Ok Cowgirl “God Made A Farmer”
Americana Highways is hosting this premiere of Ok Cowgirl’s song “God Made A Farmer” from their new album Rhinestone Cowgirl, which is due out August 21st via Easy Does It Records. The album was recorded and produced by Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Indigo De Souza) and mastered by Dan Millice. This song will be available on June 9.
Musicians on “God Made A Farmer” are Leah Lavigne on vocals, keys and guitar; Jacob Sabinsky on guitar; John Miller on guitar and keys; Ryan Work on guitar and bass; Alex Farrar on guitar; and Matthew Birkenholz on drums.
We had a brief chat with Leah Lavigne about the song and the album. The premiere appears just beneath the interview.
Americana Highways: Rhinestone Cowgirl and its latest single, “God Made a Farmer,” both draw from Western imagery. What drew you to that aesthetic, and what does it represent for you on this record?
Leah Lavigne: The visual world for “God Made A Farmer” and this record came from a trip I took to west Texas. These stunning rural Texas images felt sort of dream-like to me. It’s obviously a very different-feeling and different-looking setting than Brooklyn, NY (where we are based and where I have lived for the last twelve years). This record is a lot about dreams and the imaginary– who I thought I’d be, what I thought my life would look like, and how it felt when reality began to run up against those ideas in my late twenties. I like having this mythical version of myself out in west Texas, the rhinestone cowgirl, just trotting along on my horse looking out at this beautiful world.
AH: You’ve described your debut, Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut, as being about what gets lost, while Rhinestone Cowgirl focuses on what gets carried forward. Can you talk more about that distinction and how it shaped the songwriting process?
LL: I didn’t go into either of these records with a concept in mind. I’m always writing music and using songwriting as a tool for working through my emotions and trying to better understand myself and the world around me.
Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut was largely about finding my inner voice, rebuilding my life, and having the courage to explore new things after getting out of a long relationship that spanned my late teens and early twenties. This record was about shedding old things to make room for new, and feeling a bit lost but excited.
Rhinestone Cowgirl was written while trying to understand my personal struggles in a broader context. I was spending a lot of time thinking about the experiences of others when I wrote this record– the people close to me, acquaintances, and mere strangers I crossed paths with. I wanted to know where people came from, and why they were where they were now, why they do what they do, and how they feel about it. I have spent a lot of time asking myself these questions and writing songs about it, and for some reason I felt this shift where I became much more curious about others. I think probably because I had reached a point of diminishing returns trying to understand myself and life by just looking inwards all the time. What I found was that my feelings of powerlessness were not some personal shortcoming. Everybody has dreams and disappointments, insecurities and baggage. Little bruises and larger tragedies constantly befall everybody in an unpredictable manner. I became sort of obsessed with these questions: How do we cope? Where do we find joy and relief? How are we different? How are we the same? That’s a lot of what “God Made A Farmer” is about.
AH: This record was produced by Alex Farrar, whose work includes albums by MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, and Wednesday. What did he bring to Rhinestone Cowgirl, and how did his creative partnership help define this new chapter for the band?
LL: Yes, we love Alex’s work. The three artists you named are a large reason we reached out to him originally. We made our first LP with him and loved Drop Of Sun Studios, and Alex’s whole personality and approach. We knew we wanted to run it back, and we went into this latest recording session with a lot of excitement and a certain comfort level since we had done it before. Alex has helped us find our sound as a rock band. I’ve always written very melodic and lyric centric music, and that pulled our sound in a more Pop direction at the beginning of this project. Alex found a way to carve things out so we can have my vocals up front delivering the heart of the story and still have walls of heavy guitars to express the energy and grit behind the message. We’re a very dynamic band, and Alex has helped us find ways to be really quiet and really loud even more effectively.
Thanks very much for chatting with us!
The music is available here: https://okcowgirl.lnk.to/RhinestoneCowgirl
Fnd more information here: https://www.okcowgirlband.com/
With a dreamy introspective style akin to Big Thief and MJ Lenderman, the honesty Ok Cowgirl draws up and shares with the listener is profound and stirring. This song is a perfect hook as it makes you want more and more – a good thing with an album on the horizon.