Category: On Air

Larry McCray has undoubtably witnessed a lot of change in his life. He grew up in rural Arkansas with no electricity or running water. He went to school during desegregation and at one point was nervous to mingle with white musicians. He survived a devastating divorce that went public due to his ex wife’s financial crimes. He’s facing back surgery after decades of touring have taken their toll. Yet, his love for music remains the same.

“My body’s not the same, but I’m still very enthusiastic about going on the road,” McCray said when we spoke. “The music tastes as good as it always has.”

On Heartbreak City, McCray benefits from years of wisdom, a new life and songwriting partner in Peggy Smith, and production and financial backing from blues superstar Joe Bonamassa. 

Still, it was a 25-year-old lead track in “Try To Be A Good Man” that caught my attention and set the stage for his grounded, relatable “Heartbreak City.” This isn’t a blues of exaggerated pain or raging libido; McCray excels as a man doing his best to handle modern life.

On “Try To Be A Good Man,” McCray advises the listener that they don’t have to be perfect in order to do their best at being a good partner. You may not have to “work two jobs,” but you probably should “give her all the love you can.” 

“It’s not a perfect world, but I thought that was a very good way to give each alternative,” McCray explained. “You have an option to do the right thing.” 

The song reminds us that the all moments of slight weakness we all experience — perhaps looking in the direction of another woman — don’t have to define our self image if they don’t define our actions. “You know what’s right/you know what’s wrong/late at night, you know where you belong,” he sings.

As relatable as this message may be for men, Smith wasn’t impressed. 

“Why do you have to try?” McCray recalled her asking him. “Why can’t you just do it?”

All joking aside, the partnership has been transformative. 

“Peggy changed my whole life,” McCray said. “Long story short, I had a very unpleasant and tumultuous marriage. But when she came into my life it was the best thing that ever happened to me and my relationship with women.”

It doesn’t hurt that she’s a great lyricist.

“She just says all these things and it’s easy for me to put music to it,” said McCray.

McCray is quite an optimist considering the genre he represents, and that comes through on this album. “Bye Bye Blues” and “Keep On Loving My Baby” are straight up happy songs, but “Bright Side” captures the determination with which he handles difficult situations. “Instead of counting the tears that you cry/take a look on the bright side,” he sings on a song that could very much be describing his divorce.

“The only thing to keep you going is life itself,” McCray said of his tenacity. “Until your life ends, you have to live. I look at it as not having a choice. What ever it is, that obstacle, you have to believe you can conquer it.” 

He explained his optimism has come from witnessing so much progress in his life. Growing up in the segregated South with few luxuries or modern conveniences amazingly set him up to have such a healthy attitude now.

“It was like living close to 100 years behind your time,” said McCray. “Coming from an environment like that really gave me a lot of grit. When you are forced to live in a less favorable environment, you have a lot of appreciation for the positives in life.”

Unfortunately the progress McCray has witnessed, he said, is showing signs of faltering in the last decade. Songs like “Hangman” capture a bit of that anxiety and pain. The scene in which a man interrogates a preacher on the pulpit about the loss he experienced is about as raw as the album gets. It also wades into political territory when describing fears of police violence. In the end, there’s not much to be done when the hangman swings his rope.

“I’m not a real political person, but sometimes you can say in a song what you can’t say in conversation,” said McCray. “It goes from a direct application to a thought in general.” 

Yet, he remains an optimist. There are certainly messed up people in this world, but a story from his youth reminded him that hope arises anew with each generation. When he saw his white school friends in public, they weren’t allowed to acknowledge each other. But back in class, they were excited and happy about the encounter. 

“The children didn’t have a problem with each other but a lot of the old ways the parents were teaching them had to be overcome,” said McCray. “I think the majority of people are past all this stuff.”

McCray would like to see progress be made again, yet he’s still able to appreciate how far we’ve come.

“I’m grateful for the fact that at some point in my life there was an acknowledgment and people were moving in the right direction,” said McCray. “It just proves that given a chance, people don’t have a problem with people. I’m so happy that I don’t live a segregated life anymore. That’s what life is all about, the exchange of culture. So many people are afraid of what’s different than themselves. It ain’t really that they hate somebody.” 

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Larry McCray and the songs we discussed, starting with Try To Be A Good Man, which maintains both realistic standards and accountability. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://larrymccrayofficial.com for more.

When love is right, it feels right. Anna B. Savage had no problem being single and didn’t imagine a future like this. But it was love, and it felt right.

