel Rhine added upright bass, and then we did the foot stomps at the end. And that was the song.
For the guitar-centric people, is “Wake” in an open tuning, and do you mind sharing what that is?
No, I always forget it, but I’m going to pull it up on my “favorite tunings” column.
It is C-G-D-F-A-C, from low to high. It’s basically an open suspended chord and it’s so tricky. At first, you’re like, “There’s no possible way through this tuning.” And that’s the tuning I wrote all the record on. Every guitar here, it’s in that tuning.
Your music contains rhythmic feels that seem to be informed by drums or percussion, outside of the guitar. I know you’ve played percussion – does your drumming experience influence your songwriting on other instruments? Do you workshop things back and forth with your drummer, Kyle [Crane] in this way?
I feel like if I were to show you the original demos of these songs, there was already such a strong, informed rhythmic thing, more than in the past for me. And Kyle, I think he was playing into, “How do I make this feel like we thought of this at the same time? Or, “How can it feel like that?” For example, “Break the Jaw” came out of a band jam. I wrote the lyrics to it, but the feel of the song wasn’t something Kyle tried to figure out after the fact. We were figuring it out in real time and I think that’s why it came out so cool. Everybody put their stamp on it.
The whole process was us trying to figure out the skeleton of rhythm and how to make it feel like it wasn’t fighting with itself.
I’m wondering how you approach sequencing an album. When you consider the interludes, the streaming world, live performance, and recording, are there specific ideas, people, or records that have helped you learn how to think about the flow and energy of a record from start to finish?
Ooh, yeah, I’m sure. Radiohead is a big one for me. I think the sequencing of their records is so specific. Their opening track is always perfect to me and their closing track is always perfect. From the beginning of making this record, before all the songs were written, I knew which was going to be the first and which was going to be the last. And then Robbie Lackritz – who made the record with me – and I spent a lot of time delineating over sequencing.
The story of the record is important. Obviously, the tempo arc, and the keys melded together. The story has a plot, so that was a big thing. I wasn’t trying to write it like that, but from an aerial view, I was like, “Oh yeah, this is how it connects.”
In the song “Take Two,” you mention a fear of writing simple songs. Did this perceived fear influence the guidelines you set for yourself when writing the album? Also, were the initial ideas for the songs primarily written on guitar or piano?
For every song that ended up on piano, it actually started on guitar – with the exception of the instrumental pieces, which were formed from the piano.
For example, “Shore” started on guitar and so did “My Full Name,” but they felt like piano songs to me because I was doing a lot of transposing between instruments to see if the song was good. I would transfer it between instruments and say, “Yeah, it still has a message.” In doing that, I fell in love with “My Full Name” on the piano.
“Take Two” also started on guitar, and I was like, “I don’t like this song very much. I love what it’s saying, but I find it to be so boring.” It was a song that everybody on my team was attached to. When we got to Woodstock, the song came together on the piano before we were going to record it and I was like, “I love this song.” Something made me say, “Hell yeah.”
On a more technical note, I’m curious about the guitar sound for “Skeletree.” It sounds like a low-tuned nylon string guitar with a contact mic. What was it?
Killed it. That’s exactly what it is. There was this big bedroom with a tall ceiling and that’s where we stored the amp. The contact mic was also sitting in a really big room, which contributed to the fairy dust.
Very cool. Were there any other notable guitars on the record that were new to you or were just lying around the studio?
I used a hollow body for the bridge of “Break the Jaw.” I think it might have been a 330 or something. I really love that you can hear a crunchy, kind of reverb thing just break out for a second. I also used my Collings acoustic. I know I had that for a few, but mainly it was just that nylon string that I stuck with. A little bit of the Collings, and then that electric guitar once, for one section of a song, and then all piano after that.
I did play electric bass for “Golden Gate” and “Mummy” too.
Do you ever write on bass or play along with records on bass?
I do, and I wrote “Golden Gate” on bass. That line that you hear at the beginning, it started with that.
Do you have any advice for people who want to feel like they don’t have anything to prove, especially if they are working toward a platform in the process?
I feel like the thing that I’ve learned the most from is, even if you don’t fully have your sound yet, make it a mission to just make music you like the sound of. Even if you haven’t fully found yours yet, you will, by way of learning what it is that you love and what you like coming out of your own body and mouth and fingers.
I think the things that have spoken the most to people is going, “I can tell that you love what you’re doing.” And even though in my earlier years, you could definitely see a lot of comparisons, I needed those because those were the things that made me believe in music and what I was doing. And then I think those faded away and now this record is the first time I’ve ever been like, “This is what I’ve always wanted to make. This sounds like me.” It just took a minute, but I enjoyed the whole ride.
I also feel like I was never not myself. Everything that I did, I felt was a risk in some way or stretched me as an artist. … What I loved the most about making this record was that all of it felt in balance. Finally, my voice was the loudest.
That’s just because I finally, like you said, trusted myself, trusted the process. I knew enough to know that even if something isn’t working the first time, there’s always a second, third, or fourth to try. So, trust your curiosity and do whatever it takes to make sure your curiosity is above the fearful, negative self-talk.
