Premiere: Van Darien forges folk tradition into exquisite storytelling on new album, ‘Levee’

Americana is a broad umbrella, shuffling together noise-makers and rabble-rousers who can’t quite be pegged under blues, rock, folk, or even country by some standards. Perhaps it’s for the best. With looser conventions, and fewer institutional pressures, artists paint with more textured colors in wider, more alluring brushstrokes. The world is their canvas, enriched from years of relentless touring, establishment rejections, and a spitfire determination, and the music bares every scar, unapologetically so. The daughter of a machine shop owner, singer-songwriter Van Darien certainly sports those characteristics, and her new record, Levee, produced by Steven Cooper and J.D. Tiner (Oh Jeremiah, Birdtalker), forges classic folk arrangements with an urgent, instinctual songwriting eye.

Darien’s amber-lit vocal grips the throat. Whether she’s slithering through swampy blackness, as she does on the Maren Morris co-write called “Low Road,” or picking through “Cardboard Boxes” brimming with memories she’s collected as miscellaneous bric-a-brac or wading back into tumultuous waters (“Gone”), the Nashville storyteller drags you into a hyper-personal sphere of growth ⏤ an arc which quickly emboldens the listener to stake their own claim. She stacks the pieces, from the ever-elusive songwriting muse found engrained in “Ponderosa” to the title song’s staggeringly evergreen peek of humanity’s cyclical desperation, with care, and the result is an imposing storyboard. Stitched into the album’s very fabrics is a misery we have all encountered sooner or later, and yet Darien never succumbs totally to it. She’s simply taking our hand and guiding us through the halls of her life.

With an upbringing nestled amongst rusted cars and heaps of scrap metal, the Weatherford, Texas native configures her musical chops in much the same fashion. Songs like “Insanity” steer into countrypolitan ballroom waltz territory, while “Twisted Metal” analyzes the volatility of dangerous love with a merciless grinding. Later, the fluttering closer “What’s Killing Me” punctuates the notion of continuing bad habits, despite toxic aftereffects indicating a slow death. Darien’s creations never feel overwrought, clunky, or unnecessarily complex. They simply exist.

Levee, recorded at East Nashville’s Glass Onion Studio, fastens together many of indie-rock and Americana music’s finest players ⏤ including Brandy Zdan, Owen Beverly, Thayer Serrano, Mando Saenz, and Joey Green. Her musical comrades lend their marksmanship in various forms, from songwriting to playing instruments, and the record pulses with such rich connection, only serving to give Darien a higher platform from which to display her art. And it’s the kind of release that truly astounds and sets her up as one of the year’s best musicians.

Below, Van Darien walks us through the record, track-by-track, alongside a vibrant smorgasbord of visualizers compiled into a handy-dandy playlist.

“Ponderosa” (written by Van Darien & Mando Saenz)

“Ponderosa” is the idea of a song within a song. So often, songs pop into my head at 2 am, and I’ve frantically tried to capture it into my voice memos before it faded away. Kind of like a ghost that haunts you in the strangest times, disappearing as quickly as it appears, leaving you wondering if it was ever real. Ponderosa is the muse we’re all chasing.

“Gone” (written by Van Darien, Joey Green, and Ryan Michael)

“Gone” is one of the oldest songs on the record. It was written about a turbulent relationship, but has changed meaning to me over the years, which is why it was approached with a more modern production.

“Levee” (written by Van Darien & Ryan Micheal)

During the Great Depression, my grandfather Cotton helped lay the brick road that now lies beneath Mineral Wells Highway, the road in front of the house where I grew up. Though I never got to meet him, he passed on some knowledge to my dad that my dad then passed onto me. Back in 2008 or so, the economy was in bad shape, and no one could afford to have my dad repair their cars anymore, so he was resourceful enough to find another way to pay the bills. He even let me help! Besides music, scraping remains my favorite job that I’ve ever had to this day. Every day we’d spend hours separating metal into different piles and fill the truck or trailer with as much as we could haul.

At the end of the day, we’d take our load to the scrap yard where they weighed it in exchange for cash. One day, my dad says to me with tears in his eyes (my Dad is 6’4” solid muscle, sort of this Sam Elliot-type character): “The hardest thing a man can ever live through is to be willing and able to work, but there’s not enough work to go around.” That’s something I’m certain his father, Cotton, went through during the Great Depression while trying to provide for my dad and his five siblings. I thought about my grandfather a lot while Ryan and I were writing the title track to this record. In a way, it’s more his song than mine.

“American Steel” (written by Van Darien, Joey Green, and John Brown)

The idea for “American Steel” was heavily inspired by the life of my dad, who actually became a collaborator on the track. My father is a mechanic and a welder, and he contributed the first verse of this song, which really centered the lyric from his perspective. Joey and I wrote this song about a metal worker and the things they create that stand the test of time.

“Twisted Metal” (written by Van Darien & Maren Morris)

This song can only be summed up as a song about the disastrously, chaotic, sexiness of love. This song is sex chaos. It equates some of the intensities of people crashing together with the imagery of metal and steel, such as cars at a demolition derby. “Twisted Metal” is a song about a love that is more destructive and dangerous than steel framed cars smashing into each other at a demotion derby. Both of which are oddly sexy.

“Low Road” (written by Van Darien and Maren Morris)

“Low Road’ was the first song I ever wrote with Maren. She sent the first verse and chorus to me in a voice memo, and I remember writing the second verse while sitting in traffic on the way to a gig in Alvarado. We wanted to write a song about embracing the dark side and occasionally giving into the gossip. I remember the day she came over to finish it with me. She brought cupcakes, and it was such a sweet contrast to the dark, shit-talking song we were writing. We knew the song was complete when she came up with the line: “I never said I was Mother Theresa.” We had a blast poking fun at meanness. Recording it was fun, too, with Chase McGillis on stand up bass and John Henry Trinko incorporating some wonderfully weird Organ/B3 sounds. He played through a Lesly speaker and went to town! It really gave the track this sort of spooky, Tom Waits ghost/carnival sound!

“Insanity” (written by Van Darien)

This is the most traditional love song of the record. I feel like everyone can relate to wanting something, even though it seems crazy, especially in a relationship.

“Cardboard Boxes” (written by Steven Cooper)

This is the only song I did not have a hand in writing on the record, but I felt very passionate about including on the record. It was written by my partner/producer Steven. It’s about moving and experiencing new chapters in your life that sometimes leave you feeling hopeless and isolated, and the examination of both the physical and emotional baggage that seem to stay with you, while also reflecting on your life and looking back on the memories fondly.

“The Sparrow & The Sea” (written by Van Darien, Joey Green, and Steven Cooper)

To put it simply, “The Sparrow & The Sea” was written about two things that long for each other but can never be together. “This is a true story about a sparrow that once fell in love with the sea. I watched her dive into his waves, being carried by his current and struggling to breathe. It almost distorted her so she sought refuge in a nearby branch. From there she loved him and from there she watched as he would reach for her. The further he would reach the further he would sink. It wasn’t for a lack of love, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying, to put it simply it just couldn’t be. This is the story of the sparrow and her sea.”

“What’s Killing Me” (written by Van Darien, Joey Green, and Steven Cooper)

“What’s Killing Me” is a song about someone continuing a pattern of behavior in their day-to-day life that’s detrimental to their health but feels necessary. It’s the idea of superman drinking kryptonite cocktails and not realizing why he feels terrible all the time. We kept the recording really bare; it’s such an emotionally vulnerable song that I wanted to give each phrase space.

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