“This warmth, this is how it should be,” sings Savage on the lead track of her album “You & I Are Earth.” 

“It’s lovely but it’s also scary,” Savage said. “It’s been very surprising to me. I didn’t think I’d feel this way for someone ever. And I didn’t have any qualms about that. I really loved being single.”

Savage underwent a few major changes to create the experiences for this album. She moved to Ireland for grad school and decided she enjoyed it there. In “Donegal” she expresses her “vast lack of knowledge” on the subject of British Irish relations as she wonders if she’s found a home “forever.” 

“There’s a very long history of colonization and cultural and literal genocide against the Irish people,” said Savage. “It’s not really taught about in English schools so you learn about them peripherally, but they’re not peripheral at all. It was sobering to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge about English and British history.” Still, she says, “I have been met with only loveliness and generosity.”

“Donegal” also contains a request from her mother: don’t fall in love while in Ireland.

“Obviously I failed horrifically,” said Savage, acknowledging she was much more unlikely to move back home. “I’m happily in love, but yes, my poor mom.” 

Ireland is a world Savage prefers, and finding a true love just adds to that feeling of rightness.

“Here, my understanding of nature and my experiencing of it, that barrier is much more dissolved than it is in London,” said Savage. “In London I feel I need to go out of my way to find the natural world. Even though, obviously, we are part of the natural world. Having that closeness feels good. It makes much more sense for a human existing in a body.”

“Mo Cheol Thú” details some magnificent intimate moments between the couple, as does “I Reach For You In My Sleep.” It’s not just the clearly real details that make the relationship come alive. Savage’s shock at the whole thing is somehow more touching than anything else. When she reaches for her partner in her sleep, it’s an extraordinary feeling. “That’s never happened to me,” she sings. The unexpectedness and newness make it magical, as does the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction she’s giving off. The fact that he’s just as mystified about reaching back adds to the perfection.

As a touring musician and an independent person, Savage needed to find a slightly less conventional love. “The Rest of Our Lives” covers the fact that time apart can be just as valuable as time together when finding an ideal match.

“One of the important things for this relationship is that we are both very independent,” Savage said. “That merging, sometimes it can be an assumed nice thing and then actually it turns a bit bad. It’s been nice to feel connected and together but not always merged.” 

“I love living apart sometimes/because it’s okay/there’s no rush/we’ve the rest of our lives,” she sings.

“I feel very secure, very calm,” said Savage. “Whether we miss each other or whether we’re annoyed that we’re getting under each other’s feet because we’re together for too long, it just feels manageable and calm.” 

Savage explains that the title of her album relates to the way everything about her relationship feels natural and right. It also covers her adoration for her new home. She rejects the idea of fate or soulmates, but is open to this interpretation of perfection.

“It’s a connectedness, a rootedness, a connection with everything,” said Savage. “If I’m a tree in the earth, I will see many storms and probably most of them won’t knock me over. And even if I do get knocked over, I’d become a part of the earth in another way. My body would be feasted on and become a habitat for things in other ways.” 

The album matches its title. Savage’s voice, often deep and low, matches well with earnest guitar picking and a few moments where high notes and backup singers reach toward the heavens. The warm, minimal nature of the sound is a great fit for the humbleness Savage displays in accepting love and happiness as such a pleasant surprise. 

Though it isn’t heavily addressed on the album, Savage did note the importance of self love quite beautifully during our conversation.

“It’s something I’ve been struggling to do my whole life. I think if I hadn’t had worked as hard at it as I had, I wouldn’t have found the type of love that I have now,” said Savage. “Also, it’s just nice to be nice to yourself. Why wouldn’t you?”

Above are the songs that were aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including Donegal, which finds her quite at home in Ireland. Anna has requested that the full interview not air on YouTube, but the music is there for you to engage with. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://annabsavage.bandcamp.com/album/you-i-are-earth for more.

Pug Johnson may not be “El Cabron,” which roughly translated to bastard, but he certainly knows how to write a song as one.

“It seemed like a fun, mischievous type of a guy who would have a lot of good stories,” Johnson explained of the concept for his album. The funny stories work quite well, especially when he later adds some depth to the character.

El Cabron, at the peak of his childish antics, is not the type of guy you’d want to be around as a woman. On “Last Call,” Johnson well-worn trope in which it seems like he’s about to drop an f-bomb. Brilliantly, he flips the script again by using the cop out to get even more explicit: “Get out of your head/get into my truck/I know a nice spot where we can go suck/on some Dos Equis beer/maybe an ear or a toe.” 

