Of the 12 songs on Erin Lunsford’s second solo album Rhinestones, the Americana singer-songwriter and frontwoman for Erin & the Wildfire says she cried while writing four of them, especially “Watch Out For Deer.” That one’s stuck with her.
“I cry almost every time I play it if I’m with my family,” Lunsford says, “because it’s about Botetourt [County] and about my family, so if they’re in the audience, I cannot make eye contact.”
In the song’s chorus, when Lunsford gentles her big voice and sings, “One more hug, and say I love you in your ear / be safe and watch out for deer,” you can’t help but think about your mom.
“One thing that I’ve learned, among many, over the 20 years of my career, is that whatever serves the music is the best choice, not what serves me or what serves my ego,” says Lunsford, who grew up in Fincastle, an Appalachian ville just north of Roanoke. “That can mean a lot of different things; that can mean hitting a high C and being super wide open, loud as hell, or it can mean being reserved and leaving a lot of space.”
On Rhinestones, Lunsford’s particularly interested in space.
She hired the Los Angeles-based musician Jacob Ungerleider and his moody, atmospheric style to produce eight of the album’s tracks, including three that got Lunsford misty: “Watch Out For Deer,” “Crossing Belvidere” and “Floodwatch.” (Lunsford and assorted bandmates produced the record’s remaining four songs.)
Ungerleider has played with The Head and the Heart, Flock of Dimes, and Natalie Prass, and before going west in 2020, he spent six years in Richmond. That’s where he met Lunsford, a University of Virginia grad who’d moved to Richmond in 2018 after 10 years in Charlottesville.
“I was intrigued that she wanted to work with me,” Ungerleider says of Lunsford, “because I was like: ‘Listen, I do one vibe—a very specific vibe, just me and my very limited setup with what I can do at home,’ but she trusted that, and I think she wanted to see how much her sound would match with that.”
Rhinestones is Lunsford’s solo follow-up to 2020’s The Damsel, also an Americana to-do, crafted from her living, breathing stash of songs. She jots compulsively, starting with the chorus—“the most catchy, earworm part of the song,” she says—and albums emerge from the 993MB of raw writing (and set lists) in her iPhone Notes app.
Lunsford writes the music on her banjo and/or guitar, the latter she learned from her mom, Cheryl, a guitarist and guitar teacher who runs The Guitar Dojo in Fincastle.
“Personally—and this is kind of a theme on the album—I was trying to kick-start my solo career again,” says Lunsford, who co-formed Erin & the Wildfire 15 years ago. “[I was] writing these songs, feeling like I’m spinning my wheels in Richmond and feeling like my career is endlessly local and wanting more than that, so feeling kind of frustrated with where I’m at, but also a ton of gratitude for being able to do what I do at all.”
Written while Lunsford was listening to a lot of Kacey Musgraves, Madison Cunningham, Noah Kahan, Joni Mitchell, and Brandi Carlile, the songs on Rhinestones date back three or four years. Lunsford’s performed them ever since, and she says audience reaction influenced which songs made the record. The album, though, does not try to replicate Lunsford live.
“The stuff I was used to hearing from her was a very live, full-band sound, and my sound is not really that,” says Ungerleider, whose new album, Congratulations, features the delightful “7 Dollar Coffee.” “It’s like a sound that couldn’t necessarily exist just in a room, if that makes sense. It might be a few layers of each instrument, really soft, which then, together, creates this ghostly full effect.”
Ungerleider’s layered guitar tracks on “Crossing Belvidere,” a lament about car trouble, briefly baffled Lunsford’s guitarists, Ryan Lipps and Kim McMasters, as they started translating the intricate album version for a live show.
“It’s so nerdy that it feels like a puzzle,” says McMasters, who grew up playing indie and alt-rock and has collaborated with Lunsford for years. “It’s a super-challenging thing to do, and me, personally, I don’t have a lot of experience in bluegrass or Americana or any of these styles that Erin pulls from the most, so I’m learning that a little bit. That is part of the fun.”
Shannon Bielski’s fiddle adds aura to the choruses in “Crossing Belvidere” and tapestry throughout in “Watch Out For Deer.” Preceding it on the album is the 58-second fiddle interlude “Delphia’s Sunrise.” Listen to it with your eyes closed.
Backing Lunsford this summer is the non-Erin & the Wildfire band of McMasters (guitar/vocals), Garen Dorsey (keys), Pat Hayes (drums), Caroline Vain (fiddle), and Summer Valentine (bass).
Lunsford says Rhinestones’ softer sounds have been adapted with drums and electricity for the stage, while she herself is staying acoustic on her bright Bourgeois guitar. It was a 15th birthday present from her mom that, longtime Wildfire bandmate Ryan Lipps says, is “as much a part of her and her music as her voice is.”
