INTERVIEW: Kaitlin Butts on her fourth album 'Hello, Honky Tonk': "I love to tell stories and say what I've been through, but also make people laugh in between."

Interview: Shalane Connors
Image: Thomas Crabtree
Published: 3 November 2026

Country-Americana artist Kaitlin Butts has been releasing music for over 10 years, but in the last two her career has really accelerated.

Her 2024 album, Roadrunner!, inspired by the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! was critically acclaimed and featured covers of Cher and Kesha tracks. Last year her song ‘You Ain't Gotta Die (to Be Dead to Me)’ went viral on TikTok, and she was signed to major label Republic Records. Recently, she also starred in the music video for Ella Langley’s massive hit ‘Choosin’ Texas’.

Butts is an artist that plays endlessly with genre, releasing dance-pop remixes of her songs and dramatic ballads alongside her traditional country music.

She has just released her eagerly anticipated fourth album Hello, Honky Tonk. Inspired by vaudeville, the musical Chicago as well as the Disney World attraction Country Bear Musical Jamboree, the album brings a night at your favourite honky tonk bar into your home - the laughter, the tears, the dancing and fun with Butts building an entire world with her trademark wit and musicality.

‘I Wanna Be Bad’ is a rousing tune that sees Butts wanting to break out of the good girl mould and let herself go: ‘I always do the right thing even if it pains me…sometimes I wanna go maniac mad / I wanna smoke and drink and party and dance all on the floor.’ ‘The Bartender’ has a gloriously, almost sleazy sound with Butts declaring whatever happens in the honky tonk, stays at the honky tonk, singing ‘I'm your local therapist / With a zipper on my lips’.

‘I Make Cowboys Cry’ has a brooding, slightly dangerous opener before the country beat kicks in and Butts lets an admirer know that she isn’t the right one for them: ‘I don't wanna let you down, so you should let me go’.

Alongside the upbeat songs, Butts also delivers a range of ballads on Hello, Honky Tonk. ‘Never Really Mine’ has a traditional country ballad sound, while ‘Still Got It’ has a more ethereal, dreamlike soundscape. Where Butts really shines, and is perhaps the highlight of of the album, is ‘What More Could You Want’. It is a beautiful piano and strings ballad with Butts’ soaring vocal giving it the feel of a Broadway musical number. In it, Butts sings of the anxiety of having a career in entertainment when there is always a fear the audience will become bored of you and move onto someone else: ‘Is it ever enough? / Tell me, am I too much?…Do you need more reasons / To keep showing up for me? / ‘Cause stars, they burn out.’

After ‘What More Could You Want’ the album in the main takes on a much more introspective, quieter feel compared to the more carefree first half. ‘That Makes One Of Us’, a warm traditional country swayer also explores the themes of loneliness and self-doubt, this time when you are all alone in a bar as life happen around you. It is a poignant study of the times we feel invisible despite being surrounded by people.

The album closes on the pared back ‘Midnight I’ll Always Be Yours’, which perhaps appropriately captures the almost melancholic end of a night of partying as you leave the fun and chaos behind for the quiet of the night: ‘A song in my head and smoke in my hair’. It is a beautiful way to end the album, and in many ways sums up the experience of immersing yourself in the album - we’ve had a blast, experienced multiple emotions but now it is time for the needle to leave the record until the next time we pull it out of its sleeve.

Butts is one of country music’s most compelling rising stars, but don’t try and box her into just that one genre. Her music has multiple layers and soundscapes and there is a lot to discover and enjoy in her music no matter what your preferred genre is. We met with Butts during her recent visit to Australia to chat all about the album’s creation and her music career to date.

Congratulations on your fourth album, Hello, Honky Tonk. It's such a fun album, it’s absolutely injected with energy and good times. For those who might not know, explain to me what a honky tonk bar is?
I would say it's a place with a dance floor and people who have a common shared interest in country music and live music. Clocking out from your work and getting rowdy and drinking beer and just having fun. Honky tonk is where you make it. Home is where the heart is, anywhere can be a honky tonk if you try hard enough.

