Ryan Taylor Price makes his solo debut with The Axe & The Tree, an album rooted in sharp songwriting and gorgeous, atmospheric Americana.

Laced with pedal steel and mellow grooves, its a classic record for modern times. “Half Written Songs” unfolds like a blue-collar roots-rock anthem. “Careful With My Heart” blends timeless twang with country hooks. Fiddle and mandolin take centerstage on the string-band song “Old and Crazy.” At the core of that sound is Price himself, pulling double-duty as the album’s singer/songwriter and producer, crafting his own version of American roots music.

Price recorded The Axe & The Tree at home, pulling long hours in his basement studio in western North Carolina. The album marked the start of a new era. After decades of band projects and songwriting partnerships, this was Price’s first time creating something truly personal and undiluted. The Axe & The Tree took shape during those basement recording sessions, with Price discovering his authentic creative voice as a solo artist. He filled the recordings with everything from acoustic guitar to an heirloom piano inherited from his wife’s great-grandmother.

Before moving to Hendersonville, North Carolina, Price cut his teeth in the Pacific Northwest, where he played lead guitar in a Seattle-based rock band and paid the bills by running sound at a local theater. He was a Washington native, having grown up in the Snoqualmie Valley. During childhood camping trips with his parents, he was inspired by a family friend who would pick songs on the guitar by the firelight. Price was hooked. Back home, he explored his father’s record collection — which introduced him to classic songwriters of the ’60s and ’70s — and the country music his mother played on the radio. By his teenage years, Price was playing music, too, strumming his first chords on his mom’s old guitar and playing his first shows with a band formed during high school. When that band came to a close, he went to school for audio engineering, expanding his horizons as a musician while also learning to make albums for himself and others.

As a sound engineer, Price put his music career on hold while he ran sound for Kirkland Performance Center. By that time, he’d met the woman who’d become his wife and companion on an epic, cross-country move that would reshape both their lives and his art. The two had enjoyed their time in Seattle, but with the loss of both Ryan’s mother and niece, the couple felt it was time for a change. At his mother’s memorial service, relatives even asked Price why he’d stopped playing music, and he realized he didn’t have an answer. “With two young kids and a new perspective, my wife and I began asking ourselves hard questions,” he remembers. “We sold our house, hoping we could build a life that prioritized our family and allowed me to pursue music as a career.”

With his wife, kids, dog, and a camper full of guitars, Price headed east. The family found a new home in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and Price began settling into the area’s musical community. This was a place that loved traditional music. A place where people played acoustic instruments on porches. A place where the beauty of the great outdoors seemed to inspire the songwriters willing to engage with it. Price was certainly willing, and as he explored his own evolving sound, he carried with him all the inspiration gained along the way.

That inspiration culminates with The Axe & The Tree. The album’s title nods to a classic proverb — “The axe forgets but the tree remembers” — whose words are a fitting description for a record about the damage we inflict, the scars we leave, and the growth that happens in spite of those injuries. It’s an album that pulls no punches, and what it reveals is a songwriter exploring the fragile dynamics of human relationships while embracing his priorities, from marriage to fatherhood to personal integrity. “It’s the idea that the tree lives on, even though it may have scars from the axe,” Price says of the album title. “Maybe it’s even stronger for it. Maybe it’s wiser for it. But most importantly, it lives on.”

Ryan Taylor Price is still here, too, strumming the guitar that first captured his imagination as a young man in the Cascades, turning songs about resilience and personal growth into something universal.

“The chilling-yet-angelic song “Ghost Towns”… resembles the wisdom a grey sparrow might sing you after it lands on a fence from a long flight north. It offers the song as wisdom as the creature catches its breath before moving on again.” – American Songwriter

On their new record Tall Tales & Fables (out October 15), Nashville duo Haunted Like Human delves deeper into inspired songwriting, sparse arrangements, and, naturally, the frisson-inducing harmonies that marked their previous two releases. Despite the album’s title, these songs are honest, above all else. Real, tender, messy honesty.

“We put a ton of emphasis on storytelling in each of our songs. We tell our own stories, we tell other people’s stories, we tell stories that we’ve seen from touring,” says Cody Clark, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter. Limned with nostalgia, soaked in Southern gothic lore, the duo meticulously assembles songs to preserve the spirit of the stories they tell. “When we write, we will beat a couple lines to death for two hours. In the end, it gets us to something we’re really proud of,” lead singer and lyricist Dale Chapman says.

With a background in poetry and prose, her granular focus on language is simpatico with Clark’s background in classical guitar. Though he began playing in metal and punk bands, Clark’s evolution meant studying composition at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho. There, he focused on classical guitar. After purchasing a steel-string guitar and switching to an entirely fingerpicked style, Clark knew he’d found a place in acoustic music, stripped down so that each note carries its own weight.

It was this evolution that inspired Clark to drive from Oregon to Nashville in 2017. Hoping to find collaborators who were serious about music. Within a couple days, he met Chapman at a coffee shop. She deduced that he was a lost tourist and struck up a conversation, leading to a cowriting session. Next thing they knew, Clark had relocated to Nashville and they were making their first album, Ghost Stories. On the heels of that, they offered up their Folklore EP, featuring standout single “Feels Like Fire.” While that EP sought to channel the minimalist, intimate spirit of their live shows, Tall Tales & Fables is the next step in their maturation. Polished but not shiny, the album benefits from Mitch Dane’s production. Together with skilled string players, the album developed its own life while staying true to Clark and Chapman’s partnership, one built on literal and metaphorical voices.

“Every choice on this record was really intentional,” says Chapman. That shows in the attention to detail, how every element serves to highlight the harmonies and songwriting that are the spine of this project. Performed live, these songs take on a transparent and personal quality, augmented by the duo’s instant camaraderie with the crowd. Haunted Like Human opened for The Talbott Brothers at Nashville’s City Winery in 2019, and in pre-Covid 2020, they shared a stage with Ordinary Elephant at the Corpus Christi Songwriters Fest.