In the fall of 2004, it seemed like everybody was getting into Trouble. Even with that major label debut album, Ray LaMontagne managed to keep a low personal profile while maintaining the rigorous pace of a promising new artist. Meanwhile, the title track of Trouble got covered by that season’s winner of American Idol and ended up in an inescapable but kinda cute insurance commercial. Other cuts on the album ended up in films such as The Devil Wears Prada, Prime, and She’s the Man. In addition, Zac Brown Band recorded “Jolene” and Kelly Clarkson often performed “Shelter” in her shows (and recently revived it for Kellyoke.)
Now, LaMontagne is bringing Trouble back around for a 20th anniversary remaster and re-release (which dropped this summer) and North American and European tour dates set for 2026. He’ll be singing every song on the record to commemorate the collection two decades after its release.
“It’ll be interesting to see how my spirit reacts to learning these songs again, to going back and listening to them again in that way, to bring it to people again,” LaMontagne tells BGS. “I’m looking forward to it. And I feel like it’s important to do to mark this moment, because these are the songs that brought people to my music in the first place.
“Listening to it again now after all these years, I’m very proud of my younger self, for having the strength of will amidst all the pressures of the music business at the time, and about my writing and the way I wrote, to make the record that I did, and to leave the songs the way I wrote them and not take any advice.”
What was your day-to-day life like before Trouble was released?
Ray LaMontagne: Well, we lived off the grid. I was already married for six or seven years at that point. My two boys were five and three and we lived on a piece of land I bought in Maine. I had built a small cabin on it and we had a hand-dug well that we used for water. We had an outhouse. It was back-to-the-land living and that was just because I couldn’t stand renting. I wanted to have my own piece of ground. But it was really hand to mouth, and we were broke. And that’s putting it mildly. I mean, we were broke, broke, broke. I was working carpentry, sometimes seven days a week, because I would take anything I could get on the weekends just to get a little extra money, because I constantly was trying to improve the cabin. And I never had a car that ran.
You’d made some independent records before Trouble and I’ve read a couple of accounts of how you got your music in front of Chrysalis Music. How did that actually happen?
Someone heard me at a festival and they gave a disc to a college friend who was in the music business. Then he brought it to his boss. I went out and met with Hollywood Records first. I felt that I was in a room with a bunch of cynical people who made me feel kind of gross. I went back home and that guy called and said, “I think they’re gonna offer you a record deal.” And I said, “I don’t want to do it.” He said, “Are you crazy? What do you mean, you don’t want to do it? They’re gonna give you a record deal!” And I was like, “I didn’t like them. They made me feel gross.” So I went back to being a carpenter again, as I was, and went back to my life.
Then it was close to a year later when that guy called me again and said he had gone to a different company. Now he was with a publisher and that was Chrysalis. He said, “I played your stuff for my boss and he really likes your songs and is interested in you as a songwriter. Would you come out and meet my boss?” I talked to my wife about it and then I said, “Okay, I’ll come out.” I went out and I met his boss and played a couple songs in the office. We talked about songwriting and he said, “We want to help you as a songwriter.”
So, they were looking at you as a songwriter rather than as an artist.
And that’s how I got into the studio to make this record, because I was supposed to go in and make demos. What happened was, Ethan [Johns, who produced Trouble] and I met each other for the first time. We’re very different people and we couldn’t quite read each other. Especially at that time, I was very much a closed book, very much an observer. And he’s a type A personality, big ego, big presence, loves to talk – mostly about himself. And I don’t say that critically, I say it with humor! Anyone who knows Ethan will agree with me!
So anyway, it was this strange thing, but I began to realize as we were starting to record demos or talk about songs, that they didn’t really feel like these songs were finished. They thought they were promising. But I was getting a lot of input coming at me very quickly about, “This song doesn’t have a bridge. This song is just two verses. Is that even a song? This song just has four verses and then it ends. Is that a song?” And it was like that right down the line.
The first demo we recorded was “Hold You in My Arms.” We got to a point in the song where Ethan stopped me and said, “This song is just not finished. It needs a bridge.” He started throwing lyrics at me for this bridge and my shield started to go up. I thought, “These lyrics, first of all, aren’t right…” I was resisting and resisting, and he was getting more frustrated with me. He said, “I’m gonna go make a cup of tea. You write a bridge.” So, he went to make a cup of tea and I wrote an instrumental bridge by the time he got back. I said, “It’s just gonna go into an instrumental bridge and then back into the chorus again.” And he said, “OK. I’ve always been told you gotta do this in the moment. So how many points do you think that’s worth?”
I knew nothing about the way these things happen, but in that moment I knew what was going on and I knew why I was there. From that moment on, I was a brick wall. Nothing was changing. I was changing nothing. I’m recording the songs exactly as I had written them and then I’m going home. If you like them and you want to shop them around, great. If you don’t like them, I’m still going home. It doesn’t matter to me, but I’m not playing this game. So that’s what we did. We recorded this record, which is basically the demos the way I wrote them.
How did the recordings go from demos into becoming the Trouble album?
