Goodbye Blues Album, Produced by Deslondes’ Sam Doores, Out Today on Jalopy Records
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 today on Jalopy Records via digital and a limited vinyl run to spotlights from NPR Music, MOJO Magazine (UK), No Depression, and beyond.
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.
Today, she shared “Goodbye The Crazies,” which refers to the mountain range in Montana. HEAR/SHARE
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.
Here’s a sample of the response to Cavazos’ new music:
“Recommended [among] the best albums out April 24.”
–NPR Music, April 24, 2026
4 stars (out of 5): “She has written some great folk Americana hobo blues and train songs, like a female Blaze Foley. She sings them in a dusty, lonesome, honest voice with a country twang and minimal accompaniment.”
–Sylvie Simmons, MOJO Magazine (UK), June, 2026
“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
“Memorable for their mythic narratives, detailed imagery, and hard-won wisdom. Most notable, however, is Cavazos’ timeless voice, which evokes the essence of what it is to be human and to experience the rush of beauty and the ache of impermanence… She’s one of those artists who evokes worlds with a simple phrase and strum.”
–John Amen, No Depression, April 22, 2026
“A great songwriter… The GOAT.. Every so often, an artist like Kiki Cavazos comes along and reminds you what’s real. Her music is truth… the kind that remembers what we lost yesterday and still offers a little hope that we might figure something out today.”
–Western AF
“Cavazos is primed to be one of the next great hopes for folk music… Cavazos is quickly rising to the top of a burgeoning folk scene.”
–Glide Mag, March 2, 2026
“[Goodbye Blues] sounds like it has come echoing down the ages, and in the recorded form has the feel of being played in some kind of lonesome homestead, a hundred miles from anywhere and meant to be heard by a handful of passers-by or family: or by no-one at all. If you’re looking for that haunted music, well here it is.”
Jonathan Aird, Americana UK, February 11, 2026
“Achieve[s] what so many of its peers strive after and miss.”
–Layla Moore, Indie Boulevard, April 16, 2026
“I love the new ones from Kiki Cavazos.”
–One Chord To Another, March 15, 2026
“The best country singer-songwriter that there is in my lifetime.”
–Desiree Cannon
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 co-produced the album 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, came out last month.
March single “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.
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.
Kiki Cavazos Tour Dates (all with the Deslondes)
April 24 – New Orleans, LA – Mirror House
May 19 — Chicago, IL –
The Hideout
May 20 — Madison, WI
– High Noon Saloon
May 21 — Milwaukee, WI
– Cactus Club
May 22-23 — Elkader, IA
– Turkey River Cabin Concerts
May 24 — Park Falls, WI
– The Big Dipper
May 25 — Minneapolis, MN –
Icehouse
Kiki Cavazos Goodbye Blues Track Listing
1. Goodbye The Crazies
2. Black Eyed Man
3. Hawthorne and Heartache (band)
4. Hobo Song
5. Little Old Dusty Road
6. Pedestal
7. Leavin’
8. Cold Mountain Blue
9. Grey Ghost Train
10. Two Bit Two
11. Hawthorne and Heartache (solo, bonus track)
