By: DJ Alla
KZSC’s DJ Alla interviews rising country star and self-proclaimed cosmic cowgirl Kaitlin Butts in this KZSC exclusive interview.
Last night I had the privilege of interviewing Kaitlin Butts while on her Roadrunner! tour at the iconic Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco. Click the link below to listen to the full pre-show interview. We discussed her recent album release, the creation process, life on the road, and more.
Set in the iconic former San Francisco speakeasy, Kaitlin hosted independent queer country artist Fancy Hagood as her opener. His powerhouse vocals paired beautifully with his songs of heartbreak and growing up queer in the American South, with many tracks off his recent record “American Spirit”.
Kaitlin began her set with her mind-blowing cover of Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” Her stage presence was palpable throughout her set, and the crowd’s energy mirrored it. Her musical theatre background gave her set an extra edge of theatricality that paired beautifully with her ballads of love and anger. Toward the end of the show, she let her band go for a break and sang a heartwarming acoustic tribute to the folks she used to sing to at a retirement home in Oklahoma City, titled Elsa. She cued the crowd to sing along with her to the “You Are My Sunshine” chorus. Her set is infused with many covers, spanning multiple genres, including “Sin Wagon” by The Chicks, and “Hunt You Down” by Kesha, and she closed off the show with an electric cover of Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova.” The show was perfectly paced, and I enjoyed the mix of high- and low-energy tracks.
Kaitlin has 16 more stops on her Roadrunner! tour, her last stop at the Vanguard in her home state of Oklahoma on December 14th, ending her first headlining tour where it all began. Her final show in her schedule so far is at the Two Step In Festival in Georgetown, Texas, on April 5th, 2025. She is joined on the lineup by her husband, Cleto Cordero’s band Flatland Cavalry, and many other iconic country acts.
Interview Transcript:
A: Hi everyone. This is DJ Alla here tonight at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco with rising country star and proud Oklahoman Kaitlin Butts.
A: You released your third studio album Road Runner in summer of 2024. How would you describe the album and your process for creating it?
KB: I would say it is just a straight up country album with a little bit of theatrics. It’s inspired by the musical Oklahoma. I wanted to recreate it and see what Oklahoma might sound like in today’s world and in the country music space. And so I got all weird with it and really committed. What was the first part of your question?
A: It was just that you released it this summer and how would you describe it and your process for creating it?
KB: There’s a lot of processes in songwriting and just trying to kind of figure out what they would sound, the songs would sound like at first and recreating those and creating new narratives. And then the recording process we recorded in Nashville at Ronnie’s place with a couple members of my band and then a couple of Nashville guys who are legendary over there. And then putting it out into the world. I wanted to put a lot of music videos out there with it also to go with the visuals of Oklahoma. And I kind of copied a lot of the visuals from the original motion picture and took a lot of influence from that.
A: I know this is your first headlining tour. What cities and shows have been your favorite so far?
KB: Honestly, San Jose was really fun last night. The crowd was really cool. I’m playing my first headlining show, like you said, and it shows and they’re bigger venues than I would ever put myself in. And I’ve always been nervous about headlining shows because it’s like you’re the person responsible for drawing in everyone. And I’ve never even been to San Jose or a lot of these cities. And so to have people come out to the shows and buy a ticket for someone that they’ve never seen live probably is really, really awesome.
A: People around here definitely are willing to drive to a show. San Jose is a middle spot for so many places. Like people will show up.
A: Do you have a favorite feature you’ve done on someone else’s song or a favorite guest on one of yours? My favorite is Where Have All the Cowboys Gone. That is like my favorite of all time, number one car karaoke song.
KB: That’s awesome.That’s so cool. See, I hadn’t heard that song until Lola showed it to me and then I discovered that I love Paula Cole. That was what I was gonna say because the other ones are with my husband and I love collaborating with him, but getting to do something new was really fun with her and it gets me girls in the city.
A: You guys are both doing kind of a similar thing in the sphere of like unique, girly country music.
KB: Yeah, I love Lola. She has a new book out.
A: Yes, I’m so excited for that. It’s already pre-ordered.
A: Country music and musical theater are not two genres I would think to combine, what spurred you to make a country concept album responding to Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma?
KB: I rewatched it in 2020, my husband made the mistake of saying that he’d never watched musical theater growing up, and that’s what I grew up doing myself. That’s how I started singing was in musical theater when I was like five years old until I was about probably 13 or 14. And I was like, how can you? This is such a huge part of my life and it was crazy to like, I wanted to show him that part of what like I grew up watching. And so I turned on Chicago and Oklahoma, and then when as I’m watching Oklahoma, I’ve seen it a million times, but it had been a while. And so whenever I put it back on, I started to see certain scenes that I had songs for like, I was like, Oh my God, that would match up so well with like the visual from that, that part of the movie.And then I started, I had about two songs that went with it so well. And I was like, what if I just keep going? And so I did. And then, um, yeah, finish it.I was really proud of it.
A: I love that you’re able to combine your two loves.
KB: It feels like me. Like, yeah, like it feels like the drama of it, the theatrics of it and the country.
A: I can see that in the record.
KB: Thank you.
A: Outside of Oklahoma, the musical, what pieces of media have been most inspirational to you?
KB: Oh my goodness I mean, so many movies and films, and oh my God, that’s a good question. There’s so many, like it’s hard to even identify it for myself because like, I look back on different, even just, if I just go back to just artists, um, that I grew up with and influenced me, it’s hard to pin it down. Like to just, if I just say like some country music artists, that’s not the range of, I listened to all kinds and have been influenced by Lindsay Lohan at one point. Like, Avril Levine were like people that I just wanted to be exactly like.