Six months easily passed and the publisher called me and said, “You know, the songs are just… no one wants to sing the songs. No other artists are gravitating towards the songs, but weirdly, record labels are coming forward because they like your voice and they like what they’re hearing, but they like it delivered by you. It works when you sing it, but it’s not working for any other artist.” And that led to the next step of going back and meeting record labels and talking to people about me as a performer, which was not even on my radar.
So it was a whole other challenge. It was like me against my biggest fear. I was much more interested in being a songwriter at that time. So, that’s how it happened. Slowly, and one step at a time, and one thing led to another, and led to another. But again, that’s why, when I hear these songs at this point in my life, listening to it again for the first time, it really hits me, just where that 28- or 29-year-old guy had that strength of will to know at a gut level that what I was doing had value. Just me being me had some value and I wanted to protect that. And it just makes me very proud of him.
It’s interesting to hear that no other artists wanted to record your songs, because when this record came out, a lot of people were singing these songs. What’s the personal reward for you as a songwriter when someone does take one of these songs from the album and makes it their own?
I really like that. It always makes me happy. I think any songwriter would be happy if even one song gets covered by someone else. You feel lucky if one song you wrote even makes it into people’s lives in some meaningful way. If you’re a songwriter and that happens to you once, you’re grateful. I mean, it’s just the truth of it. It’s like any other art form. It’s not easy, and it either will work or it won’t work, because music is a complex language. … It’s probably the same with painters, with dancers, with writers. You just don’t know if it’s going to connect to people, or if people are going to understand what you’re saying, or if it’s going to speak to them in a real way, speak to their spirit in some way. So I’m very grateful. I’m so glad that there are people in the world, all over the world, who understand my language.
Something that struck me about this record, then and now, is that dynamic in your voice. At what point did you become aware of that range, that you could go loud when it when you needed to?
I don’t really know. I feel like I learned to sing just by doing it. There’s some truth to this, that I really didn’t know how to sing even when I went in to make the record. But I was learning by doing it. I had gotten to a certain point where I knew when I was singing incorrectly because I would be uncomfortable or something would hurt in my throat. And I knew that that wasn’t the right way to do it. At some point, I realized you had to really breathe and sing from your gut.
In 2004, before streaming and social media, how did you find an audience?
It was just live shows. I mean, I toured a lot. A lot. And in the beginning, even being signed, I was still just like anyone. I was in a rental car, just me and my guitar, a box of harmonicas, and getting myself from one gate to the next. Those early shows, again, it’s no different than anyone. It’s two or three people and the next year you go back and there’s 20 people and the next year you go back, there’s a hundred people. When people connect to what you’re doing, they will tell their friends about it, and they’ll bring them the next time you come around. But there’s nothing anyone can do outside of yourself to make that happen. It either works – people connect to what you’re doing, to your performance, to the music, and then they’ll tell their friends – or it doesn’t work. But being signed to a record label doesn’t mean anything. It just means they’re investing and they’re gambling. And if you build a career for yourself, then they win that bet, and if you don’t, then they move on.
I’ve read that you saw Townes Van Zandt play a show in the mid ‘90s and I wondered how much of an influence did he have on your writing and your musical direction for Trouble?
I don’t think he had a real heavy influence. I wouldn’t say that, especially at that time. It was too early. I just remember being really moved by watching him play, for a few different reasons. It’s kind of tragic in some ways. He was right at the end, but I could hear the poetry in the songs. That’s what moved me the most, to hear a song and be so close to somebody, eight feet away from him, and hear “Pancho and Lefty.” That story was completely immersive and took me somewhere else. That was really the most powerful thing I took from that particular night. He transported me. That’s powerful. Music can be really powerful if you’re receptive.
To me, your song “Narrow Escape” feels like a spiritual brother to “Pancho and Lefty.”
Yeah, I’m sure it is. I mean, it’s my take on a story song of this kind. They’re very different stories, but I’m sure that’s my “Pancho and Lefty.”
There’s a reference to “Liula” in that song and I noticed that fictional town shows up again, now, as the name of your own record company. So, are you fully independent these days?
I am, yeah. I still have all my same team around me, but I’m making records on my own and releasing them on my own. That’s a natural progression, too, in the way the music business has changed. It was a very different business when I entered it and at this point, especially for me, there’s no reason to be with a publisher or a record label at all. I left my publisher a long time ago, 10 years ago probably, and the record label followed.
I did want to ask about the illustration on the cover of Trouble. It’s not a picture of you. It’s this beautiful image from Jason Holley. What was it about that image that worked for you?
I just thought it was poetic. I saw the poetry in it. You can take lots of different things from that image, but it’s also just a powerful image. And of course, I have always been reticent to have my photograph taken, or to use my photos anywhere. Which, you know, we all have these things. If you’re comfortable doing it, that’s great. If you’re not comfortable, you should feel you have the right to say no.
Other than seeing you in concert, I don’t know that I really saw your face that much back then, when Trouble was out.
