Interview: Ruthie Collins chats about Gram Parsons, her latest album Cold Comfort, and the Americana scene

Americana singer-songwriter Ruthie Collins’ music transcends time and space, and her latest album, Cold Comfort, explores her incredible talent for blending visceral lyrics with beautiful melodies. These gorgeous songs produce a relatable story through the genres of bluegrass and country into an intensely relatable story.

Bridging the gap of where music and television collide, I discovered Ruthie through her friend, Richard Rankin (Roger MacKenzie on Starz network television show Outlander), and her warm and optimistic demeanor made for one of the most engaging interviews I’ve had to date. Ruthie is native to upstate New York, and currently makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee.

At only 36, Ruthie has already released three albums and EP’s and is always working on new music. Her music heroes and role models include several legendary artists Patty Griffin, Gram Parsons, and Emmylou Harris; the first track on Cold Comfort, “Joshua Tree,” is based on the tragic romance between Emmylou and Gram, which their story resonates deeply with Ruthie and is catalyst to many of her songs and written material. “Joshua Tree” combines a finger-tapping, string-heavy melody with vivid imagery and mournful vocals to produce a wonderfully, intoxicating piece of music.

You recently came out with an album, Cold Comfort – is there another one in the works for you in the near future?

Ruthie Collins: Oh my God, girl. That thing has been written for a year, like I don’t know
exactly what it is. There are so many songs. I’ve written so many songs this past year, in 2019. They’re some of my favorite pieces that I have ever written. I guess that’s one good thing about everything that’s going on, that maybe I can go back in the studio even though I can’t necessarily tour. I’m trying to learn this stuff at home too. I’m writing and doing the best I can.

What was your first introduction to guitar and country music?

Ruthie: So, I grew up doing a lot of music with my mom. She’s a church organist, music teacher, and piano teacher. She would only really play classical music though. My dad didn’t really play much music popular either, it was like a little bit of James Taylor here and there. So, all I really had was pop radio.

When I was in middle school, I started dating this guy. Literally, it was one of those situations where I was like, “My friend’s dating your friend, so we should probably date too.” Then, of course, we ended up dating for like six years and being in love and all the things. It was ridiculous, but that’s how I do it. I don’t go in . . . I go all in. So, his parents loved country music, and being a western New Yorker girl, we would drive up to Buffalo because he was a hockey player. We would always have these hour long-car rides back and forth to his hockey games and his parents would play country music. I loved it; it was like storytelling. There were all these women . . . you know, Jo Dee Messina and that era of Trisha [Yearwood] and Reba [McEntire]. And they were just cutting these amazing songs and I just, I fell in love with it. The Dixie Chicks, oh my God, I was a huge Dixie Chicks fan. I remember playing the Dixie Chicks, those were some of my first songs that I would try to play on guitar.

I would write songs that were more like poetry, maybe with a melody, but I wasn’t that great at instruments in high school. When I went to college is when I really started working on the guitar enough that I could accompany myself and do the thing. But yeah, that’s how it all started for me.

I believe you play a bit of piano too. Are there any other instruments you’d like to play?

Ruthie: I do, I play piano. That’s something that I’m starting to do more because it’s really just something that I would write in. But I never play it live. Now what’s really interesting is that in all these Instagram lives that I’m doing, I’m like, “Well, I’m sitting right here at a piano, I might as well play it.” But I don’t tour with one, so I never played it before. So, this has kind of been fun. I also grew up playing violin, so I play violin as well. I can play a little bit of mandolin, a little bit of banjo, a little bit of bass. A tiny bit of everything, really, but mostly just guitar and piano.

Americana seems to be your scene. What drew you to that, initially?

Ruthie: Well, I think it was when I was in college. Like I said, I didn’t really have that much of a musical upbringing. My parents are great, but they just really didn’t focus on that. So, when I went to college – I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston – all of the sudden I was surrounded by these kids who were impressed with music. They had the musical upbringing and knew everything there was, but I could barely name The Beatles, like literally. It was a whole new world. That was where I learned about Patty Griffin, Kathleen Edwards, Tom Petty, and Ryan Adams, [before he was a creeper online]. Being around those people who loved that music was my introduction to it. So yeah, college.

Then you start diving into the people who inspire the people you love. It’s like Joni Mitchell, that’s probably who Kathleen Edwards was listening to. Then you even kind of go back a decade further, decades further really, and that’s kind of how I stumbled on Emmylou and Dolly and some of those people that I’m obsessed with now. But it was really kind of a little backwards because I started with pop radio and then went backwards. Which is why my melodies, even though I love that style of production and singer-songwriter style, sometimes come out really pop, which is why I think my label for so long was pushing me to be so commercial, but then it was like, okay, no, we’re going back to the roots and doing the record I actually really want to make. That’s how I made Cold Comfort.

I’m a big fan of Gram Parsons and know you are too. Can you tell me more about why you enjoy his music

Ruthie: Oh my gosh. I’m posting a cover of “Return of the Grievous Angel” to Instagram today, you’ll love it [we did love it]! I was trying to do it because I’m doing my song “Joshua Tree” this weekend. I’ve been focusing just on posting things about this song and going track by track on my record. So I was like, “well, I got to cover a Gram song.”, and then, “well, this is obviously the one because it’s one of my first ones I fell in love with.”

I had never learned the song to play it, but of course I’ve listened to it and sung along a hundred times. This has never happened to me before, I’m pretty good at picking up songs pretty quickly. I do a lot of gigs where I’ll be like, “What do you want to hear?” And I’ll just play it and I’ll YouTube it and listen to a verse in the chorus and then just try to play it. So, I’m good at that, because it’s like a game to me.

I could not learn this song, because I was so used to the… I mean, the weirdest part was that I could not even – my brain couldn’t comprehend singing Gram’s melody. It’s like his melody and her harmony had meshed into one melody for me. So, I basically gave up and was like, “this is how I’m going to sing it.” I just kind of skate back and forth between their parts because I couldn’t do it. It was so funny because it was like I’d never experienced a song that was so ingrained inside of me that I could not separate the melodies to learn. It was really weird. But anyway, yeah, you’ll see it. I’m going to post it later.

Gram did a lot of work with Emmylou Harris. They were romantically involved, and their story kind of broke me…
Ruthie: It’s so weird, Joshua Tree was about Gram and Emmylou and it still is, obviously. But yeah, that one, in particular, was really weird. It morphed into kind of about me. It was definitely one of those spooky life imitating art situations, where next thing I knew I was in Joshua Tree with a guy and he used a song to invite me out there. It was just like… wait, who is this song about now? Is it still about Gram and Emmylou? Is it about me? And now I’m just like, “who knows? Who knows? It’s all. It’s everything.” But it’s weird, yes. But originally, and it is their story, literally about how I’d read some article that she never got the chance to tell him how she really felt. And that just devastated me. Yeah. And her quote was like, “I didn’t want to tell him on the phone and we were about to go back out on the road in six weeks,” or something, or three weeks. And then he passed away before they went back on tour.

You do a lot of collaborating with your friend Natalie Stovall. Is there anybody else that you’d love to collaborate with?

Ruthie: So, so many. I love… Patty Griffin’s my favorite. I would just like to be in the same room as her. Obviously Emmylou as well. Those are probably my big two.