Rewind, if you will, to the uncertain days of spring 2020. Amid the chaos, local rockers Country Westerns were set to release a record they’d worked on for a long time: their eponymous Matt Sweeney-produced, Fat Possum-released debut LP. But frontman and songwriter Joey Plunket, drummer Brian Kotzur and then-bassist Sabrina Rush — she has since moved on, and Jessica Lee Wilkes played on the album while Jordan Jones now holds down the bottom end for the band on tour — weren’t able to take it on the road. Like so many bands did, the CWs crew tried to capture a tiny fragment of the live experience by streaming performances. For the group’s core duo, there is no love lost for this period.

“Livestreams were such nightmares,” Kotzur remembers with a laugh. “They’d always freeze.”

We’re hanging out during happy hour at Duke’s, the Five Points bar that Plunket co-owns with his partner Sara Nelson. Plunket, meanwhile, chimes in by phone from an apartment in New York where he spends part of the year. Kotzur is a Houston native who moved to Nashville in his elementary school years; Plunket grew up in Atlanta and has done extended stints there as well as in NYC. They joined forces on a lark during the 2010s, running in the same circles as the late, great David Berman — the creative force behind canonical indie-rock outfits Silver Jews, of which Kotzur was an integral part, and Purple Mountains. 

Championed by Berman from the jump, Country Westerns ebbed and flowed around Plunket and Kotzur. The band’s gestation period included a four-piece lineup with Ghostfinger singer-guitarist Richie Kirkpatrick on bass and ex-Bully bassist Reece Lazarus on sax. That iteration was immortalized on a 7-inch, “At Any Time” backed with “It’s Not Easy,” issued in 2018. Kotzur and Plunket got back in the studio with Sweeney in summer 2022 for a follow-up LP called Forgive the City, out Friday, and it’s tough to imagine them being more excited about it.

“It’s punchier,” says Plunket. “After being stuck in a room for so long, we were ready to bust out. It’s just about getting back in the mix. Some of my favorite bands ever, I can take a decade off of listening to, because I’d absorbed it so much in the past. [Kotzur] and I both got on a big Clash kick before making this record. I can sing every word [of their first two albums] end to end, but hadn’t listened in a long time — good record-makin’ music. Traveling again was also an influence, being let out of the cage. That added to the immediacy of it all.”

“For the last 10 years, I’ve been mostly hired into bands,” adds Kotzur. “It’s a band —  our band. It’s the kind of music that just comes out, without thinking.”

Compared to Country Westerns, the dozen tunes on Forgive the City are fiercer, louder and more focused. Throughout the record, Kotzur’s earthy beats propel Plunket’s gravelly snarl and muscular electric 12-string rhythm guitar — an instrument that so readily lends itself to gentler sounds, but is used here in anger, to great effect. This energy seems to have affected the songwriting process as well.

“There are songs that are 10 years old on there, like ‘Money on the Table,’” Plunket says, “as well as ones written the night before — the closing track ‘Marinero’ for example.”

Many of the songs reflect on finding ways to ground yourself amid constant change, like “It’s a Livin’,” in whose chorus Plunket sings: “It’s the city / That you’ve gotta forgive / Gotta leave for a while / You have to let them forget / Go make your bones / Before you’re coming back home.” For the pair, the atmosphere for making music has never been better. They also credit producer Sweeney — a widely loved guitarist and producer whose massive list of credits runs the gamut from Chavez to Bonnie “Prince” Billy to Margo Price and beyond — for his approach. 

The end product, says Kotzur, “matches the vibe of how we made it — and then you add Matt Sweeney to the mix.”

Plunket adds that Sweeney “always wanted us to sound big, in a classic-rock kind of way. [He’d say] ‘Fuck that lo-fi shit. You write great songs. Let’s present them right.’ … Sweeney is the most enthusiastic, laid-back guy, but when he gets in the studio, he’s the taskmaster. He practices tough love, a lot.” 

Kotzur agrees: “He does that thing, like, ‘That was pretty good. Now, why don’t you play it, like, not-shitty?’

SOURCE: NASHVILLE SCENE