Written by David Williams | Photo by Matthew Birkenholz
The American Frontier was the land of endless opportunities. Thousands upon thousands of settlers ventured west in search of a better life. The journey was long, hazardous for most stockpiled with scorching hot heat, outstretched desert land as far as the eye can see and apex predators lurking in the shadows waiting to strike at a moment’s notice. But, there’s something romantic about leaving a place in search of life improvement no matter how difficult the struggle appeared. There’s a reason why Westerns are still so prevalent in pop culture to this day, people are fascinated with the prospect of living out their dreams as intended.
Singer/Songwriter Leah Lavigne of the band Ok Cowgirl is putting this practice into motion. In search of a creative community, Lavigne moves to New York City from suburban Detroit. Entering New York as the mysterious stranger in a strange land, Lavigne finds her saddle mates in crime guitarist Jacob Sabinsky, multi-instrumentalist John Miller, bassist Ryan Work and drummer Matt Birkenholz. After the band’s traditional indie rock debut Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut, they switch lanes like a wild stallion galloping across the prairie to the territory of alt-country.
There’s tons of fun to be had on the band’s second record Rhinestone Cowgirl, assisted by indie rock super producer Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Indigo De Souza). “Cruise The Town” feels like a pair of worn in leather boots that fit your feet perfectly. The swirling western guitar riffs and the anthematic chorus reminds me of Sheryl Crow entering her peak. “Fun Girl” is a high-noon standoff with herself for self betterment that doubles as dive bar banger, it’s one of the standout tracks for me this year. “Prepared To Lose,” feels like driving at high noon across state lines on the highway at break neck speed. If Taylor Sheridan doesn’t use this song in one of his hundred different television shows he runs, I will be extremely disappointed. The band’s destination is miles upon miles away from riding off into the sunset; their story is just beginning with the possibilities seemingly endless.
Lavigne took some time out of her day to chat with me over Zoom about her evolution of songwriting, the song she’s most proud of on Rhinestone Cowgirl, her favorite American band of all-time, and our collective love of Larry David.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Thanks for taking some time for me. What have you been up to recently?
Lavigne: I actually just quit my job a couple weeks ago. I’m enjoying having a little more free time and being able to focus on putting this record out and such. It’s hard to balance the band stuff on top of working. So I find that every couple years I usually need to take a couple months off to prevent myself from getting super burnt out.
Do you remember your first concert?
Lavigne: My first concert when I was a kid my dad took me to a Ricky Lee Jones concert in Detroit. I grew up mostly in the suburbs of Detroit. I must have been about 7 years old. It was not an all ages show, but I’m pretty sure he bribed the bouncer in order to get me into this little rock club. I was so excited to go to a concert. I wore my leather jacket and felt all cool. She ended up not going on stage until like an hour after she was supposed to. So I took a nap. She came on stage and I couldn’t see over the railing of the balcony, so I was peering through the railing. It was awesome.
Are you from Detroit originally?
Lavigne: I was born in Miami, Florida, but I spent most of my childhood in the suburbs of Detroit. I was there till I graduated high school. I’m definitely a Midwest girl.
What were your favorite bands growing up? Did you have any ones that stood out to you?
Lavigne: I love the Dixie Chicks, who we now call the chicks. I loved Avril Lavigne. I love Radiohead, The Bends is still one of my favorite records of all time. I also got really into Patsy Cline. I had her greatest hit CD that I just listened to nonstop as a kid.
Are those artists you listen to when you’re young influence the music you create today?
Lavigne: I have sort of revisited some of those favorite records of mine in the last couple years and realized how sneakily influential they are to me. I loved listening to Avril Lavigne when I was eight. But then when I listened back to her music I saw how her songwriting style and whatever at such a young, impressionable age, must have just infiltrated my brain and ended up really influencing the way I write myself.
When did you know you wanted to be a musician?
Lavigne: When I was in high school, I started taking songwriting really seriously. I really enjoy the process of writing. I like getting in that flow state. I found that it really worked wonders for my relationship with myself and regulating my nervous system, even though I definitely didn’t have the language or self-awareness to know what was going on. I just knew playing and writing my songs makes me feel good, and makes life better. I followed that and I started playing open mics and little café shows and stuff around Metro Detroit. When it came time to go to college, I really wanted to move to New York City. I wanted more opportunities and to meet more people who were interested in the same thing as me.
What was that experience like for you to perform in your new home New York City?
