Shawn Butzin's Westbound Train

Shawn Butzin has a new song from his upcoming EP, Adventures, that's all about what it's like falling in love in a place like Michigan. It's a strummy, toe-tapping Americana-pop tune that's adorned with the accompaniment of a pedal-steel and a wheezy organ, the kind of stuff you'd anticipate in a country ballad. But let's also talk about how Butzin has a naturally brassy tenor embodying that same country-aesthetic.

But here we are, in Michigan, so far north that we can touch Canada, and so far east that we could hit Niagara Falls in a few hours, and yet this up-and-coming songwriter might strike you as something from Nashville, Southern Cali, or maybe Austin...and Butzin is bringing brio and panache to this embrace of the country-rock/Americana aesthetic. And now, after all that talk about being an eastern state, here's a song about heading west... The debut single from Butzin's EP.

...."runnin' from my daddy's ol' shotgun..." ♫♫.... "I needed beauty to escape the damage I've done..." 
Butzin's evokes that outlaw-on-the-run aesthetic and imbues it effectively with his poet-ly songwriter sincerity. Country tunes don't survey the same kind of laments or starkness as the blues might, but songs like Butzin's are still narrating a life that's encroached upon hardship stakes, only with this single, it's about a longing, a search, without a desination albeit, but sort of an escaping-kind-of-search toward that untold horizon, with a heart full of love, to get away from some none-too-sunny circumstances. And that energy, that escape, that adventure, is present in the propulsive rhythms, the restorative warmth of the back up choir's harmonies and those cathartic guitar expressions. 


Adventures is out May 31
You can see Butzin and the Buskers April 22nd @ PJs Lager House
with Ian Lee Lamb and the Whiskey Charmers
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