“Oklahoma!” inspires singer-songwriter Kaitlin Butts to create her imaginative new album “Roadrunner”

This year’s winner of the Ameripolitan Best Honky Tonk Female Award is Kaitlin Butts.

It’s a well-deserved honor for the Tulsa-born singer-songwriter, who released a new album in June that, on first listen, sounds like the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!”

This is done on purpose, as she happily tells The Tennessean while preparing to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.

In fact, every step the 30-year-old artist has taken over the past decade has been marked by intention, purpose, and a deeply redemptive streak aimed at defining herself through her own body, her own feelings, and her own mind.

Released with a low-key laugh and opting for musicals over violence, Butts’ latest album, Roadrunner, is a brilliant example of what happens when you believe in yourself so much – and so well – that the world no longer serves any purpose other than to bend to your desires, whatever they may be.

Life interrupts art, then art reinvents life

In 2020, musical enthusiast Butts had already released the first independent album of her career, ten years after graduating from the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma.

During the COVID-19 quarantine, she was back in Oklahoma with her now husband, Flatland Cavalry lead singer Cleto Cordero, and watched the 1955 film adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” for what felt like the hundredth time since childhood.

While watching a scene with protagonist Laurey, Butts was struck by a serendipitous recollection of the lyrics of a song she had written months earlier with Megan James called “Spur.” The refrain, “Why give her the spurs when you know she needs the reins,” matched what she saw on screen.

The longer she watched the film, the more she suddenly remembered a decade of songs written and forgotten.

“Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice” was a carnival and sideshow piece she had written years earlier about a woman who sells magical elixirs. When Ali Hakim, a peddler, appeared on screen, it evoked images of that song.

The album that became Roadrunner was an obsession, taking shape in the back of their minds as a passion project, but what was happening in the foreground of their lives was far less imaginative.

With her first post-quarantine album, 2022’s What Else Can She Do, Butts responded to a more immediate call to action regarding these events.

The result is a very personal album that deals with traumatic experiences of women related to domestic violence (title song), drug abuse (“She’s Using”) and family abuse (“Blood”), as well as a cover of Leadbelly’s murder ballad “In the Pines”.

“Other than falling in love with my now husband, my life wasn’t very nice back then,” she says. “It was a dark time in my life where I faced so many typical shameful things like divorce, domestic violence, intergenerational trauma and substance abuse. By addressing heavy topics and making jokes about the worst part of my life, I was able to talk about the things that no one talks about – and yet somehow everyone experiences.”

“Roadrunner” – The journey begins

Butts’ emotional and physical release from her previous album cycle and the fact that she played a series of award-winning, rousing tour dates created the magic that makes Roadrunner so enjoyable.

What started as a musical concept album that best summarized her previous successes as a live artist has become a project with which Butts specifically targets country star fame.

Nashville-raised country lover Kesha’s 2017 song “Hunt You Down” (a song Butts had long wanted to cover) joined another murder ballad, Cher’s outlaw-inspired 1966 album “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” as an essential addition to a project that was undoubtedly borne of divine provenance.

“I started to open my eyes, and because everything felt like (‘Oklahoma!’) to me, pieces of what the project eventually became fell into my lap,” Butts recalls.

“I saw the name ‘Juanita,’ the word ‘Buckaroo,’ mugs with the word ‘Oklahoma’ on them, and roadrunners appearing around me like I’d never seen them before. Even though it always seemed completely random, I still felt validated in what I was doing.”

Did she then perform at the Grand Ole Opry in December 2023, meet fellow Oklahoman Vince Gill, and six months later welcome the “Go Rest High on That Mountain” singer and Country Music Hall of Famer as a guest on her “Roadrunner” song “(Come Rest Your Head) on My Pillow”?

Of course she did.

What she describes as the “synchronicity” that inspired her latest album was eventually captured by fellow musical theater devotees like video director Chris Beyrooty (French Montana, Doja Cat, Matt Maeson) and choreographer Noel Bajandas Jr. (Madonna, Miley Cyrus, “Dancing With the Stars”), alongside songwriters like Natalie Hemby (“Other Girls Ain’t Having Any Fun” and “You Ain’t Gotta Die To Be Dead to Me”) and Pistol Annies member Angaleena Presley (“That’ll Never Be Me”). Her husband Cordero also sings the duet “People Will Say We’re in Love.”

“I feel like a child again”

Before the release of Roadrunner, singing about murder – one of country music’s most authentic traditions – was Butts’ trademark. It was as much a part of her musical DNA as performing at Oklahoma’s legendary, songwriter-driven Gypsy Cafe Festival.

It launched a critically acclaimed career, but wasn’t as entertaining as the dreamed-of superstar scenarios she almost gave up in favor of more realistic events. However, the process of making Roadrunner and the success of her 2023 tour allowed her to pause and rededicate herself to her pioneering spirit.

This gave rise to a collection of folk-style songs with stripped-down lyrics rooted in a restless pioneering spirit.

“I talk about truth and reality and have fun doing it,” Butts says. “I’m a sometimes cheesy entertainer who can sing about humor and murder and sing some nice songs. On (‘Roadrunner’) I put all the experiences I’ve been thinking about into the pathways of my brain and then released them. I put everything I have – the full range of my songs and my creative energy – into this release. I have no idea where my career is going next.”

She sums up her fascination for the unknown with her most pleasing statement of the half-hour conversation:

“I feel like a child again.”

This article originally appeared in the Nashville Tennessean: Kaitlin Butts reinterprets “Oklahoma!” on her new album, “Roadrunner.”