It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)” exited the atmosphere, becoming the runaway favorite for Red Dirt’s song of the summer. Maybe it was when Kaitlin Butts woke up one morning and saw a thousand faces, some of whom were peers, shouting the lyrics of the chorus right back at her before that first sip of her morning coffee.
Maybe it was when it broke stride on streaming, leaving most of her 2024 LP “Roadrunner” in the dust as far as commercial success was concerned. Or maybe it was earlier this month, opening for fellow Okie Wyatt Flores, where she says every phone flashlight was shining down upon her as she crept into the first chorus. Regardless of when the moment arrived, Butts has been waiting for it for longer than she can remember.
“I remember getting off stage and tearing up because that was the first time that happened,” Butts said. “We’ve been doing this for so long, it just feels so much sweeter because of what we’ve been through along the way.”
But with a decade of recording and performing professionally under her belt, Butts has been flirting with the big stage practically her whole life. She’s been on one since she was about four, getting thrust into the world of theater as a tyke in Tulsa. Ballet, tap dancing, jazz, vocal lessons, acting, you name it, and she’s tried it. It was apparent to her and just about everyone around her from an early age that she found the worlds of drama and country music to be sister mediums, weaving Johnny Cash into dance recitals and modeling her latest record after the homestead tribute Broadway hit, “Oklahoma!” “If anyone has the Ado Annie role, I am open, I am ready, I have the script done, I’m good to be thrown in an ‘Oklahoma!’ costume,” she quips.
While her passion remains, her stance on the industry and how it sees her has drastically changed in the last few months. Aside from her Broadway inspired, malicious hit getting its flowers from fans, fellow female country artists have also taken up the knife and run with it. If you check TikTok, you’re bound to see the likes of Maggie Antone, Ella Langley, or Lainey Wilson gloating over the grave of a man who met a bitter end from one (or several) of the premises of “1000 Ways to Die.”
Spurned initially by a throwaway video of Butts herself singing along to the tune, the organic rise in an increasingly artificial world gave her an invitation to a party that not even the hosts know how to get invited to. Trying too hard certainly gets you knocked off the list. But for Butts, effortless charisma and charm that can’t be taught got her, as she calls it, a seat at the table. The guest list is rapidly growing, Butts said, and the vibe of the party is slowly starting to shift.
“Old boys like to help old boys,” Butts said. “And that’s fine, but I think the more we see women and have women in leadership roles, the more you’re going to see girls playing nights at festivals and helping the next one in line.”
And it’s a party that those still stuck at the door incessantly scrutinize. Even in the midst of what feels like a dethroning of the “by committee” method of choosing hits that typically excludes the female gender, those who are slowly losing grip of the reins are frantically trying to get it back. Subsequently, as modern music has become more democratized, criticism and pressure to influence every member of your species is still a pressure most of these women face. For Butts, an actor who croons and cries on crazed murder ballads and real-world trauma, it can be a hard line to toe. When in doubt, she seeks the guidance of her influences, who, like her, were loud spoken and often brazen about their feelings even when the world told them not to be.
“I’m definitely conscious that young women and girls hear my music,” Butts said. “But the reason I’m doing what I’m doing is because I saw other women who were bold and daring and said things out of line.
“Ultimately, I write from an adult woman’s standpoint. I’m not a children’s artist, I’ve never claimed to be, but I do see the importance of children seeing that on stage and seeing that fire. I don’t know if they really absorb foul language or subject matter. I think they just see that and they feel empowered and involved, to speak out or not be treated poorly.”
If lasting impressions are something that she’s conscious of, it’s by design of the system. Butts lists a CVS receipt of current female boot stompers, such as Antone, Langley, Lainey, Willow Avalon, Sierra Ferrell, and Kacey Musgraves, as the sort of energy she hopes to match or maybe even amplify. But, much like her peers, this new revival of the cool girls club wasn’t without its original settlers. She tells me that aside from acts like The Chicks and Shania, there’s one act for her that stood head and shoulders above the rest.
