Kiki Cavazos’ life has been both remarkable and hard, with significant portions marked by near-constant movement. Growing up in Montana, she’d sometimes travel into the wilderness with her father to cut down trees. Running away from home to Alaska at the age of 16, she later found herself thousands of miles south in Mexico playing banjo with an Afro-Mexican drum band. A quick 2009 stop in Asheville, N.C., yielded Early Mountain Songs, a field recording of sorts with harmonica player Gill Landry (Old Crow Medicine Show) that wasn’t officially released until 2024.
Over the course of her travels, Cavazos has acquired a healthy list of friends, collaborators and advocates, including Esther Rose, Luke Bell, Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Lee Segarra and Lost Dog Street Band’s Benjamin Todd. But her most fortuitous run-in was with the Deslondes. She recorded both 2018’s Two Bit Gambler and the upcoming Goodbye Blues (Jalopy) at the band’s New Orleans studio.
“When I listen to her music, it’s clear that pain and beauty are inexorably connected,” says the Deslondes’ Sam Doores, who produced Goodbye Blues. “Her songs aren’t influenced by any fad or era. It’s pure soul and hard, honest truth. And magic.”
“Grey Ghost Train” was written by Cavazos’ old Montana buddy “Cowboy Mike” Klopp.
“Cowboy Mike wrote most of his songs just for the pedal steel because he loved the sound so much,” says Cavazos. “He made me a little tape with him walking in the snow, drinking and singing it. I’ve always loved the simplicity and lyrics of it. He told me to take the song and make people fall off their barstools crying. I knew I was gonna lose that little tape.”
Just when she thought she did, it was found in a drawer on Luke Bell’s Wyoming ranch after Klopp died. “I’d given it to him in a squat in New Orleans when he was pretty young,” says Cavazos. “He took care of it all those years.”
We’re proud to premiere Kiki Cavazos’ “Grey Ghost Train.” Goodbye Blues is out April 24.
—Hobart Rowland
