It’s always striking when a fresh-faced musical act comes out of nowhere and bowls you over with their abundant talents.
Such is the case with Kentucky singer-songwriter Abby Hamilton, who has quickly become one of the most buzzed-about acts on the Americana scene, especially after dropping her debut album #1 Zookeeper (of the San Diego Zoo) back in October. She’s been an opening act for the likes of Tyler Childers, Shakey Graves and Wynonna Judd and appeared at such prominent festivals as Bonnaroo, AmericanaFest and Railbird, among others. Recently, she also made her network television performance debut on CBS Saturday Morning.
Even before the album’s release, Hamilton’s sharp ability to embrace and reimagine classic country frameworks with writerly ease and a sardonic bite was clear. Her debut full-length project places her firmly in the lineage of artists like Lucinda Williams and Kathleen Edwards, who combine first-rate lyricism with an expansive sound that borrows from country, folk, indie and classic rock — without being beholden to any of them.
Finding a sound
Hamilton is forthright about the fact that country music will always be her first love and guiding principle, even though her sound has organically grown into more of an outsider approach.
“I am just a total lover and fan, and have been since I was a kid, of the institution of country music, the family of country music,” she told the Charleston City Paper ahead of her Feb. 27 performance at the Pour House.
“I’ve learned so much from country music, and I’ve always wanted to be a part of that family. So I felt like when we made the record, I was really harping on the idea that, If I call it a country record, it is a country record. I could make it be that way.”
That being said, Hamilton admits that she was consciously chasing a bigger, more expansive sound on Zookeeper.
“I knew from an arrangement standpoint, I wanted these songs to be able to exist without my words and still feel epic,” she says, pointing to Glen Campbell’s grandly orchestrated mid-70s opus Rhinestone Cowboy and Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album as reference points.
Hamilton calls Crow’s record “a beautiful marriage of rock and country. That’s what I was chasing, and I felt the most comfortable there I think because that’s the music I love and I listened to the most.”
Confessional writing
For all of the throwback sounds in Hamilton’s music, though, there’s also a confessional bend that feels very of-the-moment, placing her in the company of artists like boygenius and Waxhatchee on one hand and emotive left-of-center country acts like Zach Bryan and Sam Barber on the other.
Hamilton says she does feel a natural kinship with both of those cohorts, noting that she “wanted to tell my story as a person more than I ever had before” with the batch of tunes that make up Zookeeper. She also highlights the generational antecedents of these artist-songwriters like Crow, Alanis Morisette and Tracy Chapman that she really looks up to.
“I felt like in earlier songs I was really learning how to write it just for myself, but I was making up stories or observing behavior and putting them into forms that I knew,” she said. “The process for this record was like a full retreat to call on myself, my opinions, my thoughts and my experiences, so my songwriting perspective just totally shifted in that way.”
The independent route
Despite having landed a publishing deal with Limited Edition Musician in partnership with Warner Chappell Music, Hamilton was unsuccessful in selling her album to the big labels. She did, however, have a strong support team that eventually led her to release it independently on her own, Blue Grown Records.
“It was just a way for me to retain my record in-house without having to sell off parts of it to make it worth the financial gain,” she says. “I put it out with the team that I had already assembled, and it’s been such a beautiful way to do it. To see how it happens, with this ragtag group of people pushing my art so hard, it’s pretty cool.”
Abby Hamilton takes the stage at the Charleston Pour House with Cole Chaney Feb. 27. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Show starts at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $17 in advance or $20 at the door.
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