BettySoo is among a long list of Austin acts who deserve a wider audience outside their home state. A good friend and touring partner of celebrated Texas singer/songwriter James McMurtry, she’s a skilled spinner of yarns in her own right. The self-released If You Never Go Away was produced by Will Sexton (younger brother of guitarist/actor Charlie Sexton) and tracked at Cedar Creek Studio in Austin and Southern Grooves in Memphis.
True to the quixotical essence of the state that helped to invent Americana, the album aims for some sort of ideal confluence of folk, country, rock and pop, with a little bossa nova thrown in for good measure. At the center of it all is a songwriter who is forever striving for a more granular connection with listeners, whether it’s through her lyrics or her between-song banter at shows.
BettySoo offers the personal stories behind each track.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “What Do You Want From Me Now?”
“I’ve always loved this song by Grand Rapids, Mich., artist Ralston Bowles. My fans have asked for our version for years. I hope Ralston likes what we did with it. I’m betting he does—but if he doesn’t, I know he’ll be honest enough to let me know while being kind enough to make me not feel bad about it. So now you know: The songwriter is as likable as the song … And I think this song is a hell of a cool way to open a record.”
2) “Memento”
“A few years ago, when millions of us were spending more time in our domiciles than ever before, I discovered a duplicate strip of photos from one of those little nostalgic booths. I was so happy on two counts: 1) finding an extra copy of something that reminded me of fun and happy days with my friend; and 2) finding I had two copies, which meant I’d be able to send her one. I texted her a photo and called her up. We had a good, long catchup call and updated one another on how life was going, what projects we were working on and how our families were doing. She surprised me by telling me not to send the photos. Unbeknownst to me, her partner had always been a bit touchy about our work together. So, out of respect for her partner’s feelings, my friend avoided having any visual reminders of me around the house. ‘Maybe you could you keep it as a memento for both of us?’ she asked gently—and with more than a hint of apology.”
3) “Lovering”
“This song is all about (drummer) Steve Potts. OK, it was written before I knew a thing about Steve, but I feel like the finished recording sounds as good as it does due to his playing. When Steve hits the snare, every hit is perfect. I don’t mean that as an exaggeration or some figure of speech. If you literally look at a computer screen’s isolated waveform captured by a mic pointed at his snare, you’ll see perfectly timed, perfectly executed hits from the time he counts the song off until the last amp sizzle fades.”
4) “Things Are Gonna Get Worse”
“One bright, blustery morning, I met James McMurtry in a hotel lobby and walked with him through a freezing cold Minneapolis downtown to get breakfast before he had to go to the record plant and autograph several thousand LP covers of his latest release, The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy. Breakfast was hearty and fresh, and traffic wasn’t too bad getting to the plant. The guys there were Minnesota nice, and they had a few long tables set up to create a conveyor belt of sorts for James. I sat while he signed LP covers, and the employees carefully inspected and filed the autographed jackets into boxes. I was excited to see a photo I took of James playing his eight-string Alvarez on the back jacket. Aside from my scintillating personality, I imagine that was the reason he invited me to tag along. I was thinking to myself, “This is pretty good what we have here. My life is … Well, we work hard, but the work we get to do is amazingly cool.
“Just then, whatever orchestral soundtrack we were listening to ended, and someone put on … the Doors. That was my first reminder of the day things could always take a turn for the worse. We didn’t complain. I figured James either didn’t care, didn’t mind or could block out the insistent organ and bad poetry with his superior mental focus. As for me, I figured it would be a quick 36 minutes—or whatever—of regretting my misguided middle-school musical tastes.
“The young plant worker was clearly a little sad when, a few tracks in, his record started to skip. He hung his head, crossed the room, turned it off and pulled the record. But this was, after all, a vinyl pressing plant. After a minute or two of silence, Jim Morrison’s voice returned, stronger.”
5) “Light It Up”
“Nights spent bouncing between nice hotels and truly crappy motels yield important life lessons. One is that some people are infinitely less happy than you are. Another is that everyone has conflict, but fancier places with thicker walls and insulation help people hide it better. So, if you’re in a truly flimsy Econo Lodge with paper-thin walls, you might learn exactly what a couple’s current dissatisfactions are. I’ve spent nights wondering and worrying if the violence would—please, no—bleed into my room. And I’ve spent hours marveling at the luxury of knowing these stories aren’t part of my current personal life.”