I remember telling my manager, “I want to be like the Lone Ranger. I don’t need to be seen and to be known. Just leave them with the music. And that’s it.” You can imagine how that went over. It was really, really difficult, and there were a lot of frustrated people, I’m sure, at the record label and with management. It frustrated a lot of people because they felt like I missed a lot of opportunities that I could have otherwise had. I knew that at the time as well.
But I’ve always felt like I know who I am. I could say no to a magazine cover back then because I know that that’s going to be a day out of my life where I’m going to be miserable, and it’s going to make me uncomfortable. … I’ve never felt like anyone in the press or who had a camera really cares about you as a person. They’re not sensitive to you, and your well-being doesn’t matter to them. They’re just doing their job. And whatever they capture there, they choose what they want. If you have your head in your hands, if you’re doing this, if you’re looking miserable. That’s power and they’re going to use it.
So, I turned down all of that stuff. You lose that opportunity, but I felt, well, I’ll lose that opportunity, true, but you know what? I’ve got a show tomorrow night, and I’m going to sing my ass off, and people are going to feel it. And if they feel it, they’ll come back next time. That’s what’s important, to build a career that is sustainable. And to do that, you need people to fill the seats. If they don’t come out to see you live, you have no career. That’s all there is to it. So that’s the most important thing. And that was then, and it still is.
From the half dozen records under his own name to hits co-written for Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, and Josh Turner; playing with Jerry Reed, Alan Jackson, Trisha Yearwood and the Earls of Leicester; or his work on Willie Nelson’s GRAMMY winning album, A Beautiful Time, in 2023, Shawn Camp has done just about everything in his 30+ year musical career.
But with his latest project, The Ghost Of Sis Draper, he’s able to cross off another box off his bucket list – making a concept album. According to the Arkansas native, the album’s origins trace back to the late ‘90s with his close friend and longtime collaborator Guy Clark, centering around a larger-than-life figure from Camp’s childhood named Sis Draper.
After laying the project’s foundation with the lead track “Sis Draper” one fateful day, the pair later penned “Magnolia Wind” soon thereafter with other songs slowly trickling out whenever they reconnected in the years that followed. Once the songs were all written, Camp took them to Nashville’s famed Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa – now the Clement House – where he knocked the entire record out in only one day.
Per Camp, the immediacy of his time in the studio helped to keep its collective sound cohesive – like Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger and other standout thematic country albums that came before it. And, by the sound of it, there’s more like it coming soon.
“I’ve got lots of ideas for concept albums and songs I won’t release until I have a record like that to include them on,” Camp tells BGS. “I’ve got about 14 songs on another that I started recording last year that were inspired by Johnny Cash and Cowboy Jack Clement that’ll likely be out next year as well. It’ll be a lot different from the Sis Draper stuff, because we recorded it like Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Two – stripped down with an electric and upright bass – but in a similar fashion all belong together.”
Ahead of the release of The Ghost of Sis Draper, Camp caught up with BGS to discuss his relationship with Clark, musicals, the album’s old-time ties and more.
When did you first connect with Guy Clark?
Shawn Camp: I had a country label deal with Warner Bros. Records in the early ‘90s and in 1993 the people there asked me if I could write with anyone in Nashville, who would it be? I shot for the moon and said, “How about Guy Clark?” and before I knew it I was sitting across the room from him writing [“Stop, Look And Listen (Cow Catcher Blues)”] from my second album, 1994, that Warner shelved until 2010.
Guy was known at the time for writing songs that in parentheses included a second title he’d refer to them as and that was one of them. When you go to the Country Music Hall Of Fame now his entire writing room and workshop is on display there and it’s exactly the way it was the day he died. You can walk up to the glass and see his writing tables, his ashtrays, his guitars and all of his work tapes that he would record the day he wrote each song. He would spin around and write the title on the spine of a cassette to stick on a rack on the wall behind him. If you look into that room right now you can still see the cassette for “Stop, Look And Listen” about waist-high two or three feet from the wall on the right. It’s just a real treat to see his work environment that I spent so much time in up close again.
Years ago, I remember Guy getting mad at a fiddle he couldn’t get into tune so he smashed it into smithereens and stuck it up in his attic in a fiddle case. He got to telling me about it one time and crawled up there and set it down on his bench and it’s still laying there to this day. It’s been wild to see how they number and photograph everything so they can get it back to exactly how it was – it was a real trip to see.
How did the idea for this Sis Draper album first come about a quarter century ago?
I was just sitting around with Guy trying to write a song, but got stuck. It led to us talking for an hour or so until I eventually got around to telling him about a lady I knew in Arkansas named Sis Draper. She had a big beehive hairdo and a fiddle she carried around in a coffin case that she’d shred these old-time fiddle tunes on. Before I ever saw her, my grandpa and Uncle Cleve built her up as such a superstar that she was a world traveler in my eyes, even though in reality I don’t think she did much traveling at all.
After telling Guy about her I remember him leaning back in his chair, taking a big drag off a cigarette, and saying, “That’s your story right there,” which led to us writing more songs about Sis Draper and my family that together make up this new record.
Were there any differences in how you approached writing or recording this project compared to your other non-conceptual work?