“I would say the first one for me was Miranda [Lambert],” Butts said. “She was someone who just blew up on stage, and it just seemed larger than life, and she is! She had that fire, and I was just like ‘I have that too!’”
On top of the lie of wholesale expectations, she’s also coming to terms with the twisted truths that she’s been fed on the nature of women in her position or higher over the years. Once at the party, Butts says it was as warm a greeting as ever.
“Growing up, I was kind of told this lie that women are competitive and catty, and also the lie that women don’t want to hear women on the radio,” Butts said. “In my experience, that’s just not true. Women are so supportive of each other, and it was just so cool to see all of them supporting [my song].”
For Butts, the lifeblood of the genre is found in those dreary tunes she’s been kicking her heels to since kindergarten. A lot of her catalog reflects those sensibilities in a collection of songs that range from gothic to theatrical, sometimes both, depending on the day. From the chilling “White River” that feels like a ghost story recited under candlelight to her rendition of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” later made famous by Kurt Cobain, where she sways in the wind and takes a down-the-middle blues number and spins it into a cultish chant. Country music, in her eyes, is a reflector of reality, and to shy away from that would be dishonest both to her and the heroes she hopes to carry the torch for.
“Life is dark sometimes,” Butts said. “And I think that the subject matter can be tough, but that’s what country music is. It’s singing about the truth and the world around you and life as you see it.”
In her case, the wide world of Kaitlin Butts has a revolving cast of characters. Some adore her, like her husband, Cleto Cordero, and some who still haunt her psyche unwillingly. In the instance of her newest hit, “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)” was a sort of sonic exorcism, an exercise in extinguishing an old flame to make space for newer, less toxic ones fully.
While her main mode of thought toward that unnamed subject matter is indifference, she says the success she’s had in unloading the baggage isn’t keeping her from penning a few more songs of sadism in the future. It really depends on how bad you piss her off.
But currently, Butts is happily married to Cordero, a fellow country songwriter and frontman of Flatland Cavalry. They’ve been together for nine years, in matrimony for five come October, but all the while their journeys have been working in parallel since their breakout duet “In A Life Where We Work Out,” released in 2016. Butts says it’s hard being with a person whose schedule is equally as hectic as hers. However, she considers herself blessed to have a partner privy to the stresses and tribulations that come with a life on the road, even if they’re sometimes headed in different directions, literally and figuratively.
“That kind of separation is definitely not for the faint of heart, but I’ve dated a ‘regular,’” Butts said, referring to a past relationship with a desk jockey. “Someone who had a regular nine-to-five before, and I think that there are certain things that if you’re not in the industry, it’s hard to really understand the expectations we have for ourselves or that are placed upon us. We just kind of live a life that’s parallel, as Cleto says.”
In the midst of what’s shaping up to be a career-defining moment, Butts doesn’t seem all that bothered by the rearview mirror. Currently supporting fellow femme fatale Sierra Ferrell, her mind is still on the music, even in the van on long drives between cities. During the week of CMA Fest, while the rest of her co-workers were picking up extra shifts or taking a long staycation, she locked herself in the studio. Aside from another “little ditty” now locked and loaded, she was recently a part of a pair of duets with Tyler Braden and Zack Telander.
When she gets back to town, she’ll be locked in the writers’ room for four straight days with award-winning songwriter Natalie Hemby working on new tunes, with the promise of more soon to come.
“She called me literally yesterday and said ‘my schedule’s open, so before somebody else books it for me, I want to write with who I want first,’” Butts said. “I said, ‘I’ll take all four open spots, thank you, please!’”
For now, she’s high-tailing it to the next tour stop as she continues to move westward in direction and upward in trajectory. While fifteen seconds may come and go, the fire she’s blazing on her trail is going to be a hard one to put out.