“He can’t just say the expected thing,” Johnson said of his character. “He’s got to go for a little bit of a shock factor.” 

The joke works better than almost any other time it’s been used because by the end of the refrain, every listener and possibly even the woman he’s singing to wishes he would’ve just said fuck and  kept it more normal. 

“El Cabron” strikes on a few more songs including “Pipeliner Blues,” a song that leads to a double entendre about laying pipe, and “Buy Me A Bayou,” in which the title of the track is rhymed with “something worth kissing I could lie to.” Johnson identifies with the character he’s created, to an extent. 

“I was never too wild or anything, but that’s a subjective question,” said Johnson. “I’m sure my wife would say I’ve been El Cabron all the way.”

So Johnson may not be singing “Thanks to the Cathouse (I’m in the Doghouse)” from experience, but “Waxahatchie” sounds a bit more like something he could relate to. In that song, a man smokes his life away and is oblivious to the fact that his woman is growing frustrated. 

“I disappointed a lot of women,” Johnson admitted. “Patience is definitely a virtue. I’m more patient now than when I met my wife a few years ago.”  

Mindy Johnson, who serves as Pug’s manager, is an important part of this album. She was able to turn Pug’s life around both personally and professionally. Pug credits Mindy for getting him out of a rut of performing only locally and convincing him to become more professional. The two currently travel together as husband and wife, talent and manager.

“Mindy came in and believed in me more than I believed in myself,” said Johnson. “There was a point where I didn’t think I could make it as a solo act. I didn’t think I was interesting enough.”

Mindy’s belief was a powerful thing for Pug, who in turn wrote a song called “Believer” for her. “You made me a believer/you made me more than I could be,” he sings. 

It’s this love story that makes “El Cabron” much more compelling than a collection of clever and funny songs. Johnson shines perhaps even more brightly describing his evolution into a loving husband. “Believer” describes the transformative effect of love and support on someone who’s given up on themselves. It’s a relatable song delivered with conviction.

“Change Myself Today” is the emotional capstone of the album. It’s an acknowledgment of failure both emotional and professional. The slow and sweet music backing Johnson’s earnest vocals make his determination come through. 

“Being a pretty awful [man] for a while and having to live with that can be pretty good motivation,” said Johnson of his inspiration.

While the depths of his debauchery were certainly exaggerated for humor on this album, I suspect the highs of his newfound purpose are entirely real. Hilarity and sincerity make for a more than interesting enough solo act; Pug has nothing to worry about. In fact, I’d say his lines about sucking ears and toes are quite unforgettable.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Pug Johnson and the songs we discussed, starting with “Last Call,” which genuinely made me laugh out loud by inverting a cliche. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://pugjohnson.com/ for more.

Barry Oreck is grateful to be a part of the New York City folk community. The lower East side was once the center of the American folk movement and though Oreck spent most of his career as a dancer, he’s familiar with the tradition he’s carrying on.

“It’s just amazing to me, the breadth of it, the new music and old music,” said Oreck of the folk scene here. “Thankfully it has some young blood. There is a really building of a multigenerational community there, where I think for a while it was a bunch of us gray hairs talking about how great we did in the 60s.”

In many ways, We Were Wood feels like a work out of that time. For those who grew up on similar folk albums, the sounds and left-of-center themes will be comforting. The histories Oreck presents, whether it be the exploits of Robert Moses, the collateral damage of the Norris Dam, or tailors from Scotland, would’ve been fresher from a chronological standpoint in the 60s as well. 

There’s a reason we learn about history, however. In “Build Me A City,” Oreck sings of Moses: “He never was elected/how was he selected/to say what would be destroyed and what would be protected?” 

Sound familiar, anyone? 

Robert Moses might have taken the expression “move fast and break things” more literally with his demolition of neighborhoods, but Elon Musk seems to be doing very much the same thing with government agencies. 

“He definitely was a precursor of the Trump playbook and he did it excellently,” said Oreck. “He had the newspapers in his pocket, the bankers, they were all enjoying the largesse.”

Much of what Moses created is still being dealt with today. The glut of cars, underutilization of public transit, the paved over neighborhoods and farmland, and the very presence of Long Island’s endless suburbs. 

