Celebrating the release of her new album “Country,” Skylar Gudasz joined Aaron last week on Live & Local.
“Country” is Gudasz’s third album and her first in four years. Her last album, 2020’s “Cinema,” drew widespread acclaim – but also dropped right in the middle of the pandemic, a rough period that briefly soured Gudasz on the whole music scene altogether.
But luckily that feeling was only a temporary one – and Gudasz says the new album grew in part from that experience.
“There was no touring, nobody knew what was going to happen in the world, (and) I was like, I don’t know if this music thing is for me anymore,” she says. “But ‘the muse is contrary,’ as I always say…and then my brother was visiting, and I found this old guitar of his in the closet and we pulled it out and we started trading it back and forth and playing songs together – and the first chords I played on that guitar were the chords for ‘Fire Country.'”
“Fire Country” is the album’s opening track and lead single, with a breezy yet haunting melody and pointed lyrics about natural disasters – manmade ones, in this case – that set the stage for an album whose nine songs revolve around the theme of nature, and our own futile efforts to impose our will upon it. It’s a global statement, but it’s also a personal one as well: Gudasz drew on her own experience living and touring in wildfire-torn parts of the world, from Australia to L.A.
“I said the words ‘fire country,’ Gudasz says of her a-ha moment, “and I was like, ‘well, I can’t do that’ – because I already had some ‘country’ lyrics laying around – and (then) I was like, ‘what if the album is called Country?’ And as soon as I decided that, the rest of the songs sort of showed up. That song really was the conduit.”
Listen to the full album (and purchase it) on Bandcamp.
Gudasz recorded and co-produced the album with “mad genius” Ari Picker (Dante High), at his Goth Construction studio in Pittsboro. Some of the songs were recorded outdoors – partly owing to the pandemic, but primarily a vehicle to keep the songs as connected with nature as possible.
“I grew up in the woods, and Ari’s studio is deep in the woods,” says Gudasz. “We had a great time.”
The album dropped in August, and Gudasz has been on tour to support it ever since (making up for lost time, after not being able to tour when “Cinema” dropped in 2020). Her next local show is Friday, October 11, at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw.
Buy tickets to the show at HawRiverBallroom.com.
“I was talking to some people and they’re like, ‘I’m surprised you wrote a political album’ – and I was like, ‘I guess you didn’t know me that well, then,'” Gudasz says with a laugh. “It really (comes) back to the word ‘country,’ and all the ways that people use that (word) to identify themselves or create their identity, create their self worth, create their value – and how that is (both) a limiting and a freeing factor, and (how) it can be a factor of resistance.”
No limits on Skylar Gudasz, though: “Country” is an album, and an act, of liberation.
Skylar Gudasz stopped by Live & Local to discuss the album and play three songs: “Fire Country,” “Lovestorypastlife,” and “Truck.” Listen:
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