SONG PREMIERE: Colin Cutler Goes Old Timey Folky and Blues on Ravishing “Bad Man’s Easy”

North Carolina-based singer-songwriter and Army veteran Colin Cutler might very well be the second coming of fellow Carolina musician/historian Dom Flemons. Armed with a banjo, guitar, and harmonicas, Colin’s music draws inspiration from various genres, including early country, blues, old-time, gospel, and rock and roll. It might be safe to say that if Bob Dylan would listen to new music, he might even mark a spot on his playlist for Cutler who evokes a Time Out of Mind/Love and Theft era of folksy and bluesy aesthetics.

His upcoming album, Tarwater, set to be released on October 31st on Bandcamp and via streaming on November 3rd, is a unique marriage of Culter’s literary and musical interests. In a pilgrimage across the Americana genre, from his folk roots in banjo-based old-time to the gospel music of his Pentecostal upbringing, to honky-tonk country and blues-based roots rock, the lyrics explore the literary works of Flannery O’Connor, the Georgia Catholic writer whom Kurt Vonnegut hailed as “the greatest American short story writer of [his] generation.” Colin has transformed these stories into a captivating musical tapestry weaving together sound that captures the essence of life’s highs and lows.

Cutler first encountered the works of O’Connor during his college years. Initially uncertain about his feelings toward her writing, he recognized the depth of her storytelling, which placed characters in challenging circumstances to explore their true essence, shot through with sparks of the divine. This connection inspired him to record the Peacock Feathers EP (2018), featuring four songs based on characters from O’Connor’s short stories. The EP not only sparked engaging discussions at conferences but also granted Cutler the privilege of performing at O’Connor’s former home, now a museum, in Milledgeville. The project even caught the attention of BBC Introducing, earning him international recognition.

Five years after his first O’Connor-inspired project, Colin is now revisiting those impactful songs, this time recording them with his stellar band and collaborating with musicians from the Carolinas and Virginia, including David Childers, Dashawn Hickman, and Rebekah Todd. Not content with stopping there, he has also penned four additional songs to expand the project into a full-length LP.  “The title is an homage to one of O’Connor’s characters and to my dad’s hometown at the junction of the Tar and Pamlico rivers in North Carolina.”

Glide is premiering the mysterious”Bad Man’s Easy,” a rollicking number that inspired directly by O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The song explores the perspective of a killer as he’s driving away from the scene, haunted for the first time by something that “might be the devil, it might be God, it might be both.”

“Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and I were both inspired by O’Connor, and I was inspired to dig into her characters (and their uncanny reflections in folks I knew) by that album.  I didn’t know about the blues song “A Good Man is Hard to Find” until much later,” adds Cutler.

“My local songwriter group encouraged me to keep it a sludgy swinging blues number years ago when I was toying with making it a banjo tune, and I am forever glad they did.  Finally, there’s probably a fair bit of influence from Solzhenitsyn: “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”