Some of it inarguably contributed to New York City being the largest urban center in America today. Many of the buildings that were knocked down would not be considered up to our standard of living today. And yet, there was a darkness to Moses’ vision. He had a knack for destroying majority minority neighborhoods.

Long Island mansions were spared even if the highways had to take a sharp turn to cover land owned by small farmers. Even public utilities like Jones Beach had a way of being exclusionary. 

“He designed the overpasses too low for city buses so you needed a private car,” said Oreck, noting the reasons behind that decision were well known even in Moses’ time.

The architects of the New Deal also draw Oreck’s ire for their creation of “The Norris Dam,” which was at the center of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Here too, Oreck talks about those left behind by progress and environmental destruction. 

“Snake Bones” is one song that finds anxiety in modern issues. Climates both political and meteorological are mentioned for their worsening. In this world, it pays to adapt. 

“Snakes are survivors,” said Oreck. “They find their way over and under and around. They have such meaning in terms of how to live on this planet. Finding solutions is a circuitous path; there’s no straight lines.” 

Oreck’s insights into the politics of our time are a bit different than mine. While I’ve spent my adult life adjusted to the idea of polarization and bitterness, Oreck remembers a time when things were different. 

“When the crisis comes we seem less likely to work together these days instead of go further into our tribes,” said Oreck. “In the 60’s I really believed that people could come together and solve it. Now the idea seems very distant to me.”

As always with these albums that address societal ills, a few songs that present a more positive vision go a long way. The title track describes natural decay in a way that reminds us of the value of change, recycling, and well balanced systems. “The Crabbit Wee Tailors of Forfar” focuses on the benefits of recycling and reuse and a culture that promotes those values. Oreck has a brother-in-law who comes from the Scottish region who often creates art from items like toilet paper rolls.

“He seemed like a perfect symbol of that,” said Oreck. “The Scots in general are known as frugal or thrifty or you could call it cheap. I felt like they were a perfect group to highlight what we need to do. We can’t keep throwing everything away. We need to reuse and repair.”  

On an island largely designed by Robert Moses, it might be hard to imagine a more organic way of life. Yet it may ultimately prove more painful not to adapt.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Barry Oreck and the songs we discussed, starting with Build Me A City, which tells the story of Robert Moses, the controversial power broker of mid century New York. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://barryoreckmusic.com for more.

They made their way to Los Angeles to study comedy. They accidentally formed a country band. Haley Spence Brown and Jack Hackett of The Doohickeys have proven to be quite gifted in both realms.

The Doohickeys perform real country music while taking shots at tropes of the genre and pains of rural living. But they do it in a way that’s often loving and always healthy. Unbelievably, a song discussing ‘truck size’ turns into an opportunity to promote male body positivity and healthy sexual goals. It’s bold, unique, and funny. And it allows men to be satisfied with their appearance “as long as my lady gets to where she is going.”

“When we wrote it, we weren’t even really a band. We wrote it for sketch comedy,” said Hackett. “People have this machismo manly persona in country music. Very rarely do we talk about our insecurities.”

Shockingly, they originally planned for “I Wish My Truck Was Bigger” to be a slower song. It could’ve been ugly.

“You can’t do a real sad song about that,” Hackett added. “You have to laugh at it. I’m shocked at the number of deep dives there have been on this song. I thought people would just glaze over it but I’m happy about it.” 

There’s an important line in the song “This Town Sucks” that sums up their gentle touch: “I know I say I hate it here/but it made me who I am/so I can say it’s crap/but don’t think that means you can.” 

A few targets — an aggressive man at the bar, televangelists, and faux populist politicians — take a direct hit. But for the most part, The Doohickeys are laughing at themselves and celebrating things like Jack’s beat up truck and Haley’s hero of a father.

Hackett is from the Atlanta area while Brown comes from the rural Liberty, Missouri. 

“I think every mainstream country artist has a song about their small town and this is ours,” Brown said. 

While they aren’t aiming for mainstream country success, there’s plenty of commentary and discussion with the genre. One of the characters they take a less than kind view on in the title track is a country star from Seattle who fakes a Southern drawl. 

“I would argue that the vast majority of people from where I’m from are tired of musicians who pretend to be country,” said Brown. “They’re tired of politicians who pretend to be populists.”

Brown’s solution to the problem is hilarious and, considering her background in comedy, shockingly brilliant. 

“Have Congress work as a jury pool where we just randomly pull people to serve for two years,” Brown explained. “Cause it can’t be crazier than it is now.”