And then growing up, you know.
A: It changes as you age.
KB: Yeah. It goes in phases. So I would just say everything in the world.
A: I love your theatrical touches on your cover of Kesha’s Hunt You Down. I played it on my show last week it was like the same time that you were releasing the music video, so I had to shout it out, and I was wondering if you have a process for choosing songs to cover or do you just let them choose you?
KB: I let them choose me. I love Kesha and I’ve loved her for a long time since I saw her in high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And, um, but I, so I followed her, but she has that rainbow album, which is so, so underrated.
A: Yeah.
KB: And, um, and it has Dolly Parton on it and like all these very, I mean, Hunt You Down is a country song.
A: Very much.
KB: I didn’t change any of the arrangement.
A: When I listened to it, I expected it to be not country and you turned it yourself
KB: No, no, she is totally country. It’s like a Johnny Cash song.
A: Yeah.
KB: Um, I don’t know, it was really funny and it felt like something I identified with because I, I love, I have love songs, but like I, in my artist self, I feel like an identity with like, if you f*ck around, I’ll hunt you down. Like that, I don’t really have any songs that I’ve wanted to write about like murdering anyone lately, but the love song with a little tinge of threat, you know, it’s pretty funny.
A: Yeah.
A: How does it feel to tour, perform, and exist in the same genre as your husband? An interesting question to follow the Hunt You Down song.
KB: It feels good. I mean, we’ve always, we’ve been doing this for each of us, like on our own paths and, um, it’s not easy a lot, but we, we love doing this and it makes it easier almost that we’re kind of in the same world because we have the same schedules. We’re gone the same, you know, on the weekends. We understand as lead singers, I feel like we understand the different kind of responsibilities that even like the guitar world wouldn’t even understand, even though they’re on the road with me doing, there’s different level.
A: Yeah. Everything’s different.
KB: It’s so much different in, um, that it’s like certain obligations that, you know, only lead singers will have.
A: Yeah.
KB: It’s like, you kind of understand the expectations and you don’t get mad at them for like taking a phone call and you’d like, yeah, I know that that’s a big deal. So you got to take that, but I don’t know. It’s all we know.
A: I loved hearing your story because I feel like you see so many celebrities like married to musicians or all these stories of musicians and their partners, but not too often do you see two musicians together.
KB: Yeah. Honestly, it would be hard. I mean, me and my tour manager were talking about this was like how it would be hard. I know there are a lot of wives that stay home, and have their husbands or boyfriends leave and go on the road. And, our friend was, you know, he’s Cleto’s (Her husband) tour manager and he was saying, I’ve got to find Sophia a guy. Like, she’s awesome. And, and I was like, well, it would be hard. When the rules are reversed and he was like, I had never thought about like, if Steph (his wife) was the one that left every weekend. And I was like, you’ve never thought about that before?? I’m like, yeah, it definitely changed a little bit, but it makes it easier for me to have somebody that is in the same, doing the same thing.
A: Yeah. That’s awesome.
KB: Cause I’ve been the other way around.
A: Yeah.
A: When you first decided to embark on the journey of becoming a musician, did you initially plan on going into the country sphere or were you thinking of creating music in another genre?
KB: Um, I just kind of let, I think I’ve always been inspired by like Americana music, like Brandi Carlisle and like John Prine, um, Kacey Musgraves, like real genuine country. But it’s kind of, I wouldn’t say that it’s only been country for me that has inspired doing this. Like I said earlier.
A: Yeah. You can see it in your covers and what’s inspired you.
KB: Yeah. It was never just like, I’m going to do country. It just kind of, I went to school at ACM in Oklahoma City and it was the school of rock, but I was like the only person doing country music there. And I, you know, I mean, I guess, I guess a lot of it that I started playing on guitar, it’s like, that’s going to be country. That’s going to be Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert, The Chicks, The Wreckers. That’s those were girls that were playing their own instruments and singing their own songs. Killing it on stage. And so I was like, that’s, I want to do that.
A: Yeah.
KB: Um, but there’s lots of rock and roll influence and Americana and folk.
A: Some of the biggest names in country right now are coming out of Oklahoma, how does it feel to not only be a part of that scene, but also create music that challenges what we’ve been seeing in country for the past decade?
KB: It feels really good. You have really great questions.
A: Thank you.
KB: Um, it feels really great. I like being, I’m glad that people are outside of Oklahoma or seeing that a lot of it is based there. There’s so many great songwriters that have influenced me. That’s still, that’s still just playing the bars there in Oklahoma. Um, there’s like, and then there’s people like John Fulbright or John Moreland or Parker Millsap that like inspired me when I was in my early, early twenties, and girls like Kirsten White and Camille Hart and the Tequila Songbirds, I was in this band, like a girl band and it was just all the girls songwriters in, in Oklahoma city area. And we would get together and call ourselves the Tequila Songbirds. And those girls taught me how to like sing harmonies and, and taught me about, taught me John Prine and, uh, Gillian Welch to things like that. So there was never, I don’t know, there’s, there’s a lot going on.
A: Yeah.
KB: And I’m happy to be a part of it for sure.
A: That’s so awesome. All right, that was all the questions I have for tonight, but thank you so much.
KB: Thank you so much. I appreciate your questions.