Did you start out at honky tonk bars?
I started doing gigs in restaurants and in little dive bars - anywhere that they would have me! I would be on the back of a trailer bed or I would be singing at the library or old folks' homes I would sing anywhere

You're such a world builder, and the spoken word introduction really sets the scene, it's got this real kind of theatrical sense to it. Your previous album, Roadrunner!, which was a modern take on Oklahoma! and also had a world building theatrical setting. What is the draw towards theatre? Did you grow up in that space?
I did. I grew up doing musical theatre since I was five years old. I'd been in a gymnastics class, and at the end of the class, the teacher came up to my mum and said, "She does not enjoy gymnastics, but what she does love to do is sing and dance in the mirror. You should put her in musical theatre." And boy, did I love to sing in the mirror at myself! I always just loved to be on stage as a kid. I just loved to entertain. I would stand on the coffee table and sing at my parents before bed, they'd let me get it out of my system. I grew up doing theatre, and then picked up the guitar at 15, and then just kind of went from there.

How did the transition from musical theatre into country music come about for you? Was that just a product of growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
Growing up a ‘90s kid, we listened to lots of ‘90s country, but I listened to all kinds of music growing up: theatre, pop, rock. Now as a grown country singer, I look back at my old theatre recital videos or performance videos, and I'm always in some sort of country garb. I'm wearing a cowboy hat, even though I wasn't from the country. I did Toy Story, so I was dressed up as Jessie, or I would do ‘You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun’ from the Annie Get Your Gun musical. I was doing tap dances to Johnny Cash's ‘Get Rhythm’, or singing The Chicks. I just was performing country in a recital setting even though my aspirations were not to be a country singer. I just loved the storytelling and the humour, and I feel like those things, country music and musical theatre, do have that in common. They kind of bleed into one another. There's not very many people that would say that, but I can see the common thread. There’s also the kind of cheeky love for murdering people in country music and musical theatre songs!. There's always that in there and I feel like those worlds just remain in me.

Shalane Connors (L) with Kaitlin Butts

Has humour always been a part of your music. I went back and listened to your debut album, Same Hell, Different Devil, and I found it to be a lot more serious with darker tones. When did the humour creep in, and and for what reason?
Humour is a default to me. My favourite thing to do is make people laugh. I love to say the joke, to say the thing I'm not supposed to say or be a little raunchy. I love to catch people off guard with shock value humour. I had released my second album What Else Can She Do and a booking agent at William Morris said, ‘I listened to your album, iIt's so it's so dark. But you're not dark, you're funny and light.’ And I said, ‘Well, what I went through was really dark, but I feel like I cope a lot with humour.' So after that, I had that in the back of my head. I'm not a dark person, I just had to get those songs out of me because that's what I was going through at the time. You cope with humour and a matter of fact way of living.

I really just tapped into that for this album. I love to tell stories and say what I've been through, but then also make people laugh in between and laugh at the pain. You get oxytocin from laughing, and I just wanted to show more of myself in my songwriting, especially for this album.

This is your second time in Australia and you’ve had a bit of a slice of Australiana - I saw you did your first shoey on stage in Melbourne. Tell us about that!
I have a little bit of athlete's throat now…I'm just kidding! it was funny, I'd seen Dasha do it on the internet, and I love the spirit of just everybody chanting something together. I love camaraderie, and the spirit of just getting wild and having fun. We don't have shoeys over in the States, but I just wanted to do it the other day. They had a vodka drink for me, and I’m like ‘I can drink that!’

What else have you been loving about your tour in Australia, or what have you found different from back home?
I really like being over here, and I like being in the UK, just because there's such a thirst for country music and the spirit of it. Y'all just want to be a part of it so bad, and it makes me want to deliver, and just really make it really honky tonk for y'all. There's a love for women and country over here too. Y'all get our sense of humour pretty quickly, right off the bat. I feel like sometimes there is a spirit of not liking women right off the bat over in the States sometimes, you kind of have to earn it over there. Y'all have such open hearts over here, and there's so much love for women and being loud and empowered and saying the raunchy things and y'all really dig that and get my jokes pretty quick. There's areas of the States that I don't feel that way, there are certain audiences where they're standing with their hands, their arms folded. They slowly open up, but you have to prove why they should listen. And I feel like that's not the spirit over here, for sure.