The pair were shocked how much love their song has gotten on both sides of the aisle, even as it took aim at mostly conservative leaning figures. 

“If you’re a televangelist, maybe just let us know what your net worth is, Hackett said. “Or maybe be taxed.”

What’s shocking is how good and meaningful one of their less comedic songs is. It tells the true story of Brown’s father, a lawyer who defends farmers against any governmental body looking to exercise eminent domain.

“My dad’s awesome,” Brown said. “I wanted to sit down and write a song that was authentically me but inspired by Dolly Parton.”

The song sounds quite a bit like Parton wrote and performed it. And compared to the subjects of “All Hat, No Cattle,” it’s a reminder of what a real populist hero looks like. It’s a man who left a job foreclosing on farms to defend the little guy who just wants to remain in his home.

“He saw what they were doing,” Brown explained. “He really wanted to get an inside view on their operations.”

Brown’s love for Parton runs deep. She received viral acclaim for an online audition to play Parton in a musical production. It just so happened she recorded it as the band fled Los Angeles during the recent wildfires. Brown doesn’t look much like Parton, but she absolutely has the voice and soul to perform her music. 

“It was a really nice positive moment in a really scary week,” she said.

There are some unhinged moments on the album that deliver on the promise of comedy. “Please Tell Me You’re Sleepin’” truly goes in an unexpected and hilarious direction. “Too Ugly To Hitchhike” is a good concept but perhaps a few decades too late. 

But most of the laughs come on songs like “I Don’t Give A Damn About Football.” A little comic exaggeration on a common but under discussed problem among country music fans — in this case a man more focused on football than his wife — and a couple of lines of observational humor, and you have a Doohickeys song. It’s solid blue collar humor that doesn’t resort to cruelty. Somehow, this occasionally raunchy album is one of the more unique and wholesome things you’ll hear in 2025. It’s just a beautiful thing that this project exists.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Haley and Jack and the songs we discussed, starting with This Town Sucks, which both roasts and stands up for small town living. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.thedoohickeysband.com for more.

Mallory Chipman would love for you to come see the gorgeous wild plains of her homeland of Alberta. 

“Part of me has always thought that if folks could see it with their own eyes, they would feel the same way I do about this place being sacred and worth protecting,” said Chipman. “We as humans are part of this nature. We as humans are nature protecting itself when we take action.” 

On Songs To A Wild God, Chipman expands on her activism and spiritual connection to nature to create one of the more moving albums focused on environmentalism. The plea she makes is beautiful, multifaceted, and dire. It also regularly mentions waking up to the fact that there’s a problem. Recent summers have done that for Chipman, as wildfire smoke from British Colombia or even a national park in Alberta have made her skies hazy. One of her friends even became a climate refugee after losing her home and instruments to a wildfire.

“Most folks have work life balance and daily patterns they need to uphold just to get by. It can be really easy to let some of these collective responsibilities fall to the side, which I have a lot of empathy for,” said Chipman. “Until we have seen the destruction, we often don’t realize we’re capable of it. Sometimes we’re reminded that things are more dire than we think.”

“Saltwater Tears” underlines that urgency and hints at the album’s title with an encounter with a street preacher. He is predicting the end of the world and Chipman agrees, though not for the religious reasons he’d expect. “We’ve been praying to the wrong God the whole damn time,” she sings.

“Old Man River” hints at this conversion. In describing a decaying ecosystem, Chipman sings “I ask myself why didn’t I care until now,” hinting strongly that it’s too late in this case. 

Chipman benefits from a clear voice with a range that reaches to the skies. Though she’s tended toward indie rock thus far in her career, she’s a natural fit for folk music like this. The high notes she hits on tracks like “Sing Me Home” are impressive and sound a bit like birdsong. That, of course, feels right at home on an album like this.

“Mystic Time” is the one song on the album not rooted in nature and tells an extraordinary story of Chipman first discovering her heritage. Her father, who was adopted, did not discover where he came from until later in his life. Chipman sings of familiarizing herself with a culture and the hole in her history that was suddenly filled. On an album that serves as a warning call, a happy story is welcome. 

“Same Hands” is a standout both for its dreamy sound and the loss of innocence story it tells. It follows a young Chipman exploring her natural surroundings, picking lilies and bringing frogs home from the creek.

