Caitlin Quisenberry is ready to get her solo work onto your playlist. The Denver musician has worked in the spotlight for years in bands, but now she is hitting the stage on her own and she has plenty of music to share with the world.
The singer has joined forces with Off the Row studio in Nashville, TN to record her debut, self-titled album, set out for release later this year. Quisenberry spoke with us about how her solo opportunities came to be and the great things to expect from her future.
303 Magazine: Thank you for chatting with us! You have a lot of exciting things coming up, with a few new singles out and a newly recorded EP. Is that set to come out in 2020?
Caitlin Quisenberry: Yes. My third song came out on May 1, then I have another one called “Imogene” coming out after that. I am actually pumping out a song a month. I was supposed to be going to Nashville at the end of May to record another five songs. Now, we’ll see. That was the plan but if not, it will be June or July.
303: Your newest single, “Let Love Die,” was released May 1. The song seems to be about the agony that love can sometimes bring. Were you writing from experience?
CQ: Right. At first, you’re so in love with someone, and if they hurt you you’re sort of blind-sided by that and the pain they cause. It is hard to imagine that someone who you love so much and have that relationship would do that to you. A friend of mine wrote the song and came from her own experience, and she shared the song with me. I really fell in love with it. It was written in the third person initially, but I changed to first-person because I thought people could relate to it more.
I do write songs though, when I was supposed to go out to Nashville in May I had three songs that I was going to record. I am a pretty quick writer, one of the songs I am working on I wrote coming home from Boston on a four-hour plane ride. I play a little guitar but I am not awesome at it. I write lyrics and melody and I record it on my phone. I send it to my producer in Nashville, and he puts chords underneath my voice.
303: How did you get involved with Nashville living in Denver?
CQ: I live in Denver and I go to Nashville to record. The way I got involved with the studio was after I recorded a song on Instagram, the studio in Nashville saw it. They invited me out and offered to cover the majority of my studio time. They are also featuring me as their breakout artist. They believed in me, funded the majority of it, put me up with songwriters and really helped get my career off the ground.
303: Have you performed here?
CQ: I have. I am also in a band called Look West, and we have performed around Denver. We had a couple of events at View House coming up this summer, and some other private events. Right now I am looking at forging a band underneath my own name. I have a guitarist and we have been doing live stream shows.
303: These new singles and your EP have been a long time building for you, as you have spent almost half of your life training musically. What are your goals with this release?
CQ: My main goal is to get a band underneath my name. I want to get on the road and start touring once things open up again. I want to make this a full-time career. Right now, I am a part-time nanny, while also doing music and it feels like I have a pretty heavy workload. I would like to start making money doing music and do it full time. Getting my name out there and getting that recognition.
I want to work on my songwriting and record original music that I wrote or co-wrote and develop my own unique sound as an artist.
303: You’re working with Off the Row studio and became their Breakout Artist of 2020. How is working between Nashville and Denver?
CQ: They’re awesome, I’ve become good friends with the producer and his wife is a photographer and took a lot of those photos. They’re both fun to work with and are nice people. Everyone is so nice to work with, in Nashville with that Southern Hospitality.
303: Is there anything else you would like to discuss in regards to your new music?
CQ: I have a lot of songs in the works. I want to go into bluegrass, some people have compared my voice to Allison Kraus. I grab a lot of my influences from more vintage artists like Linda Rhondstat, Emmy Lou Harris and Dolly Parton. I want to take that older sound and traditional country and put a modern twist on it. I am working on the creative side of my sound.
Listen to the rest of Caitlin Quisenberry’s music here.