ON THE RISE
Caroline Spence discusses how she used her "English major brain" to crack the code of country songwriting.
Molly MatalonAfter moving to Nashville from Ohio in 2011, Caroline Spence nannied, waited tables and wrote songs. It took her two years to come up with one she felt was good enough to play around town: “Whiskey Watered Down,” a gently savage kiss-off to a flaky musician. “You think you’re a big deal with that guitar in your hands,” she sings. “But you’ll never be Parsons, Earle, or Van Zandt.”
“I had been making myself a student [of those famous musicians],” the 29-year-old country singer says of her songwriting process. “The tagline of the verse is the same as the tagline of the chorus, and every time it lands, it means something different.” In the first verse, the song’s title refers the sub-par tunes of a wannabe singer-songwriter; by the second verse, it describes what it’s like to try to love such a person. Spence says, “It was the first time I wrote the type of song that I love.”
Spence first started thinking about becoming a songwriter as a teenager in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she grew up in a family of piano players and audio engineers. Loving music was simply part of the family routine. “Everyone could kind of play, so it didn’t feel super special,” she says. “It just felt like a thing I did.”
As a teenager, Spence idolized singer-songwriters like Patti Griffin and Lori McKenna, whose songs often would up getting recorded by others. When she first heard Faith Hill sing one of McKenna’s songs on the radio, she had a realization: “’I want to do that.’ I just didn’t know that was a job you could have.”
But the singer’s plan to remain in fully the background hasn’t quite panned out. After two self-released albums, she recently signed to Rounder, which put out her third LP, Mint Condition, a gorgeous reflection on finding peace amid upheaval and confusion. “I don’t think I considered being an artist,” Spence says. “[There was just] a need for someone to be singing my songs. And [that person] was me.”
The album establishes Spence as a writer somewhere between Kathleen Edwards and Guy Clark in her deft chronicles of interpersonal complexity. She relies on the Nashville tradition of rigorous songcraft and is obsessive about songwriting on both a literary and formal level: how words work in relation to one another, how removing a word like “when” can change the entire meter of a verse, how a protagonist in one song on her album seems to respond to a narrator on another. When she was writing “Sometimes a Woman Is an Island,” Spence flicked on “English major brain” and created a line that unlocked the entire meaning of the song: “Sometimes a woman is a bell.”
Spence’s craft has even impressed Emmylou Harris, who appears on Mint Condition’s poignant title track. Spence wrote the song back in 2013 from the perspective of her grandparents, with Harris’ iconic voice in mind.
Spence has also had to grow comfortable with the inherent beauty of her own singing. “I would love to be able to rock a little bit, but there’s no denying the tenderness and softness of my voice,” she says. “I just have to be like, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ve got a sweet voice.’”
Spence’s potent, unflashy sound feels like part of a movement, also exemplified by Kelsey Waldon, Erin Rae, and Michaela Anne, fellow rising singer-songwriters who share her mission of stripping country and folk music back to its core elements. “People always ask, ‘is it hard to do this?’” says Spence. “And I mean, everything’s hard. But because it’s so hard to make a living, seeing anybody rise up always feels like a victory. That’s the greatest joy of living here.”
ON THE RISE
Ollie Byrd, a musician blending 1980’s new wave sounds with Hard Rock, shows how his musical output mirrors the different stages of his life through genres that mix, match, and mold with one another. His latest single, “the sun will bring the day again,” serves as a time capsule as one of his first written works, finally making its way to release.
From Ollie’s earliest memories of hearing music on the radio or the spin of his mom’s records, he recalls the dopamine rush that music gave him, a feeling he still experiences to this day. He shares that watching his heroes perform was profoundly inspiring, and with such resonance, he eventually felt compelled to do it for himself.
He recalls first riffing alongside recorded works, jamming with a friend who had a drumset in the 9th grade, to forming high school and college bands inspired by the 90’s grunge era. His first recordings were through cassette tape decks from stereos with a dinky microphone, that captured that raw and unpolished experimental stage. After reading an iconic Guitar Magazine article in which Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page shared insights into his creative techniques, innovative recording methods, and unique riffs, Ollie became further inspired to produce, write, and hone all the skills needed to make music on his own.
With the introduction of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to mainstream users, Ollie recalls this laid the framework to make his first record. Influenced by Missing Persons, Blondie, and U2 (especially The Joshua Tree era), as well as Pink Floyd and The Police, Ollie’s music fuses the boldness of macho hard rock, bands like Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, and the new wave, hypnotic sounds of The Cure and Joy Division for a unique and unusual sonic combination.
As his music has morphed over the years, Ollie gained an underground following with his album “Barrel of Fun.” He shared how much he enjoyed building out each track with hard rock guitars and simplistic new wave baselines that allowed him to be precise and intentional in shaping the overall tone, which has often been referred to as lo-fi emo.
When asked about the tone of his upcoming single, “the sun will bring the day again,” Ollie mentions that not only was it the first song he ever wrote, but he wanted to preserve its simplicity and bring that timeless style full circle. The track, a bittersweet reflection on love lost, tells the story of a girl he was once in love with and the devastation when the years they spent together ended. In the lyrics, “I know that you won’t be back this way again,” the song served as a pathway to coming to terms with the loss and being able to move on. To put it simply, Ollie jokes, “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy cries.” He shared that it took a while for him to actually record the track, as he didn’t have much of a vision beyond wanting to stay true to its rawness. He detuned the electric guitar for an extra-low sound to preserve the authentic feel of where and how it was originally created. (In his bedroom, alone).
As he’s evolved through his music styles, creative outputs, and mental states over the years, he wanted to revisit the mellow, minimalistic feeling. Ollie also sees this music as a potential bridge beyond an angsty, grungy musical past and corresponding fan base, into a new lighter time of life, music, and listeners. Ollie reflects on a unique element from the original version of the song: a high-up fingerpicking technique, inspired by Van Halen’s “Little Guitars.” This staccato right-hand plucking style was unusual for his artistry at the time but gave the song a distinct character.
When asked if there were any recent revisions, he explained that one of his favorite parts of resurfacing the track was recording new guitars inspired by Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. He describes overdriving the board, burning up the gain, and creating a distortion-heavy hum that added extra texture to the acoustic song, much like Eno’s experimental and ambient elements over traditional rock instrumentation. Lastly, Ollie added powerful drums to the track, noting, "You don’t usually hear that—acoustic, hard electric, and drums all together."
Parallel to how Ollie bridges contrasting musical elements from different genres and ends of the spectrum, he shares a parting sentiment with fans and readers: "Seek to overcome division. Despite the polarizing narratives that are all around us, seek to find connections over division. Keep looking for the patience to meet your fellow humans, and love your neighbors.”
Listen to “the sun will bring the day again” here.
Follow Ollie Byrd on social media for updates on new music coming out this year!
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