Lavigne: It was probably some open mic in Greenwich Village. I was enamored by the lore of Greenwich Village, you know, Bob Dylan, and the poets and everybody playing in small clubs. To have a sense of community around that. When I first moved to New York. I wanted to find like-minded people who were serious about their creative practices. I wanted to be friends with them, learn from them, feel seen and understood because I definitely came from a much more classic, straightforward, very normal suburb. I felt kind of isolated while I was growing up trying to find people who had the same interests and values as me. Most people just wanted to figure out a way to make a lot of money and buy a nice car. I wanted to have intellectually stimulating conversations and delve into craft. It was really that sort of social scene of playing shows, going to other people’s shows, and hanging out, and having a beer where I started to find that creative community that I had spent years searching for.
Speaking of another New Yorker, you have a song named “Larry David.” What about him inspired you to title a song after all?
Lavigne: I love Larry David. I’m a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think one of the things that makes the show so fun to watch for me is that Larry behaves in a way that I cannot even imagine behaving myself. I’ve spent years in therapy trying to be less of a people pleaser. I get disgruntled about the world and there are things that piss me off and I think don’t make sense. I love watching that show and seeing him just be so unabashedly outspoken about the things that don’t make sense to him and that he thinks they’re wrong. It’s kind of cathartic to see somebody else just walk around and call shit out. I wrote this song and it was sort of like having a bad day when things haven’t really been going your way, and it’s just sort of building up. I had this line in the bridge, “I’m no Larry David, but if I could speak my mind right, then maybe it wouldn’t build up.” It’s sort of just an offhanded thing that came to me when I was trying to think about how I’d been feeling. I let all this resentment build up, all this negative energy because I just keep taking it and not putting my foot down, not setting boundaries, not taking care of myself. Larry David came to mind when I was writing that lyric and I just thought it was kind of funny to name the song after him. It felt like an inside joke to myself.
Do you have a favorite episode or season of Curb that stands out to you?
Lavigne: I like the one with the babysitter and the pound cake (The Nanny from Hell). I’ll just go and pick a random episode to watch. Whenever I stumble upon that one, I’m always excited to watch it again. This feels incriminating to say out loud, but I really think it’s hysterical. Larry’s starting the restaurant – I’m getting in the weeds of the show now. He’s starting the restaurant, and he gets invited to the manager’s pool party. And then he compliments the manager’s son about his body. I think that one just makes me so uncomfortable that it’s just such an egregious example of him being so affable that that one just remains funny to me because it remains uncomfortable. Yeah, he’s the master of making that stuff, he’s just the best.
How do you think you evolved as an artist and your songwriting?
Lavigne: The first album was definitely much more focused on myself. It was about my personal experiences, my personal feelings, about a big breakup. This was a journey I was on to try to feel more empowered as a person. The second album is a little more removed from myself, or obviously it’s very informed by my personal life. I was spending a lot of time just thinking about life in general, thinking about the experiences of my friends and unfortunate events that happened, you know, people getting sick and battling cancer, and and just trying to wrap my head around all these unpredictable curveballs that life throws at you. The different ways on how we cope, and what makes it worth it, and how to find levity, joy, humor and connection amongst all these moments. What this record is more about is it’s a little more zoomed out, less just “oh, this happened to me.” I’m thinking about this and more, like “wow, what are we all doing? How, how, how are we doing this?” God, life is crazy.
Is there a song you’re most proud of on Rhinestone Cowgirl?
Lavigne: The song that stands out to me is “Wished I Could Be.” It’s not a single, it’s the second track on the record. I wrote this song in the middle of the night, sitting on the floor with my acoustic guitar. I was feeling really insecure. I had gotten into a pretty serious relationship, but it was still kind of new. I really liked this person. I really thought highly of them, and I was really terrified I wasn’t good enough for them. I’m thinking maybe they were gonna find out. I started feeling all this fear and anxiety over just overthinking all these little things. We’re all human, but just feeling really insecure and anxious. I wrote this song, just stream of consciousness in one go. I was in the zone, it came out pretty quickly, and felt really cathartic. I got a little stuck and I was thinking, “is that the whole song? Is there supposed to be more?”
One of my songwriting tricks that I use when I feel that way is I’ll record on my phone what I have so far. And then I’ll go take a little bit of a mental break, come back, and listen to the song impartially. I remember lying on my bed with my phone right next to me, hearing it, and I just started sobbing. I was thinking “Oh my gosh, this poor girl.” This poor girl was me five minutes ago. It was so interesting to hear someone else, this voice in my phone, say all of these things that I had been feeling and ashamed of saying out loud. I think that’s one of the most valuable things songwriting does for me is sometimes it allows me to express things that I would otherwise be too ashamed or scared to bring up to a friend or even to my therapist or to my journal.