We recorded it all in one day with the same musicians, so when you listen it doesn’t sound like a hodgepodge of different sessions and trying to make them fit together, because it basically happened live. In the past I’ve spent eight or nine months just recording the songs, but with Sis Draper it was easier to streamline because all the songs already sounded similar and fit together.
What motivated you to keep returning to this project through the years?
It’s taken a long time to come to fruition. [Laughs] We first started in the late ‘90s and would work on it anytime we got together and didn’t have other stuff to work on. We’d always thought about it being a musical play too. I even have started writing dialogue to turn these songs into that. It’s always been in the back of my mind, but now that Guy’s gone it felt like I needed to go ahead and get it into this form.
What specifically interests you about a play format?
I’ve always loved acting, even though I haven’t done much of it. I’d love to do it more and a play would be a cool way to accomplish that.
Several of the songs on Sis Draper have roots in old-time music. What made you want to weave those influences through these songs?
We wanted to pull from those old fiddle tunes that I heard Sis and others playing when I was a kid during jam sessions. Like “Lost Indian,” which is what “Big Foot Stomp” was written around. The common thread of it all was always an old fiddle tune melody, so I wanted to reference those songs in any way I could.
You and Guy both collaborated a lot with Verlon Thompson through the years. With that in mind, what did it mean to have him aboard to co-write “Old Hillbilly Hand-Me-Down” with y’all?
Verlon is one of the greatest songwriters around and an even better person. I don’t do a lot of co-writing with him, but we’re the best of friends. I love making music with him because we play off of each other so well.
The only song on the album you weren’t involved in writing was “New Cut Road,” but even so it still ties back to Guy and your childhood?
Yes. Guy wrote the song originally about his grandaddy Coleman Bonner who played fiddle in Kentucky. On the play-version of this album there’s dialogue that ties it all together. But when I was a kid, I started playing fiddle at 15. I remember standing on a ladder holding up a piece of sheet rock to the ceiling in a house my dad and I were remodeling. We had a little Gilligan’s Island radio playing across the room and Bobby Bare’s version of the song featuring Ricky Skaggs came on. It really inspired me to be a fiddler even though I didn’t know Guy wrote it at the time. Six short years later I was in Nashville, so it just felt like it belonged in this Sis Draper suite of songs.
Another tune I wanted to ask you about was “Grandpa’s Rovin’ Ear,” which I understand you originally constructed as a poem?
Guy and I wrote all those lyrics in different places, but for the longest time didn’t have a melody to go with it, so I made one up before going in to record. Similarly, “The Checkered Shirt Band” started as a rap that we played without a melody, almost like a group chant. I put melody to that right before heading into the studio, as well and was inspired by the old-time tune “I Don’t Love Nobody.”
The guy’s names I mention on [“The Checkered Shirt Band”] – Rodney, Chuck, and Rodge – are all band members from my days with the Grand Prairie Boys in Arkansas. We’d dress up like Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys. I recently went back there to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arkansas Country Music Awards and got those boys together to play for the first time in years. We played that song and a couple others from the album and it was such a treat. It meant a lot to not only do that, but shout them out by name in the song as well.
The end of Sis Draper includes “Hello Dyin’ Day,” the last song you and Guy ever recorded together, sandwiched between “The Death Of Sis Draper” parts 1 and 2. What did it mean to you to include that one here?
It represents the deathbed confessions of Sis Draper. It just felt like The Ghost Of Sis Draper to me, due to the mood of it all. It’s her last words, but when we return to “The Death Of Sis Draper” in the medley it’s like Sis’ funeral, so it all just kind of belonged together in my mind. It’s about 10 minutes of music that all goes together, so hopefully it’ll be listened to that way and not dissected too much.
With that being said, what are your thoughts on song sequencing? It sounds like you designed this Sis Draper record as something intended to be listened to in order?
We’ve really gotten away from the arc of storylines on albums. It’s a two-minute world out there now, so if you can get just one single out that’s all a lot of people shoot for anymore. I miss those records like Red Headed Stranger that take you through all different kinds of moods and serve as an escape from the real world. I enjoy going on those little trips and hope listeners enjoy going on this Sis Draper adventure with us.
What has the process of bringing The Ghost Of Sis Draper taught you about yourself?
It’s taught me not to hesitate and to make the move to record stuff when it crosses your mind because if you don’t it may never happen. It initiated a whole new lease on life for me because I hadn’t put out a solo album since 2006. A lot in the world has changed since then just like it has in my own life, but I’ll never stop wanting to make music.
Today on Only Vans, we’re in the mountains of New Mexico with one of my most talented friends, Adam Hood! We get to talk about balancing being a songwriter and a road dog, building a home, and the motivation of writing a song as well as publishing deals, re-recording an album, and being an introverted artist.
We also talk with Charlie and Nicole, the organizers of the 8750′ Festival in Red River, New Mexico.
What an honor it is to have my friend from Alabama, Mr. Adam Hood, on the podcast today coming to you from the really incredible 8750′ Festival we both played in Red River, New Mexico back in August. Peeking at his tour schedule, Adam is going to IL, WI, TX, MS, AL, TN, MD, and more, so be sure to check his tour schedule, because he is a must-see live act!