Oh, that's really lovely to hear. I think also perhaps we have a hungrier country music scene over here, people really strive to find their people in country music.
I played a a festival, I think we were playing like the 2 o'clock set, and over in the States, the 2 o'clock slot is not a great one because people are just kind of making their way in or may not be there. But y'all are there from the very beginning of the day! People were there for the very opening. It's exciting because you get to be in front of a big crowd over here and we're all newer acts over here too, so it's really exciting to just be in front of the masses that just really want to hear us.

Hello, Honky Tonk was described as one of the most anticipated albums of 2026. How does it feel to be anticipated?
It feels weird, it feels cool. When we had the show in Sydney, we had all these RSVPs, but I don't know a single soul here other than people that are scheduled to interview me. To be in a place that you've never been before, and have people just dying to come to the show and having to go through the hoops of signing up and doing codes and putting their email in…like there's not very many people I would do that for, so it's really meaningful to me. I was talking to my drummer about that and he was like, ‘Why are you always surprised when good things happen?’ I just have to keep a low expectation because I don't want to be let down. But it feels cool that there's awareness about the album and people are excited for it. I just I know I’m really proud of this album and I know that people will like it. It feels like what I want to say, it feels truly country and just really fun and just light, and that's what I wanted to do. It feels weird to be anticipated or that people are looking forward to it. It feels weird to have people that I've never met before be invested in my life. Someone other than my mum is excited!

Do you feel the like the weight of expectations as well?
It's more of my own. I want to do it right. Now that I have the product, I don't feel nervous because I just know that what we did is great. I have a lot of confidence in it. It was before that I was very nervous going into the writing sessions with Lori McKenna and Shane McNally Natalie Hemby Jesse Jo Dillon. These are people whose songs that everyone knows. the songs that built me, like Miranda Lambert's songs - Natalie Hemby is the reason, and I'm getting to write with that person. I'm getting to write with these people who I've listened to my whole life, and so you just hope whenever you get in these rooms with these people that you can perform. I did feel nervous of having good ideas, and you just hope that your brain's working that day, because at the end of the day, someone's gonna call you and go, ‘Hey, what was the song you wrote today?’ You just get nervous that you're able to perform in those four-hour windows that you have with another writer. But once the album has been finished and done, I really feel proud of it. I don't feel nervous at all! I do have confidence that it will be received well.

Gosh, there's so much pressure going into set time writing sessions. Do you work well under pressure? What's your usual approach to songwriting?
My manager said that the other day ‘you work really well right before the deadline, do I need to start saying what the deadline is before?’ And I'm like, no, do not do that to me because I need to have as much time as I can. I do work well under pressure. It is really draining though, those writing sessions, and having to be on for long periods of time and just really be on word wise. It's four to five hours of just being creative, and sometimes it gets personal, and so it's just emotionally draining. But you love it once you get done with the song, there's a relief. I feel proud of the songs and feel lucky to have gotten to write with all the people that I did.

Amazing. It's been just over a decade since your first album release. You've been in the industry a long time now, and I'm curious to know what has changed for you the most within the industry, or what have you seen change around women creating their own spaces, finding their own voices and having autonomy over their careers?
I've always been confident, I was just trying to learn as much as I could in the very beginning, and just get better and better over time. Keep the horse blinders on, and just trying to work on my craft over time. I feel like that has really served me.

When it comes to being a female in the space, in the beginning you're told lots of lies about how women view each other in the industry, and that it's a competition. The only person that's told me things like that are men, and I have no evidence of of those things throughout my entire life experience. I have no evidence of women that are competitive with me, because when someone is truly authentic or they're not insecure, I could be as loud and take up as much space on stage next to them in the spotlight and they wouldn't feel jealousy. That's how Lainey Wilson has been with me, Ella Langley, Willow Avalon, Lola Kirke, Maggie Antone…all these women that are just so secure in themselves. All of those lies that I was told are just completely put to rest. I can't think of a single girl that I’ve felt this weird energy with.

Hello, Honky Tonk is out now via Republic Records/Universal Music. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Kaitlin Butts on Instagram and TikTok.