Durham鈥檚 own Skylar Gudasz is back with a new record called It鈥檚 a word that can mean different things to different people, and Gudasz explores those threads throughout the record.
Country was recorded in Pittsboro with collaborator and producer Ari Picker at his Goth Construction Studios.
Gudasz will be celebrating the album鈥檚 release Friday night at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw and recently caught up with 深夜福利鈥檚 Brian Burns to talk about the process for recording it and how she鈥檚 been celebrating.
This is an excerpt of an edited transcript of that conversation. You can hear the full interview by clicking the LISTEN button at the top of this post.
The word 鈥淐ountry鈥� can mean a lot of different things. Why was that the right title for this record?
"When I first started writing this record, it came from an old beater guitar of my brother鈥檚 that I found in my closet. The first song that I started playing is the song that became 鈥淔ire Country.鈥� The word 鈥渃ountry鈥� was in that song, but I had a few other fragments floating around that used the word 鈥渃ountry鈥� because it was around a lot at the time. It was during the 2020 elections and the pandemic, so the word was just around. So, when I first started, I thought 鈥淚 can鈥檛 use that in this song鈥� but then thought 鈥渨ell what if that was the title of the record?鈥� It鈥檚 not a country record, but once I made that decision the rest of the songs lined up in a queue. It really came to mean so many different things. This ungovernable wildness, and this swagger, and the ways in which 鈥渃ountry鈥� represents not necessarily a nation, but land and relationship with nature."
The song 鈥淥utlaw鈥� really knocked me out the first time I heard it. Tell us about the backstory on that one.
"During the summer of 2020 there were a lot of moments of resistance going on in the country, and that鈥檚 what a lot of that song is about. There are these places of moral righteousness that aren鈥檛 necessarily reflected in the laws of a country, but that doesn鈥檛 make them wrong, in some ways it makes them more right."
Skylar Gudasz' new record, Country, is available now.
