Track-By-Track: Ladybird reflects on life with new album, ‘Amy Come on Home’
The alt-country band’s new album is one of 2024’s finest.
Ladybird doesn’t take shit from anything or anyone. Just take a listen to the alt-country band’s new album. Amy Come on Home zigs and zags among elements of raw humanity, drifting friendships, breakups, bar fights, and short kings. 10 songs stick like chewing gum to the bottom of your sneakers, elastic until it snaps and unfettered and loose. The group – comprised of Peter McDermott (guitar/vocals), Sam Szymborski (guitar), Josh Rardin (bass), Aidan Gouran (drums), and Will Hansen (pedal steel) – shake the flesh from their bones like a “Drive-By Truckers rip-off band” should do.
In songs like “My Worried Heart,” McDermott turns in a throat-scratching performance drenched in vulnerability as he struggles to cope with heartache. Such moments demonstrate the group is more than just rough ‘n tumble troubadours looking to get your body shakin’. They’ve got stories to tell, and they’re unafraid to expose the tattered nerve endings of their beings.
As one of the year’s best albums, Amy Come on Home – the title track of which explores the colorful people and places that shade our lives – arrives as a rambling good time. It never adheres to any particular template, even though McDermott draws from such influences as Bruce Springsteen (more on that later!), and instead shoots straight for the stars with a collection of heart-torn and world-weary narratives that seem ripped straight out a rustic text.
With the project, released in May, McDermott and his trusty band of players position themselves as one of the finest alt-country bands to hit the scene in quite some time. As they stretch their wings and aim for bigger oceans and bigger fish, Ladybird passes through the ear canals and wiggles into the soul. There’s no mistaking their talent – and this is just the beginning.
Below, the band gave us a thorough deep-dive into their latest record, track by track. Take a gander!
“Audrey’s Garden”
This is the first song of the new batch that we wrote as a band (other than ‘Honky Tonk Mama,’ which was a re-release). It was also the first single we released upon announcing the new record because we felt it was the best encapsulation of everything we do as a band… the loud melodic breakdown, the weeping pedal steel, and the poppy structure of the verses.
My neighbors growing up were Audrey and Ken. They were the sweetest, smoothest m’fers on the block. Audrey always kept an immaculate garden in her backyard. Whenever I’d come home for holidays or funerals or both, I’d hear and see about the changes to the place and the people who raised me. I watched the “cow town,” as I heard it referred to, start to slowly change into a DC suburb.
While the physical and geographic elements of change are hard to swallow, this song deals more with the human element of change. Coming home and seeing time take its toll on the people I had come up around, as it does to us all.
Audrey passed away last year. She was a piece of this elaborate web of people who nurtured, protected, and sometimes made fun of me so that I could become who I am today. And I am so grateful to her and everyone for it.
Organ, piano, mellotron, and baritone guitar were all performed and placed by Ian Olvera, who tracked, produced, and mixed the record for us. Pedal steel was provided by our friend and (now) bandmate– Will Hansen.
“Kemp Lane”
When I started recruiting the guys to be in this band with me, I used the tongue-in-cheek pitch of, “Wanna be in my Drive-By Truckers rip-off band?” I’m sure even casual DBT fans can hear that influence here, but lyrically I wanted to draw on all the things I love from another guy I rip off, hopefully not-so-blatantly – Bruce Springsteen. Bruce has a way of depicting broken dreams and change that has always resonated with me. I have a very romantic and nostalgic feeling toward my childhood and adolescence. I grew up in Western Maryland, and so I wanted to include the characters and scenes from that place and time in a way that showcases the human elements of changes and forgotten dreams.
The song features glimpses of the place I come from… The South Mountain, Kemp Lane, Market Street… all of which may be specifically unfamiliar to a listener not from “Fredneck” Maryland. But I hope that the tone of the song and the remaining elements, such as the lost friends, the haggard bar closer, and the quiet fields with singing or glowing bugs, resonate with whoever spends time with it.