6) “What Would I Do”
“I get mistaken for one of those songwriters with a high body count. But I think I’ve only released one song in which outright murder is even hinted at. (‘Secrets,’ from 2007’s Little Tiny Secrets.) I do, however, very frequently kill off romantic relationships, so maybe that’s the origin of the confusion. This song took an unusually long time for me to complete. It spent years being ‘almost there’ in a digital folder of song scraps I almost never visit. Still, it hummed along from the corner of my brain often.
“More than a dozen years ago, I had the idea that I’d like to release singles one at a time, and I suddenly saw the path to finishing this one. I recorded it in Nashville with a room full of very talented musicians. And while it’s a bit of a shame I never released it or any of the other songs from that project publicly, I’m still glad I did it. The go-to PR firms for my genre at the time told me the singles approach was unworkable for roots artists—though a decade later, they’d all be releasing music that way. I ended up shelving the project. It sure felt good to revisit this song and find that I still feel good about it.”
7) “Love, Fear Or Hunger”
“I used to be the most anxiously attached person on the planet. OK, that’s an exaggeration—and it also implies this dysfunction is in my past, when the truth is that my little internal injured child selves—banging around inside with their dull knives—can sometimes be triggered back into action at the most unexpected moments. Looking back at my younger self, I was unable to separate emotions from thoughts. I trusted fleeting feelings as if they were beliefs, and the conflicts that arose internally from that mishandling of trauma paralyzed me. In romantic relationships, I worried constantly about being unlovable. In friendships, I worried about not being thoughtful enough to fulfill everyone’s expectations and needs. With work, I worried about being an underachiever and disappointing those who I thought needed me to do well. In middle age, I now feel the major work of my life is not accomplishing career goals or shaping a life people approve of so much as learning who I want to be each day and trying to be brave enough to be myself, moment by moment.”
8) “Human Echo”
“I play every guitar sound on this track. We just let the session run, and we played and played. OK, there was more to recording the tune than that, but barely more. I wrote this during lockdown when I was having fun with my guitar, playing and exploring how to make the instrument produce the kind of harmonies I loved from bossa-nova tunes I fell in love as a freshman in college.”
9) “Gold Stars”
“This is a rare song for me. It’s unapologetically positive and affirming. As sarcastic and cynical as I can often be, one of my sincerest personal goals is to be the kind of person whose close friends feel provides the kind of safety this song describes. I don’t know if that’s yet true. If not, I hope it will be truer of me one day.”
10) “Rewind”
“Like most songs in my catalog, this one is presumably about a romantic relationship— but that’s only because I find it to be dependable and accessible scaffolding for all kinds of choices and circumstances. Stepping into or away from a career, a family of origin, ingrained beliefs, friendships and romantic relationships is risky. Placing faith in ourselves—as much as trusting others with our hopes, expectations and past hurts—is frightening but necessary work if we want to grow into our joy.”
11) “Still”
“This may be one of the most straightforward songs I’ve ever written. It says everything it means, right on the surface. The mysteries below the water belong to each listener.”
12) “Dreams”
“Years ago, one of my best friends spent more than a year in treatment for addiction and mental-health issues. I visited often, and we spoke on the phone each week. Then there came a visit about four months into her treatment when she casually mentioned that one day maybe she’d open a bakery. It struck me that it was the first time I’d heard her acknowledge her own future, and she was allowing herself to hope and dream—something she hadn’t done in a very long time. The conversation flipped back to the regular, safe, daily recap space we’d been inhabiting together, but I could feel myself holding back tears. When I got into my rental car, I broke down in sobs. It’s so easy to lose sight of how brave it is to dream.”
13) “Gulf Road”
“I’ve often threatened to record an entire album—or at least an EP—of McMurtry tunes written from a female perspective, alongside some of his tunes I think could shift in meaning when sung by a female voice. I haven’t done it yet, but when James agreed to record this tune with me for the album, I just about flipped. Yes, we’re friends. He often has me accompany him on tour as his opener, and I’ve sung on his last couple albums. So it’s not necessarily a huge surprise that he shows up on this album.
“What is a little unusual is the willingness of a well-known songwriter to participate in the recording of a solo song as a duet in such a way that it, in my opinion, subtly shifts the listener’s ear toward a new and different meaning. To my ears, the death alluded to in the lyric is no longer a literal end of a human life. It feels like the end of a relationship. But what do I know? I’m just another middle-aged former English major who reads too much into things.”
See BettySoo live.
