Liverpool and Americana have perhaps more in common than the miles between Merseyside and Nashville might suggest.
It’s a connection we’ve found ourselves returning to increasingly often at Urbanista.
When Michael Weston King joined us on the Misadventures in Music podcast, the conversation explored a career spent helping shape British Americana long before the genre had established the profile it enjoys today. In our more recent conversation with Siobhan Maher Kennedy, the former River City People singer talked about a life that has taken her from Liverpool to Nashville and an ambition to bring the songwriting communities of those two music cities closer together.
That ambition is now also taking shape through Siobhan’s proposed Liverpool to Nashville Songwriter Retreat, intended to create further connections between writers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Perhaps it explains why more Americana, country and roots music seems to be finding its way into the Urbanista inbox. The latest comes from considerably further west.
Northern California singer-songwriter Lindsay Everly is preparing to release her new album ‘Fool’s Gold’ on 13 November, bringing together Americana and cosmic country with elements of classic country, rock, pop and psychedelia.
Looking beyond the glitter
There is a central idea running through Fool’s Gold: learning to trust your own instincts when the world is offering something apparently brighter or easier.
Everly describes a record concerned with intuition, self-worth and recognising what is genuine. Musically, however, she approaches those themes from several directions.
The album moves between honky-tonk swagger, reflective ballads and more psychedelic territory rather than remaining safely within traditional country boundaries.
That mix feels particularly appropriate for an artist whose background reaches beyond a straightforward Nashville template.
Everly grew up in rural Wisconsin, beginning piano lessons at the age of eight on a neighbouring dairy farm. She was surrounded by church music, country and classic rock before later travelling to Ghana to study music. Now based in Northern California, her songwriting explores independence, identity, resilience, travel and belonging. Lindsay Everly
‘Fool’s Gold’
The album’s title track gives a good indication of Everly’s willingness to play with those influences.
Released in September, ‘Fool’s Gold’ combines a disco-driven beat with a classic country perspective, telling the story of a woman capable of seeing through an all-too-familiar player’s game.
It is followed on 20 October by ‘Rainbow of the Night’, which heads somewhere rather different. The forthcoming single moves into more celestial and psychedelic territory, asking who remains beside us when circumstances become difficult.
Everly’s current band, Lindsay Everly & The Evergreens, expands that sound through folk, alt-country and bluegrass influences, with three-part harmonies playing an important part in their music.
The album was produced by Gawain Mathews and is being released independently across digital, streaming and vinyl formats.
Americana without borders
One of the more interesting things about contemporary Americana is how difficult it has become to confine geographically.
Its roots may be American, but the songwriting traditions around country, folk and roots music have travelled remarkably well.
Liverpool provides plenty of evidence of that.
Michael Weston King’s career has spent decades moving through those musical traditions, while Siobhan Maher Kennedy has quite literally built a life between Liverpool and Nashville. Her plans to bring songwriters from the two cities together suggest that relationship could become increasingly tangible.
Lindsay Everly arrives from a different part of America altogether, but Fool’s Gold occupies that same broad territory where storytelling matters more than rigid genre boundaries.
With the title track already out, ‘Rainbow of the Night’ arriving on 20 October and the full album following on 13 November, there are a few opportunities to hear where Everly takes that idea next.
