Song Review – Nikki Lane’s “Woodruff City Limit”
When you think of Nikki Lane, you think of swagger. You think of awakening the Nancy Sinatra influence in country music, with a small pinch of vintage kitsch, and a much bigger dollop of cool. After all, she got into country music to get the better of an ex-boyfriend, and ultimately did. It doesn’t get much more country than that.
Few if any of us can be as cool as Nikki Lane. But we can live vicariously through her songs. There is an element of escapism in her music, but that’s not to say that Lane hasn’t released some songs in her career that touch on something deeper. None have hit as hard, or have come across so vulnerable and honest than her new single “Woodruff City Limit.”
Woodruff is a small town (pop. below 5,000) near Greenville in South Carolina. This is where Nikki Lane transports you, starting from her birth, through a tumultuous upbringing, up until the passing of her father. Written and recorded in the shadow of her dad’s passing in the summer of 2024, the song captures the wave of often complex emotions that overtake us during such life events.
There’s little fond recollection found in “Woodruff City Limit.” Instead, the verses find Nikki Lane reckoning with formidable memories that come flooding forth from repressed recesses after her father’s death. Though ultimately, Lane finds a solemn sweetness in all of the pain—if only from the Gibson guitar her father gave her, and understanding that pain was the catalyst for her father’s anger.
It’s often the greatest songs that are not written for an audience, but for the artist themselves to process through their emotions. It just happens to be that the rest of us can listen in, and often use great songs to help us process through grief of our own, or find a level of solace previously unattainable ourselves.
“Woodruff City Limit” is one of those great songs.
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Nikki Lane released “Woodruff City Limit” to coincide with a performance in the town on Saturday, June 7th. No new album to announce tied to this song just yet.
June 9, 2025 @ 6:55 am
What’s the story on her getting into country to “get the better of an ex-boyfriend?”
June 9, 2025 @ 7:03 am
Paraphrasing here and would have to find the full story, if its ever been told in full publicly. But long story short, I believe she was dating a country musician who was making an album. She kept criticizing the songs and the album until he said, “Go make your own album.” And so she did.
June 9, 2025 @ 7:15 am
Speaking of Nancy Sinatra,she was 85 yesterday,June 8 (Ms. Sinatra was born exactly 27 years after my father’s June 8,1913 birthdate),but hopefully “Woodruff City Limit” puts Nikki Lane squarely on the map.
June 9, 2025 @ 7:43 am
Love her new song, I couldn’t make it to her show Saturday, but I certainly wanted to be there.
June 9, 2025 @ 8:31 am
…”he was a good man with a dark side and a brutal hand” – looking for a disturbing contradiction, look no further. on the whole a commendable and noteworthy effort by ms. lane, but that little adjective there is one too many as well as too much.
June 9, 2025 @ 1:01 pm
I Feel Like Going Home, written and performed by the great Charlie Rich.
For some reason, this song kept playing in my head, almost like a soundtrack to the thousands of fragmented memories blowing like a whirlwind through my mind that April night in ’02.
We did a recon in a neighborhood in Paktia, Afghanistan when we suddenly caught hostile fire. Me and a fellow dog soldier ran for cover in the nearest building, a small three-story brickshack with apartments, of course long ago abandoned. A fragment of something had ripped through my left leg, so my buddy helped me up the stairs to the third story, where we managed to tourniquet my leg with an old curtain, no kidding. He ran down the staircase again, and I did my best to stuff the wound with gaze. Then I heard voices screaming in dari (afghan) downstairs, and limped into the closest corner, away from the staircase, fiddling with the Harris radio frenetically and obviously in vain. It felt like hours (probably 2-3 minutes or so), and the gallery of random memories flickered before my “inner” eyes, while Charlie Rich moaned his forlorn, hopeless song (I had a compilation of him back at the base). I drifted in and out of reality in that short time, the song and sounds of gunshots took turns until the afghan voices disappeared and I soon heard an unknown language from folks coming up the stairs. It was three norwegian soldiers (I was told so later), from a patrol who happened to be close by when the short attack began. The patrol interrupted the action and saved our lives inside that building, of that I’m 100% convinced. Not only did they chase away the enemy, they also glued up my bleeding leg. I doubt I would have survived for too long without their assistance.
So, yes, songs becomes personal. I’m not a religious person, but then and there, that was the mighty song my mind found fit to get me through.
And it’s a wonderful hymn. The best of them, according to me. I miss ol’ Silver Fox.
Sorry for the long explanation.
June 9, 2025 @ 4:19 pm
Do you know Steve Viola?
June 10, 2025 @ 2:02 am
No, ma’am, not by name.
June 10, 2025 @ 2:42 am
Sofus,
This is for you. 🔱
https://youtu.be/QkjN1QDPv60?si=W9PZj-MlwSAstuOc
June 10, 2025 @ 8:33 am
Thank you for the video.
Most veterans returns home to lead normal, anonymous lives, never dwelling too much on whatever crap they experienced.
That’s a fact, often overlooked in the popular narrative.
It’s my firm belief that those who freaks out – the so-called PTSD’ers – wasn’t fit for service in the first place. They should never have made it past the recruit camp.
There are no room for Rambo’s in a war. They are a danger to themselves and their co-soldiers. A good soldier de-escalates a situation, if possible, he’s not running head-first in with his bang on rock’n’roll.
A few does, tho, and almost all of them goes home in a bag.
June 10, 2025 @ 8:42 am
I too, am a veteran.
Have shared this video with quite a few.
It is educational, and can certainly be beneficial.
June 9, 2025 @ 4:22 pm
Thanks for the story Sofus.
June 9, 2025 @ 5:15 pm
I like this song a lot.
Always liked her music, but her voice is kind of annoying.
June 9, 2025 @ 5:41 pm
Keep an eye on her guitar player Cotton Clifton. He’s doing good things himself.
June 10, 2025 @ 12:26 pm
Such a well written song. Hopefully this is a sign of an album release from Nikki Lane!
June 10, 2025 @ 4:36 pm
She will have an album out. We were fortunate to hear this song live for the first time in Portland, After announcing her new album and singing a track, she said, “I’ve not sang this one live before” she took a shot of tequila and borrowed a light from someone in the front row, took a hit of a joint and said “This is going to hurt a little bit”…..then proceeded to belt out this gem. It held the whole room in silence until the cheers erupted and tears in her eyes the whole time.
“But nobody sang like Brandi Carlisle or wrote like Nikki Lane” – Brent Cobb ‘When Country Came Back to Town’
June 10, 2025 @ 7:22 pm
Couldn’t agree more,Sofus.
June 11, 2025 @ 12:59 am
Thank you. On what?
Sorry, but your comment ended up alone down here.
June 17, 2025 @ 11:15 am
Thanks for this!! Haunted by this song, I do love her guitar swagger songs, but between this and “when my morning comes along” I’m starting to think the sad Piano power ballad may be her most powerful lane. (Sorry, just heard the terrible pun)