The rouged roulette of Willow Avalon and her Pink Pocket Pistol

Avalon open-carries her newest album on the recordBar stage

2 hours ago

Samantha Russell,

Willow Avalon. // photo by Samantha Russell

With the pop resurgence of country music, new country artists seem to rise weekly out of the woodwork. Emerging fully-formed from their god-like, big-music-mogul backers, they’re dressed convincingly in well-decked country image to cut down similarly-posing competition. It’s done so that all involved can stake their claim in the shiny gold mine dredged from a blue-collared past.

To this scene, Willow Avalon, native of Carlton, Georgia, plants her sweet vocal trills. She’s not one to subsume a character for the sake of show-business. The authentic resonance in her voice lured me from ringing around folk and dabbling in Americana all the way down South, to the dappling form of country music I didn’t before dare go.

Backed by her band at recordBar on Thursday August 13, she yields what most of the Athenian-insectile-country musicians cannot: authenticity. Her independent femme fatale character hails from pure country roots, living a life that blossoms real, raw emotion.

In that very small town of less than three hundred people, with “one stop-sign, a Baptist Church, and a biker bar that doesn’t allow women,” she worked her first job as a waitress, dropping out of high school while noting that better opportunities must happen in bigger cities.

Stepping into her world is like being encapsulated in a rosy haze. Through the gruff strife of life she’s managed to paint a pretty picture and bring wisdom beyond her years to boot. Even if the stuff of her songs doesn’t hold lovely content or pretty outcomes, she makes it sound real, real nice.

Willow Avalon. // photo by Samantha Russell

Willow Avalon is dressed this evening in an embroidered white, down-home dress; evocative of a show put on simply for a group of friends. She treats the crowd as just that, with a warm geniality as if she’s known people here for years. The audience is attuned in return. A solid group of people, they attend to her stories and take up call-and-responses immediately, a testament to the type of music she displays that draws such a lively group of people in.

Lipping a microphone atop a flower-lined microphone stand, she tunes us into stories between songs, padding them with endearing phrases like “crazy bonker-jonkers.” Avalon tells us of her first car she bought for four hundred dollars and its quirks, like a CD player that would retain a disc at random on full volume, “And so, you’d put a CD in and hope to God you wouldn’t hate it six months from now.” One of those CDs was Jason Isbell’s, who has since asked to collaborate with her. Their song together is “Cardinal Sin.”

With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, her vocals carry the listener on a soft pillowy breeze. They do not ask for your energy in return. They exist as they are in evanescent floral arrangements.

Willow Avalon. // photo by Samantha Russell

Willow Avalon levels with what her internet critics say about her, “I see these comments about people saying I’m a man hater. And I want to just set the record straight: I love men. That is how we got in this position, okay. I love men: I just don’t quite love when men don’t say sorry.”

She calls out a past partner by name, in “Willy Won’t,” gunning him down with participation from the audience, “there’s gonna be a point where I say ‘if his name is Taylor, send him straight to jail or hell.’ Kansas City, can y’all yell ‘jail or hell’ for me?” And we do. Her tone has a true undercut bite to it when she says his name. She plasters the end all pretty to tip a hat to our participation in her crusading slander with a southern-drawn thank you.

Willow Avalon is immersed in life. She doesn’t overlay her lyrics in pretend performance. She lives it, and her music transmits that.

An ideal live music experience leaves its viewers with more than they came with. More fervor, more energy, more lifeblood; more of a rosy-colored outlook on life or a gumption to stick it to the man. Willow Avalon is such a performer and her music an extension of that. To be coddled cozy in her swirling Pink Pocket Pistol world, and to then have to exit the flowers, her crooning voice, and the darling taxidermy deer head to emerge back onto the street is a crime indeed. One that should be avenged by another round of her rouged roulette, whenever she comes through Kansas City next: with new lovers’ names to spite and more country twang to uphold.