“I’ve always found a lot of kinship with these creatures. It was this innocent perspective of looking for friendship. Unfortunately, the next day they were belly up in their aquarium,” said Chipman. “I realized I can do as much damage as I can do good. As adults, that’s still true.” 

Chipman acknowledges that in an age of short attention spans, helping the environment can be a difficult concept to grasp. She points to her work removing invasive species near her home as an example of one of the speedier ways to make progress.

“You’re able to very quickly see when you come back the next summer how much more room there is for native plants. Even that, when I say it’s a shorter term thing, that’s a year away,” said Chipman.“We’re so used to instant gratification. The results are going to look different than that. Hopefully that’s not too discouraging.”

The album ends with an appreciative song about time spend in the wild and that invitation to Alberta. There are dire warnings on this album, but Chipman preferred to end it on notes of joyful reverence. It’s a leap of faith that people could be inspired to truly change, but for Chipman, the natural world and faith are quite intertwined

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Mallory Chipman and the songs we discussed, starting with Saltwater Tears, which deals with themes as heavy as the end times and Earth crying. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.mallorychipmanmusic.com for more.

“Whether we listen or not, the songbird sings,” goes the refrain on the title track of Hannah Juanita’s Tennessee Songbird. They’re words the singer understands: her sophomore album is a true love letter to music and performance and a recognition that they form the core of her identity. Her earnest words stand out even among the thousands of artists I’ve listened to for the show. When she chose to cover “Mother Country Music,” it was because of a sincere gratitude to the genre.

“It was very consoling and really changed my life and gave me a lot direction and peace that I hadn’t had before,” Juanita said.

Her song original song, “Peace of Mind,” celebrates that living a hard life on the road has given her a sense of wholeness that she wouldn’t trade for all the creature comforts of a stable home life. 

“I don’t know what else I would do anyway,” Juanita said. “It comes with the struggles but so does everything. A lot of this record is me coming to terms with that this is what I’m doing and accepting the challenges.”

Her decision to stick to a traditional country sound and forgo attempts at making waves in Nashville is just part of that inner peace. 

“I don’t feel like I’m trying to make it big,” Juanita said, emphasizing her commitment to the music. “I want to have a long career and I want to be financially viable and keep the show going.”

The financial and logistical struggles didn’t bear much mentioning to Juanita, but she does find social media uncomfortable and balance tough to find.

“You are supposed to be putting yourself out there constantly, daily,” she said. It’s not like it used to be where people did radio interviews and shows. It’s constant. “The type of person that’s an artist, you need to go inward and you need to close off to the world to recharge and get inspired and make your art and hone your craft.”

There might not be a solution there, but she found a truly beautiful one to avoiding the alcoholism and unbalanced lifestyle of the road.

“I bring my dog when I can,” Juanita said. “That forces us to plan ahead and get to the park or get to the lake and run around or go swimming. That’s build in outside time. It keeps me grounded.” 

Not every song talks about passion for music, but every song shows it. “Blue Moon” and “Loose Caboose” feel like tributes to classic country, though very different varieties. But it’s the much more original “Granny’s Cutlass Supreme” that feels like a classic. 

The song tells the story of an older woman with a nice car and a few bad habits. In an inexplicable stroke of genius, Juanita chose to duet with Riley Downing and his distinct, nearly impossibly low voice. Her and the Deslondes performer make a unique pair, but there’s no way this song was meant to be conventional. In a genre of tight jeans and dirt roads and trucks, a grandma in a bikini with a classic car is a fresh spin that gently pokes fun at cliches while somehow receiving the benefit of featuring those cultural touchstones.

“Granny is a wild woman,” Juanita said. “She has country livin’ wisdom that she wants to share with the world. People often get overlooked in their older age, but I think it’s cool that granny is still kicking it.”

Personally, I think this particular woman would be hard to overlook. Still, the standout song on the album is “Fortune.” Juanita portrays the concept of fortune as an ex who rightfully left her. 

It’s about “looking back over your life and decisions and choices and feeling like at one point you had fortune on your side and maybe it doesn’t feel that way anymore,” Juanita explained. 

The execution is gorgeous as are the female harmonies. Out of all the tracks on this album, it sounds the most like it’s performed by songbirds. Anyone who can write and sing like this, much like Granny, should not be overlooked.

Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Hannah Juanita and the songs we discussed, starting with Fortune, which is a like a breakup song, but with a concept. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Tuesday at 12pm on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://hannahjuanita.com for more. Photo Credit Emily Danielle Jones.