Album Review – Kaitlin Butts – “Roadrunner!”

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Uninterested in taking a conventional approach to making an album, rising country star Kaitlin Butts finds inspiration in the original Rodgers and Hammerstein stage production about her native state of Oklahoma to release a conceptualized work that is as epic, involved, entertaining, and thought-provoking upon the interpersonal relationships of men and women as the original award-winning play. But don’t be afraid that theatrics dominate the experience. Overall, this thing is country.

Kaitlin Butts has been lurking in the “grossly underrated” category in country music for some years now, in part due to her recorded output being somewhat scant and driven by singles, taking seven years between her 2015 debut album Sam Hell, Different Devil and 2022’s What Else Can She Do that received excellent reception, but only included seven songs. Now she’s dropped a 17 song treatise that darn near doubles her recorded output, expands her cultural footprint, and is solidly country and Western to boot.

Kaitlin Butts has never been shy at shirking and challenging the gender stereotype of the sweet and obedient country woman, similar to some of her country predecessors such as Loretta Lynn. But Kaitlin isn’t just looking to take you to “Fist City” here. She’s perhaps the most prolific purveyor of the modern murder ballad, and was already known for painting in the medium of murder before this album. Roadrunner now might crown her as the modern “Murder Song Queen.”

After a few sips of “Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice,” the listener is transported to a world where the ways of courtship are explored. And yes, a level of revenge fantasy and the female empowerment that it conveys is a big part of this experience through the rocking “I Can’t Have You” or Kaitlin’s cover of Kesha’s “Hunt You Down.” But it’s not at the expense of exploring all aspects of the love quotient. Roadrunner! delves into the full complexity of relationships, including the loving side.

One of the best songs on the album is the sweet and consoling “Come Rest Your Head (On My Pillow)” performed with the incomparable Vince Gill. “Buckaroo” and “Followed You To Vegas” convey a devotional aspect of love perhaps even to the point of obedience, though this also works to create a contrast of perspective with the other songs that push back on the idea of the doting and devotional partner, or a woman who “knows her place,” like the confessional song “That’ll Never Be Me.”


It’s hard to not deduce that much of the inspiration for Roadrunner! is Kaitlin’s real life relationship with husband Cleto Cordero, who happens to the be frontman of Flatland Cavalry. This is reinforced by the video content released for the album so far. The forward nature from a woman’s perspective that “Other Girls (Ain’t Having Any Fun)” mirrors the Cleto and Kaitlin story. It was also inspired by a specific line from the Oklahoma! musical. “Like I Should” speaks to Kaitlin’s occupation as a traveling musician missing her beau back home.

Ultimately though, it’s the deep exploration of the dichotomy of love that makes Roadrunner! so compelling—how the same passion that can make someone almost blindly devotional to a lover comes from the same place that can inspire a grizzly crime of passion. When it comes to relationships, love and hate aren’t the exact opposite sides of the spectrum. They are two sides of the same coin, and can flip on a dime. We see this through the stories and characters Kaitlin Butts creates.

Though Roadrunner is meant to be taken in cohesively to get the full experience, the way the songs unfold may not exactly be linear. Also, plenty of songs can be selected from the album and enjoyed independently. The title track and the very personal final track “Elsa” might be two of the album’s best, but only fit with the rest of the songs loosely. Only a few tracks need the others to work.

And throughout the whole album, Kaitlin Butts and producer Oran Thorton find a distinctly Western sound to help invoke the bygone setting Kaitlin envisioned for many of these songs, with the loud rock aspects of “If I Can’t Have You” being the exception. Though some of the imagery and video content might be a bit kitschy, the music rarely is.

Even after repeated listens, Roadrunner! leaves the listener fulfilled, but perhaps with many lingering questions. The fate of multiple characters seems to remain unresolved, and how one song relates to another isn’t always easy to deduce. But perhaps that’s the point, to leave the audience with more clues to unravel, and convey the overall messiness of human emotion that can make us give of our lives almost completely to another, or sadly, take life when we feel so scorned that we somehow rationalize no other recourse.

8.2/10

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