Tucked within the mountains of Colorado throughout most of the pandemic was country artist Clare Dunn. It was there on that land she grew up on that she found shelter from an increasingly complex world, where she found a refuge for a broken heart, where she found a place to create her first music in over three years.
And it was there that her new EPIn This Kind of Lightwas born.
“In a lot of ways, we were all sort of forced to return to the fundamentals this past year, at least I certainly was,” explains Dunn, 34, during a recent interview with PEOPLE. “And you can hear that in this new music.
Perhaps one of the most telling songs on the EP is the soulful track “Holding Out for a Cowboy,” which she produced herself and co-wrote alongside Whitney Phillips.
“I think every girl deserves a cowboy, you know?” she asks aloud. “Loyalty, steadfastness, strength … whether he rides a horse or drives a car, or whatever it is, those good qualities remain. It’s all about what a cowboy represents for me.”
Clare Dunn.Courtesy Big Yellow Dog Music
“I’ve just been thinking about that song a lot lately,” she says. “And with all that’s happening, it’s been somewhat of a reaffirmation for me. Yeah, I want a cowboy. I’m a strong, independent woman, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind someone to protect me. Going through something like I have just really makes all those wishes and those dreams that you write about … it just makes you realize what you want. I’m ready for that.”
She knows that some might see that need as somewhat weak. And she could care less.
“A woman can only be strong for so long, and that’s something I think women are hesitant to admit,” explains Dunn. “I think there’s a certain side of society today that tells us that’s not okay. But, you know, I certainly think there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think we were all meant to just be alone. We were all meant to have someone that we could lean on.”
For now, that person to lean on is absent from Dunn’s life, a fact that she turns on its side on the frolic of a song “Lonely Alone.”
“It’s all about that feeling of not being afraid to be alone and not being afraid to just be comfortable with that,” says Dunn of the song she co-wrote with fellow songwriter Karyn Rochelle.
And indeed, Dunn has gotten used to being alone. She was alone on her farm during the pandemic, she was alone during much of the creation of this project, she was alone as she retreated to Colorado after her assault in the hopes of finding a way to ground herself yet again.
“This whole year for me has been about getting back to my core and my roots,” says the country rocker, who grew up on a healthy dose of everyone fromFleetwood Macto Waylon Jennings. “I grew up on classic music with classic instrumentation. It was their story to tell, with real instruments and not a lot of fluff. That’s one thing that — and I’m not talking about anyone else’s records — but just for me on this one, it’s very scaled-down and it’s very meat and potatoes and it’s just what’s necessary.”
Because for the first time in a long time, Dunn is calling the shots. When she first burst on the country music scene back in 2013, Dunn says she felt pressured to sound a certain way and look a certain way.
“It was a very terrible time for me, but unfortunately that’s just how the machine works,” she says quietly. “I’m not the first one that has happened to and unfortunately I won’t be the last. You know, you’re in a catch-22 where you’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But on this project and with the team I had around me, it was like, ‘Do exactly what you want to do and be exactly who you want to be.’ That’s always where the real good is anyway.”
And so that’s what she finds herself immersed in at the moment — finding the good.
And she’s finding it within her music.
“The music is what’s important to me,” Dunn concludes. “My job is just to try and make the best music. And I think that the best music, ultimately, will win. Sometimes it doesn’t, but you can’t worry about all that stuff because if you do, you’re forgetting about the music. And isn’t the music what it’s all about?”
source: people.com