Organ by Ian and Steel by Will. Of all the accompanying arrangements on the record, I think this is the track that benefits most from the added layers.
“My Worried Heart”
Probably the best song I’ve ever written??? (Lyrically, at least). Each verse draws from an old song that made me feel less alone while processing the disintegration of a 5-year relationship. “Golden Ring” to reflect on the object’s separation from the feeling; “In My Life” to reflect the expression of love and inability to accept that on one party’s behalf; and “Helpless” to show the pull that place can have on two people, and how that can tear them apart.
The song on the record is the first take that we recorded – the four of us in a room with a guitar and two mics.
“Rollin & Ramblin”
(This from Sam Szymborski, who plays lead guitar, sings, and shares some writing responsibilities in the band)
This melody had been stuck in my brain for a long time. I had a few words but I knew I wanted Pete’s charm and humor with this one. This song is a driving force and is violently catchy. I am so glad I asked Pete for help with the lyrics because “There’s nothing I’d rather do, then die slow with you” breaks my heart. It is just so innocently romantic and straightforward. Like there’s literally nothing I would rather do than hang out with you on my porch – laughing, drinking, smoking, and smooching until the moment I die.
“Fight Song”
(again, from Sam)
“Fight Song” literally fell out of my head. I remember I was drinking some whiskey in my dark living room late at night and was originally playing a much sadder song on the guitar. I immediately switched vibe and the moment I started playing what is now – fight song – everything started flowing so quickly. The lyrics poured out of my brain, the melody, everything. It came together so smoothly that I am convinced it had just been living in my brain for a while. This reminded me of John Prine and how it’s perfectly acceptable to combine a love song with a bar fighting song. It’s about being in love, growing old, and still being a scrappy dude unafraid to stand up for himself and his gal.
“-”
Drunk noises and the birth of the riff and melody for the following track…
“Sarah Taylor Davis”
John Prine taught me that sometimes you can just write a silly song and leave it at that. This one and the Shuffle come from the Prine side of my brain. My favorite addition that Ian made on keys, albeit subtle, is during the waltz portion before the last chorus – where you can hear the high piano keys paving the way back into the original structure, and mimicking Sam’s guitar on the way out.
“Short King Shuffle”
I have been short all my life. You learn to embrace it or you end up like the Napoleonic meatball with the punisher t-shirt and biceps the size of watermelons. It can be a humbling experience being short… but this is more of an empowering anthem for the short kings and an encouragement to not being afraid to shoot your shot with the tall folks.
“Honky Tonk Mama”
(Sam again)
I used to play in a lot of punk bands, and this song sounds like a more mature version of the songs I used to write as a kid. This song was easy for me to write because I was living the lyrics. I was feeling grief, frisky, alone, and in love – all of it. I was shouting the lyrics to be heard but also keeping it very tongue-in-cheek. I wanted to see what would happen if the Black Lips and Weezer had a love child that was obsessed with Waylon Jennings.
I remember writing this song after going to a country gig with Pete, Aidan, and Josh, and just feeling like “damn, why can’t country be punk?”
“Amy Come on Home”
It’s eerily appropriate that “Audrey’s Garden” was the first song we wrote for the record, and that “Amy” is the last. This was the last song I penned before we went into the studio. I remember completing it while sitting on my front porch. The repetitive conclusion was the last thing that came together, and it gave me this overwhelming sense of clarity… We hadn’t had a title for the record yet, but when I finished that portion I knew what it had to be. It made me reflect on the “theme,” if any, of the record.
“Amy” starts the way “Garden” does – in the same key and both dealing with names, places, and the concept of coming home. The theme is the characters that color our life and keep us safe or inspire us – the tall queens, the honky tonk mamas, strangers in a corner of a bar, neighbors, old lovers, lost friends, and lifelong buddies. Again – we may not be thinking about the same people when we listen to these songs, but I hope that it resonates with someone in some way, or reminds them of someone they love, or pushes them to reach out to a buddy they haven’t heard from in a while.