I was kind of overwhelmed with that song after I wrote it. I closed the notebook and I was like this song was just for me. I will never share this song with anybody because that girl is so sad and pathetic. Nobody can know that that’s me. When it came time to put this record together, I was gathering songs. I’ll just share it with the band. It doesn’t really match our usual energy level or vibe. It’s a little quiet and folky. They’re probably just gonna listen to it and hit skip. And these are like my best friends and like, who cares? But I’m just showing it to 4 of my best friends so I felt safe enough sharing it with them. We showed up to rehearsal, and I said “all right, guys, are there any of those songs that you like that you think we should put on the next record?” They all agreed on “Wished I Could Be”. It is very validating and a good reminder that sometimes the most vulnerable songs, the most real songs, the songs that feel the hardest to write or to share are the ones that are the most important for you to share.
My favorite song on the new record is “Fun Girl.” That’s a mega chorus right there.
Lavigne: Oh, thank you so much. That’s so funny. I was thinking that was the other song I was most vulnerable about. Like is it too, like, dumb? It kind of sounds like something I would have written when I was like 10. “I’m a fun girl.” But again, the people around me were telling me we like this song.
You worked with Alex Farrar on production for this album. He’s worked with Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, a lot of indie, heavy hitters. What did he most bring to the table for you during recording?
Lavigne: We love working with Alex. He’s a super chill guy and creates such a welcoming environment where I think we all feel super comfortable being ourselves and being creative, which is a pretty vulnerable thing. Alex is really good at helping us figure out how to best present a song on a recording because we’re definitely a live band. Alex is really good at opening that up for us and having great ideas about how to enhance the sound so the song comes across even better in a recording context. He’s also really good at sort of pairing things down because once you open things up in that way, it’s really easy to get carried away and be like “okay, we’re gonna do 15 layers of guitar, then let’s have this and let’s double that with a synth rib, background vocals and like all this stuff.” He’s really good at saying sometimes less is more. I really appreciate his opinions and his guidance in producing/figuring out how to make this song the best recording. So from album one to album two, it feels like a stylistic change with the, you know, it seems more alt-country.
So from album one to album two, it feels like a stylistic change leaning more into the alt country direction. Are there any artists or specific movies that inspired you to get to this point for Rhinestone Cowgirl?
Lavigne: I think that shift in genre for this record has to do with the fact that I wrote all of these songs on acoustic guitar. On the previous record, I had written mostly on piano. I think that sort of pushed those songs naturally towards a more pop, a more classic indie rock sound. Since I was playing on my acoustic guitar, I think more of my country, old country influences, like, Sheryl Crow, for instance, sort of just came through more naturally.
Is there a difference in writing songs on acoustic guitar as opposed to electric guitar?
Lavigne: I think on acoustic guitar, I’m more likely to write things that are more delicate. I might get more nuanced about things like finger picking or voicings. Whereas when I’m playing and writing on an electric guitar, I have a pedal board to work with where I can adjust the way the guitar is sounding in these different ways. I might get a little more fixated on writing the song around these different sounds. Writing with an overdrive pedal on that’s gonna make your guitar sound more gnarly and big, it’s going to infuse the song with a certain type of energy that might inform the type of melody you’re writing, the way I’m singing, the lyrical cadence, things like that. I do feel like it pushes me to sort of write in different ways.
So since this album is Americana leaning, who’s the best American band of all time in your opinion? Or favorite? You can go in any direction you want with this one.
Lavigne: Oh my God, that’s a hard question. It might be The Band. The Band is all American, right? That I know of. I also really love Neil Young. I would probably go with one of those, which I feel like is a little cliche, because they’re definitely having a moment right now. Yeah, that’s a good one.
Are there any bands that you would love to open for down the line?
Lavigne: I would love to play with Waxahatchee. I saw Waxahatchee a couple years ago with her side project called Plains. That was also just an incredible set. It was really cool to see her and Jess do all the beautiful classic harmonies. It was awesome. Also, I love Kevin Morby. I think they’re both great fits and I love both of their music. I love MJ Lenderman and Wednesday as well. Those are the first couple ones that come to mind for me.
So last question for you. Where do you see, Ok Cowgirl going next?
Lavigne: It’s hard to financially make touring work these days, but we love being on the road. We love the experience of exploring new places and making memories with each other and getting to meet new people. So I really hope that if the album does well, we’re able to maybe play some shows outside of New York City.
You can listen to Rhinestone Cowboy out now.
the ugly hug 