During the episode we talk a lot about publishing deals, because Adam and I both had them – and if you don’t know, a publishing deal is when you’re considered a full-time writer for a company. That is a uniquely hard place to be in, being a road dog and an employed staff writer was very busy and stressful – and also a freaking amazing – time in my life. I’m glad we dove in on that and, even though we talk about how hard it was, I know we both loved it and were lucky to be in that position.
We also talk about resistance from the book, War of Art (gifted to me by Wade Bowen actually), that is a must read for artists. Adam re-recorded one of his records to own the masters and it sounds great. Shoutout, again, to Gordy Quist and The Finishing School studio in Austin, Texas. And, to clarify, I did not do my own drywall in my house. That’s a lie, I don’t know why I said that.
Thank you to one of our favorite places, The Motherlode Saloon in Red River, NM for letting us film the pod there.
Ismay travels across Nashville to the Station Inn to meet with legendary folk singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier. This episode of Finding Lucinda is different from those in the past – rather than interviewing a character from Lucinda Williams’ history, Ismay speaks to Mary because of their shared experiences as fans and devotees of Lucinda’s music.
Mary reveals that her most well known song was in fact directly derived from techniques Lucinda uses in her songwriting. This conversation turns out to be incredibly revelatory, as wisdom Mary imparts allows Ismay to discover that what they initially thought this journey was all about may in fact be completely upended.
Produced in partnership with BGS and distributed through the BGS Podcast Network, Finding Lucinda expands on the themes of Ismay’s eponymous documentary film, exploring artistic influence, creative resilience, and the impact of Williams’ music. New episodes are released twice a month. Listen right here on BGS or wherever you get podcasts.
Finding Lucinda, the documentary film that inspired and instigated the podcast, is slated for release on September 9, 2025. Both the film and podcast showcase never-before-heard archival material, intimate conversations, and a visual journey through the literal and figurative landscapes that molded Lucinda’s songwriting.
Credits: Produced and mixed by Avery Hellman for Neanderthal Records, LLC. Music by Ismay Artwork by Avery Hellman. Nashville Recording: Recorded at The Station Inn. Sound Recordist: Rodrigo Nino Producer: Liz McBee Director: Joel Fendelman Co-Director & Cinematographer: Rose Bush Special thanks to: Mick Hellman, Chuck Prophet, Jonathan McHugh, Sydney Lane, Don Fierro, Jacqueline Sabec, Rosemary Carroll, Lucinda Williams, and Tom Overby.
Find more information on Finding Lucinda here. Find our full Finding Lucinda episode archive here. Pre-order the documentary film via Apple TV here.
Quite possibly the most talented guest we’ve had on Only Vans so far, Kristi Grider is a good friend of mine from the New Braunfels, Texas, area and we dig into topics like playing and teaching piano, being a substitute player, singing harmony, high-profile gigs, The Finishing School, therapizing your friends, and the benefits of walking.
This is such interesting timing, having my friend Kristi Grider join me this week on the podcast. We recorded this episode right before the devastating floods in Kerrville, Texas, which happens to be Kristi’s hometown. Her heart is so big for her community, and she has encouraged everyone to go to CommunityFoundation.net to donate to this unimaginable tragedy.
Kristi is married to fellow Las Crucen (that’s where I’m from!) Josh Grider and we have gotten really close in recent years living in the same city here in Texas. In addition to her own writing, recording, and solo shows, she performs in cream-of-the-crop cover bands, plays shows with Josh, teaches piano lessons, and is a great mom. I’m so glad that she clarified that Josh is really supportive of her career; it’s the perfect example of how people can make incorrect assumptions from the outside. Kristi talks about being in my songwriting accountability group – where you force yourself to write a song every two weeks – which I stole from my producer Rachel Loy, who we give a lot of well-deserved love to on this episode.
Give Kristi a follow on Instagram and be sure to stream her new EP, All Right – and all her music – wherever you listen. She’s as beautiful as she is talented, so my joke about her being ugly is… a joke.
Artist:My Brother’s Keeper Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio Latest Album:Wartime Cartoons Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Most of the band goes by our given names. Titus, Joshua, Adam, and Benj(amin), but our bass player “Wyatt” has been holding strong to the nickname “Sawmill” and has a “Sawmill” vanity license plate on his Ford Focus to prove it.
Answers provided by Benj Luckhaupt.
Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?
I’m sure any artist would say “it’s hard to choose” and I’m going to say the same. Brian Wilson, Chris Thile, Alison Krauss, Tony Rice are all so formative to us, but as a songwriter I would say Bruce Springsteen has inspired me above all. His melodies are insanely catchy, his lyrics are gritty and literary. I appreciate his ability to be both subtle and straightforward, sometimes in the same sentence. He tells you the facts and then makes you think about the implications. Bruce also covers such a wide range of the human experience. His music is a great blueprint for the “song first” approach and I really try to incorporate that into my writing, even in the bluegrass medium. I want to write simple songs that make you think. There’s also such a variance in sound (think between Nebraska and Born in the USA) and yet it all works. I could nerd out about this forever.
