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Tré Burt is the newest signee to Oh Boy Records, the label owned and co-founded by veritable folk legend John Prine. They’ve shaken things up this year with additions to their roster for the first time in 15 years: Burt joins the company of fellow 2019 signee and country singer Kelsey Waldon, as well as Dan Reeder and Prine himself. Oh Boy will be re-releasing Burt’s 2018 debut, Caught It From the Rye, on Jan. 31, 2020, and they’ve shared a video for the record’s title track.
“Caught It from the Rye” is a candid folk song on the cyclical nature of life and death, beginning with an origin story of creation: “The sky then opened up / and from it came a light.” It’s a reminder to remain aware of your mortality, and grateful for what you have. “If nothing’s everlasting, and everything is lost,” sings Burt, “Then everyone around me is all I ever got.” As he describes it in a statement, the song burst out of him in a trancelike state:
The songs of mine I find most interesting to play are the ones I can’t remember writing. CIFTR is one of those songs. I remember where I was though, and the conditions of that particular time. I was living out of a broken down car during a warm summer in Portland, Ore. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the forest brushes in Washington Park with my guitar. I had just found a fresh box of cigarettes someone must’ve dropped and was feeling pretty lucky all things considered. I sat down at the base of a tree and when I looked up I saw an unmistakable shape of a butterfly made by a break in the leaves and branches against the blue of the sky. The sun shot down on my lap. When I looked back down at my notebook I wrote the first line, “The sky then opened up and from it came a light.” After that, all I remember is rocking back and forth in the dirt in a state of hypnosis.
Watch “Caught It from the Rye” below.