Welcome, welcome to the show that never ends: Kaitlin Butts’ glittering, dolorous, kaleidoscopic dance hall and bar where she sits behind the piano all night observing the denizens of bar stools and sawdust floors as they fight, love, curse, lie, and drink. In the songs on her fourth album Hello, Honky Tonk, Butts acts as the impresario of this world of lost souls searching for a night of solace or rowdy partiers line-dancing the night away.
Lainey Wilson serves as a carnival barker and ringmaster on the song’s opening track, “Introducing Hello, Honky Tonk,” ushering listeners into a honky-tonk sideshow filled with “The lovers, heartbreakers/ The big talkers, unwanted advicers/ The drinkers, line dancers, barkeepers, the ponderers.” Butts’ soaring vocals sweep into the rollicking party anthem “I Wanna Be Bad” on a tinkling Jerry Lee Lewis-like piano roll before the song kicks into high gear with swinging rhythms drive by scampering pedal steel and fiddle. With the tempo of Don Williams’ “Tulsa Time,” “The Bartender” is an ode to the people delivering the drinks and lending listening ears to customers and who will continue pouring and keeping secrets (“I won’t remember”) as long as the bar-stool confessors keep tipping the bartender.
Butts’ towering vocals wring out the heart with a tale of resignation and missed love on the lilting waltz “Never Really Mine,” while the swirling psychedelic country swinger “I Make Cowboys Cry” defiantly embraces the singer’s freedom to love whomever she wants and to choose whichever partner suits her that moment: “I’m a wild one/ I just wanna have fun.” The centerpiece of the album, “What More Could You Want,” flows cinematically as Butts’ crystalline vocals ride over rolling piano chords and she ponders her role as the entertainer at the center of the room. In a bittersweet moment, she asks, “Do you need more reasons to keep showin’ up for me?/ ‘Cause stars they burn out/ And glitter’s just dust/ Am I not what you want?”
