We had the privilege of chatting to the amazing Kaitlin Butts after her first ever UK set at The Long Road the other weekend. Check out as we chat about her set and her latest album, Roadrunner! (that we loved and reviewed here)!

How was the set?

It was very fun! Playing here in front of so many people who love country in the UK, it was very killer and unexpectedly fun. I loved it, every second!

You definitely pack a bit more of a punch live. Is that purposeful?

Yeah, I like to talk about things we’re not supposed to talk about and talk about the elephant in the room. I think that’s what country music is all about; singing about what’s real.

Is this the first stop on the tour, today?

Yes! We’ve got five more shows this week!

And you’ve been in the UK before, right?

Yes, I’ve been before. Vacation, brothers wedding, I did like a pub crawl thing in Dublin. But this is my first time playing live shows!

Are there any differences between here and back home you’ve noticed?

It honestly feels like home until people start to me and then it’s like ‘y’all are not from Texas!’. It’s very cool, everyone is very… everybody looks like they’re from Texas. Everyone’s dressed up and having fun just as much as at home. Y’all are quieter, for sure, but then whenever it’s time to clap y’all are loud and rowdy and that makes me play a better show, so happy to!

It’s been a few weeks since the album, right? It seems to have gone down really well!

Yes, June 28th was the release. It feels like weeks, but it also feels like two years! I’m happy to finally have it out, it’s been a long time in the making.

Yes, you said you were writing it in 2020, right? I imagine it was that much of a struggle to do anything at that point.

Yep, doing and playing!

And you mentioned on stage that the album was based around the musical Oklahoma. Was that a conscious decision from the start?

Yeah well I’d had two songs… I watched Oklahoma again as I hadn’t seen it in years, since I was a kid, and my husband had never seen musicals. I’d grown up doing musical theater so I wanted to show him a part that had made me me. So watched Chicago and we watched Oklahoma and I’m realising that I have songs that go with the visuals of the movie. I was like ‘holy shit, do I have more? Do I write to this?’. So then I became obsessed with it, could not think about anything else, and started writing to it and making the visuals that would recreate scenes from the movie for the music videos. It’s been a long time but now we’re done and I’m happy to be on tour promoting it!

Is that kinda indicative of your writing process then, is it mainly you?

Most of it is me, I think I co-wrote two or three songs off of it. There’s Angeleena, Natalie Hemby and Courtney Patton were the three women I wrote with. So I normally write by myself. I struggle to write without an intention, and if you don’t have a story you don’t really have anything to say. I really do a lot better when I have a theme or something I can write towards.

You have a pretty busy rest of the year, right?

I’m living in my van right now!

Any dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of?

Oh, the dream would be like: The Chicks, The Wreckers, Trixie Mattel, Miley Cyrus and Chapel Roan. That would be my dream tour lineup. It would be fun, right? It would be so lively. So funny and hilarious! I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. And me, of course, I’m on it too!