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
Definitely film and literature. We look to film often to inspire our visuals. We have a music video that is very Wes Anderson-esque, and the visuals for the album cover of Wartime Cartoons were inspired by the starkness of show Severance. There are certainly a few songs inspired by movies. A song called “The Banshees” on our last album was inspired by the landscape and darkness of a movie called The Banshees of Inisherin.
Literature, song and poetry are all so closely related. Leonard Cohen was a great author outside of songs. Spending a lot of time in books has had major influence on my writing, directly and indirectly. I love to start my day with a book about religion or history and end my day with a book about music or musicians. Sometimes I try to do an audiobook in between. Just taking in all those beautiful words is such a wonderful way to increase your vocabulary and worldview.
Titus and Wyatt are both photographers, and I think that art form opens up creative pathways as well, and of course contributes to the visuals of the band.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
This kid told me to think about what I’m thankful for and write about that. That was great advice. He was like 5 or 6 years old and I do think about thankfulness every time I write. Out of the mouth of babes.
What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?
Most people are pretty surprised when they find out that we love hip-hop and mainstream pop. They’re even more surprised when we tell them that our music is inspired by those genres. I’ve even had people say things to me like, “I like all music except for that rap crap” and I’m always like, “Oh, really? Because I love it!” Some people are even surprised when they hear how much we love The Beach Boys.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I’d like to sit down with Tony Rice and eat whatever fish he just caught and fried up. I’m sure we wouldn’t talk much, but we’d probably listen to Miles Davis and I’m sure I would learn a lot.
Tim O’Brien & Jan Fabricius‘ new album, Paper Flowers, represents something of a double collaboration. While O’Brien has achieved many accomplishments in his long career, Paper Flowers stands as his first official album collaboration with his wife, Jan, although she has written and performed with him over the past decade.
Secondly, Paper Flowers is the result of the couple’s ongoing collaboration with the legendary singer-songwriter Tom Paxton. Twelve of the album’s 15 songs are the product of these regular Zoom sessions. Paxton had known the couple for years from traveling in similar musical circles, but their virtual songwriting dates arose after mutual friends Cathy Fink and Jon Weisberger asked O’Brien and Fabricius if they would consider co-writing a song with Paxton for the Bluegrass Sings Paxton project that they were then just getting off the ground.
The first song the three of them wrote together, “You Took Me In,” wound up on that 2024 release. “We wrote the song really quickly and we’re really happy about it,” O’Brien shared on a phone call between concerts with Fabricius in New Mexico. “It did jump start the process.”
O’Brien has found this collaborative process particularly productive. “Writing songs on your own, for me, sometimes I labor over them for months,” he elaborates. “But with a co-write, it seems like your time is precious. The idea that you’re together in the same space…and you want to get to the crux really as quickly as possible. And in general, it’s a liberating process. It’s like fishing. You’re pulling these things out of the water and you see, ‘Oh, there’s a good one. Here’s a good, good size one.’”
You can easily sense the musical liberation on Paper Flowers. The album stands as perhaps O’Brien’s most musically diverse work across his celebrated career. While still securely rooted in an acoustic foundation, the record contains a variety of music styles, including the boogie-woogie jaunt “Blacktop Rag Top,” the gospel-tinged “Back To Eden,” and the New Wave-y rocker “Down to Burn.” Fabricius discovered that these songwriting sessions can lead to some interesting results.
“It amazes me how we’ll have an idea and then by the time the whole song’s molded and done, it may be totally different, take you down a different path than you thought you were going,” she says. One example of this twisty path of songwriting came when the couple shared with Paxton the story of an armadillo that they were battling in the yard of their Nashville home – including the animal’s miraculous escape from a raccoon trap. Paxton, who was at a laundromat at the time, immediately saw it as a song premise. The highly comical “Lonesome Armadillo” relates the misadventures of an armadillo that’s stranded in a laundromat. It’s trying to bum a quarter to get back to Amarillo after failed attempts to become a Nashville music star, including getting kicked out of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and not getting to meet award-winning bassist (and longtime O’Brien collaborator) Mike Bub.
Fabricius also credits Paxton for coming up with a key lyrical detail – a peanut butter sandwich – in “Covenant,” a heartbreaking song about parents losing a child in a school shooting that was inspired by the 2023 Covenant School tragedy in Nashville. She recalls, “When he said, ‘Well, let’s say this kid has got a peanut butter sandwich in the backpack,’ at first I thought: ‘Huh?’ And then I thought, ‘Oh boy, that really does bring the reality to it.’ We’re just putting ourselves into the parents’ shoes a little bit, you know, and what can you say? It’s hard to put the words to it, so less was more.” O’Brien adds that these “visual references and physical details are sometimes better than trying to moralize or anything.” He also drew a parallel to the subtleties involved in cooking: “If you make cornbread, you don’t want to stir it up too much. It doesn’t work as well if you stir it up too much.”
