As the kids say—or at least I think they do—10 out of 10. No notes.
Kaitlin Butts’ Hello, Honky Tonk is perfect to my ears. That isn’t hyperbole. I have had this thing on repeat, and it is addictive as shit. Can’t stop. Won’t stop.
It has the fiddle, the steel guitar, and the storytelling that made me fall in love with country music. But what keeps pulling me back is how much life she puts into these songs. There’s humor, swagger, vulnerability, and that raw, let-it-all-out feeling that makes you believe every word.
This is an album full of people you want to spend time with. Even the ones you probably shouldn’t go home with.
Country music was part of what drew me to Nashville and MTSU in the first place. I wasn’t coming here to become a musician. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. But I loved the music and the culture surrounding it. Maybe some of that is in the Childers family DNA.
Give me twin fiddles and a steel guitar, as George Strait would say. Give me a cold beer, boots on a dance floor, and an old honky-tonk with its own quirks and charm.
When I picture that place, I often think of Pure Country, the George Strait movie, and the kind of bar where Dusty could get back to the music.
Kaitlin Butts is exactly the artist I would hope to find on that stage.
A whole world inside one bar
The Tulsa-born singer-songwriter has been building toward this moment for years, beginning with her 2015 debut, Same Hell, Different Devil, and earning her reputation one bar and honky-tonk gig at a time. Hello, Honky Tonk, her first full-length project since signing with Republic Records, brings that experience into a world of her own creation.
Recorded in Nashville with producer Tofer Brown, the album takes us inside Katie B’s saloon. The people in the room get their turn in the spotlight: the bartender, the heartbreaker, the lonely regular, the entertainer trying to hold everybody’s attention. It’s like a country Broadway show in a musical masterpiece. Did I mention, I love it yet?
Her inspiration includes Chicago and its vaudeville-style numbers, along with Disney’s Country Bear Jamboree. I feel like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music right now. “These are a few of my favorite things” LOL. The album cover draws on Teddi Barra, the bear on the swing. I mean, come on! This F’ing WOMAN!
Country music. Musical theater. Disney. Storytelling.
Good Lord, woman. You are hitting every button I have.
But the concept works because the music carries it. You don’t need to know a damn thing about musical theater to get pulled into these stories. The fiddle and steel welcome you through the door. Her voice makes you stay.
I hear flashes of Kelly Willis and Lee Ann Womack, with some George Strait sensibility in the mix. Those are reference points for what my ears love: personality, emotional honesty, and a song that can hold its own. Butts has all of that, along with a wonderfully quirky imagination that belongs entirely to her.
“The Bartender” feels like the big one
I think “The Bartender” could change her life.
There. I’m putting it in writing.
To my ears, this song has the potential to take her to a much bigger audience. I hear a massive hit. The steel guitar and swagger get you immediately, and the perspective gives it something to say: the person behind the bar has heard everybody’s stories.
Butts wrote it with Natalie Hemby and Tofer Brown. The recording also features TJ Osborne on backing vocals and harmonica from Vinnie Maniscalco, the Nashville bartender who inspired the character. These stories have depth; you can tell. This lady is a creative genius. A true artist in every sense.
At her album release show, I happened to be standing beside Hemby, who is a f’ing badass and one of the great songwriters working today. I had been beside her for probably an hour without saying anything. It’s Nashville. You leave people alone and let them enjoy the show.
Then Kaitlin played “The Bartender.”
I looked over and asked Hemby whether she had written it.
She said yes.
I told her it was so damn incredible. She said, “ohh thank you my dude”, gave me a warm pat, and told me how excited she was.
Well, Natalie, badass genius lady, I’m excited too.
“I Make Cowboys Cry” is another one I hear reaching a big audience. The attitude alone makes it a song I want to tell people about. And “Bacon Naked (Take It From Me)” has that same immediate appeal, with the humor and personality that make this album such a good time.
I hear songs here that could crush on the radio. “The Bartender” is my bet for the one that opens the biggest door.
Then she knocks the wind out of you
For all the fun on this record, “What More Could You Want” is the song that reaches into your chest.
At the show, Kaitlin described a feeling I suspect plenty of people will recognize: wanting so badly to be loved that you start wondering what else you can possibly do to earn it.
Would you love me if I did this? If I gave you more? If I somehow became even more entertaining?
That’s my paraphrase of the feeling she described, and it’s devastating.
The vocal is raw and intensely soulful. You hear the need underneath the performance. An artist can give a room everything she has and still wonder whether it was enough.
That vulnerability gives the whole album more weight. After the swagger and the laughter, you get to feel what it costs to stand there and keep asking people to care.
This is where the theater kid in her becomes especially powerful. She inhabits the feeling. The story is vivid because she makes the person inside it feel alive.
Then there’s “Still Got It,” the love song I keep coming back to. Damn, it’s good.
Her one swing at a love song is a home run!
And the closing “Midnight I’ll Always Be Yours” fits the world she has built: the night winding down, the room growing quiet, the music leaving something behind.
That’s part of what makes Hello, Honky Tonk work as an album. You want to hear the individual songs again, but you also want to go back inside the place.
Why this one means so much to me
When I first listened, I cried.
Not because the album was sad. Because the sound, the stories, the imagination, and the feeling reached all those places in me at once.
I went to the album release show, then her karaoke hang the following night, and I might as well admit it: I am obsessed.
I also got to meet her. She recognized me from the clip I had shared from Show Pony Live, where I was telling Trey Wallace he HAD to check her out.
That made my night. Here I was trying to explain to anybody who would listen how incredible this woman is, and she had actually seen it and more importantly, it meant something to her.
But the reason I keep talking about her is the record. Long after the fun of those nights, these are songs I want playing in my car, in my house, and wherever else I can turn them up.
I hope she becomes a massive star. I also hope this theatrical world gets a life onstage someday. A country-bar musical with these characters and these stories? I can see the Playbill already.
I would be there opening night.
A lot of you come to Show Pony Media for college football. That will always be a huge part of what we do. But I live in Nashville, and I may as well bring you inside the music scene when I find something I love this much.
Besides, college football fans and country music fans share an awful lot of the same tailgates.
The best way I can describe Kaitlin Butts is this: Imagine wandering into a honky-tonk in the middle of nowhere. You open the door, hear the fiddle and steel, and somebody on that stage is making what feels, in that moment, like the greatest music on the planet.
You have nowhere else you want to be. You’re in the right place at exactly the right time.
That’s what Hello, Honky Tonk gives me.
Give this woman a listen. Start with “The Bartender,” stay for “What More Could You Want,” and then let the whole album play.
She has reminded me why I wanted to live around this music in the first place.
My rating: 10/10. No notes.
Listen to Hello, Honky Tonk on Apple Music.
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