Single “Hawthorne & Heartache” Out Today As Western AF Shares Performance Video by Formerly Itinerant New Orleans-Via-Montana Songwriter
We believe Kiki Cavazos is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Both mystical and salt of the earth. The best of the best.”
–Big Thief
“The GOAT”
–Western AF
Kiki Cavazos has lived the kind of life that most troubadours only sing about. Born in Montana, the songwriter spent summers traveling the northwest with her dad cutting down trees. At 16, she ran away from home to Alaska before drifting down to Mexico, where her grandfather was from. She played banjo in a Mexican drum band that performed on buses and on the street. Arriving in New Orleans, she formed a band called Sundown, writing and playing guitar with Alynda Lee Segarra (of Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Sam Doores (of The Deslondes), among others. Doores produced Cavazos’ debut album Goodbye Blues, coming out April 24 on Jalopy Records via digital and a limited vinyl run.
Now back in New Orleans after years in Montana, Cavazos has performed at Newport Folk Fest, opened shows last year for Big Thief and the Deslondes, and earned over 200,000 views on her Western AF videos.
Goodbye Blues is stripped down, mostly just Cavazos on acoustic guitar and vulnerable vocals, with just an Telecaster, upright bass, or harmony vocal supporting her. Doores produced the album with Ajai Combelic in New Orleans. He says, “When I listen to her music it’s clear that pain and beauty are inexorably connected. I start to value the most painful moments of my life. Her songs aren’t influenced by any fad or era. It’s pure soul and hard honest truth — and magic.”
Doores adds, “Her songwriting has inspired every musician who knows her music. Her influence is an integral part of the New Orleans music scene and beyond. None of us would be doing what we’re doing without her.”
Her songwriting has the power and economy of Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley, or Lucinda Williams. First single “Hawthorne & Heartache,” a lonesome song partly inspired by a New Orleans tarot card reader, is out today
Western AF has released a new solo performance video of the “Hawthorne & Heartache,” filmed in Montana.
The memorable “Grey Ghost Train” is based on a song she says she heard on a cassette of demos from her friend Cowboy Mike. “He wrote the ten perfect country songs before he died. Me and Luke Bell had nine of them on tape. He worked at the dump. He was too shy to sing them in front of people. He told me to go sing ‘em places, told me to call them my own,” she recalls.
Meanwhile, timeless, traveling song “Hobo Song” draws from her experiences drifting around the continent, with two lines written about Cowboy Mike.
“Goodbye The Crazies” refers to the mountain range in Montana. She sings, “Livin’ in the lost cause and carrying the last straws, backroads are gone and the west is not wild.” Growing up, she went to a rainbow gathering — a meetup of traveling kids where they’ll have food and a safe place to stay — in the Crazies. She recently drove back up that way, only to see a golf course and a series of brand new mansions. It also serves as a metaphor for an untamed life.
The autobiographical “Two Bit Gambler” is another highlight. “Ain’t no paved road gonna bring me home,” she sings. Kiki has worked as a tree topper, a silversmith, and at a burger joint, among other odd jobs. “I tried too many things and ended up doing nothing, somehow,” she says, laughing.
Kiki transports her listeners to her world, that of hobos, trains, mountains, dirt roads, and open hearts. She recently received a letter from a young Iranian girl who wrote said that she can’t take her life anymore and wished she could travel like a Kiki Cavazos song.
