Artist Spotlight - Paige Plaisance

Paige Plaisance’s Swampwater grooves (“Make Mine Country”) and growls (the title track) with swashbuckling swagger (“Honkytonkin’ Round the Hill Country”). We recently spoke with the current Austin resident about her excellent new collection.

The ten new songs – particularly other standouts like “Movin’ Out,” “Waiting” and “Easy Love” – already have turned heads around the local Austin scene. “Oh, I know all about Paige Plaisance,” Shinyribs’ Kevin Russell says. “She’s really great.”

Alt.Country Specialty Chart: Describe how Swampwater took shape.

Paige Plaisance: Jonathan Tyler produced Swampwater. I have been writing since I put out my last album Louisiana Lonely and had enough songs to go into the studio again. Jonathan and I have worked together before, but he made things a little different by recording at (late musician and producer George Reiff’s) Finishing School. Jonathan did the audio engineering and producing for three days there.

Explain why you didn’t do this at Jonathan’s own studio.

Yeah, he has his home studio, but we wanted to do this with live tracking and Finishing School has the space we needed. Jonathan really likes Finishing School because he did an album with Sam Morrow there. I was cool with it. Recording at the Finishing School ended up being a really great experience.

Describe how you connected with Jonathan in the first place.

We connected back in 2022. I had tried to do some stuff on my own and didn’t like it but then my friend Hayden Redwine recommended Jonathan. I saw Jonathan at Sam’s Town Point the next week and said, “I really need help with recording.” “Okay,” he said, “let’s try.” We started with the four songs that became my EP Different Now and kept building from there for Louisiana Lonely. Swampwater is a more organized.”

Explain that title. 

Yeah, it’s funny. I had seen that title when I was home about two summers ago in a camp on Lake St. John called Swampwater. Then I was in Natchez, Mississippi and saw a poster for a band called Swampwater from the seventies in the Under-the-Hill Saloon. I actually knew one of the guys in the band who owned a little store I went into when I was growing up. Such a small town: everybody knows everybody.

Describe how that inspired the title track.

I wanted to incorporate that into the song. I fleshed out this little mystery story in my head and turned that into “Swampwater.” I loved that song and was so excited when I heard the band play it for the first time. I immediately was like, “This is the title track to my album.” “Swampwater” encompasses my whole sound.

- Brian T. Atkinson