Cliff Westfall on Red Barn Radio!

Cliff Westfall was born and raised in Owensboro, not far from tiny Rosine, Kentucky where Bill Monroe invented bluegrass music, and he grew up listening endlessly to Kentuckians like The Everly Brothers who changed the path of popular music. Though he got his start playing cowpunk music in Kentucky, he soon left his home state behind for the bright lights of New York City. “The term ‘country music’ is almost a misnomer anyway,” argues Westfall. “A big part of the original audience was people a generation or two removed from the farm who had migrated to the city. People more familiar with factory work and honky tonks than with the back end of a mule, you know? The music they wanted to hear was as much about cutting loose, dancing and having a good time as it was about sadness and hardship. That was kind of the story of my family. Or maybe I’m just attracted to neon lights, I don’t know.”

That is to say, country music was born in cities big and small, throughout the South and wherever Southerners ended up, as much as it was in the country. And though rural America is endlessly mythologized today in modern country music, the city is still at the heart of country, and still a source of new inspirations and influences on the traditions. On Baby You Win, Cliff Westfall brings his Kentucky roots to a very urban New York world, opening up the old country sounds to a much wider vision of Americana.

“We’re not that different you and me,” Alec Koukol repeats throughout the swelling bridge of “Garden Talker,” and that line might as well be a mission statement for Safari Room. Koukol describes “human connection as a founding cornerstone” as the project’s ethos, and that message is a through-line for Safari Room’s entire discography so far. The band is known, particularly in Nashville, for their special brand of indie rock, their live shows and the sense of community that comes from singing Safari Room’s songs together. That’s Safari Room’s hope, and that’s what they’re going for on their as-yet-untitled third LP. These songs are the band’s biggest, boldest, and most personal yet; in other words, they’re Safari Room at their very best. – Zac Djamoos