Detailed lyric writing is something Paxton very much believes in. “It’s not just a tree; it’s an oak tree,” Paxton believes. “It’s not just a street, it’s Cornwall Street. You get them closer to life when you notice the particulars of life and the sandwich in the kid’s backpack is a given and it’s up to you to see it.”
The importance of details also was central in the creation of the track, “Yellow Hat.” Paxton came to one session stating that he wanted to write a song about a hat. Not just any hat, but a yellow hat. This sense of specificity certainly lent an air of realism to the tune, which deals with a couple aging gracefully. The lyrics come off as being so relatable and authentic that people think it is about O’Brien and Fabricius. O’Brien says that he has alerted audiences that it is not them in the song by announcing: “This is about an old couple, not us; (they’re) moving out of their house, not our house.”
“He hasn’t bought me a yellow hat!” Fabricius chimes in.
Paxton, in fact, often arrives to the Zoom with a premise or a phrase that he is eager to work on. Fabricius recalls him saying: “’This idea has been driving me nuts all week. It’s about a guy who really loves his wife but all he does is complain about her.’ And we were off and running.” After coming up with lyrics for this premise, O’Brien and Fabricius realized the next day that the song was very husband-sided, so they wrote a verse from the wife’s perspective. “And (Tom) was really happy with it,” Fabricius reveals. And well, he should be. The tune, “This Gal Of Mine” sits nicely with Tennessee Ernie Ford/Kay Starr’s “You’re My Sugar” and John Prine/Iris Dement’s “In Spite Of Ourselves” as a classic battling couples country tune.
There are times too when ideas come out of nowhere – or close to nowhere. At one of their virtual meetups, O’Brien was sitting around riffing on the guitar and, as he recalls, “Tom says, ‘Boy, the more you play that, the more it sounds like you’re playing ‘fat pile of puppies.’” And thus, the song “Fat Pile of Puppies” was born. While the tune may initially sound like a light romp simply about adorable little dogs, “Fat Pile of Puppies” (at one time considered for the album’s title) holds a deceptive depth to it. The crucial lyric “Falling in love is what I fear” could easily be describing the emotions for another human as much as for a dog.
“It’s kind of a love song in a way,” Fabricius confides. The writing of this song also came as O’Brien and she were still mourning the loss of their 17-year-old dog; however, they have since acquired a new pup named Nellie Kane (yes, after the O’Brien-penned Hot Rize track).
Real-life inspirations serve as the source for several other songs on this album. “Father of the Bride,” for example, was written for Fabricius’ son when his daughter was getting married. The humorous “Atchison” was inspired by a trip the couple took to Kansas, where Fabricius is from. She has a cousin who actually lives in Atchison, and during the visit, O’Brien exclaimed: “I have never been to Atchison.” The phrase stuck in their heads, giving rise to the album’s catchy lead-off track, which not only references the great train tune “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” but also affords O’Brien the opportunity to break out a Jimmie Rodgers-like yodel.
It’s not surprising, however, that the couple wound up choosing “Paper Flowers” as their title track, because it serves as something like their courting song. The tune came about after they came across O’Brien’s old notebooks (the “little $2 notebooks you could put in your shirt pocket,” as he described them) in which he had written his early love notes to her. Fabricius saved the postcards and paper flowers that he had sent her. One of the notes contained the sentence: “one for you and one for me and one for the miles in between,” which got transformed into one of the song’s key lines.
“We still have the paper flowers on the mantle,” Fabricius shares. “And they made for good cover art.”
The tracks that the couple wrote without Paxton, “I Look Good in Blue” and “Down to Burn,” are both true stories, although not drawn from their own lives. “I Look Good in Blue” is a gin-soaked portrait of a honky-tonk piano player whose family told O’Brien and Fabricius about this woman whose wish was to “save that (Bombay) Sapphire bottle and pour my ashes in.” Another song drenched in alcohol, “Down to Burn” was written after the couple encountered a quintet of drunk women on a “girlfriends’ getaway.” The tune, which exudes an ’80s New Wave party vibe, provided O’Brien the chance to dust off his electric guitars. “The great part is seeing Tim in our music room putting electric guitar on (the song). He had more fun with that,” Fabricius shares. O’Brien admits, “I sweated over it more than I had fun. I did enjoy that. I have several electric guitars, and I don’t know how to operate them, and it made me try to learn more. I kind of got a couple of them working pretty good.”
O’Brien has won two GRAMMYs and made a lot of music in his over 50 years as a professional musician. Toward the end of our conversation, he shared some of his thoughts about the role of music and musicians in society. “The music is, in a broader sense, like the human song. It’s like creative force, like a tree growing or grass growing. It’s going to happen and we’re the vehicles – the musicians – the people who play music and we just organize it in some way to let it be there…
“The human race could not function without music,” he continues. “It’s used for various things. It’s used for ceremony. It’s used for dancing. It’s used for entertainment. It’s used for communication… I mean Bob Dylan, he wrote ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ He was writing what he saw, what was already going on. It wasn’t like he invented that. He’s the channel.” O’Brien then paused before adding, “It’s a nice thing to be in the channel and kind of push it along.”
Photo Credit: Scott Simontacchi
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