Bringing the album to life.
On the heels of putting out her new album, Hello, Honky Tonk, Kaitlin Butts has released a cinematic 30-minute mini musical called “Hello, Honky Tonk: The Mini Musical,” which she co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator Chris Beyrooty.
Butts has become one of the buzziest female stars in the genre, thanks in part to the virality of her 2024 single, “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me),” and you might also recognize her name from her feature on Flatland Cavalry’s certified-gold hit, “A Life Where We Work Out.” Butts has proven time and time again that she brings a whole lot more to the table than simply being a collaborator with her husband, Cleto Cordero’s, Texas band, and her 2022 project, What Else Can She Do, was downright phenomenal, and she followed it another cenematic album in Roadrunner!
Roadrunner! was heavily inspired by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, Oklahoma!, and Hello, Honky Tonk also drew inspiration from art outside of the country music world. This time around, she pulled from the likes of the 2002 noir film adaptation of the musical, Chicago, as well as Country Bear Jamboree, the classic animatronic stage show at Walt Disney World, which features country and bluegrass stylings throughout.
And that is incredibly apparent in this new mini musical, which finds her opening the saloon doors at Kait B’s Honky Tonk Saloon as the songs come to life with in a dreamy honk tonk world. Kaitlin says the project has been a “labor of love,” and allowed her to further her creativity because she’s always seen her songs visually too.
It’s a really incredible concept, the way she weaves the songs and stories together is just brilliant, and I think it’s an incredibly cool idea that she pulled off flawlessly:
“Getting to welcome everybody into Kait B’s Honky Tonk Saloon is truly a dream come true. This whole project has been such a labor of love, from writing the songs to bringing them to life on screen. It really fed my inner theater kid in the best possible way.
I’ve always seen my songs visually, and getting to create an entire world around them and invite everybody in has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I hope everybody finds their favorite regular, grabs a drink and stays awhile.”
The mini musical features eight songs from Hello, Honky Tonk: “The Bartender,” “Everybody Wanna Sing a Country Song,” “Still Got It,” “The Joker,” “Bacon Naked (Take It from Me),” “What More Could You Want,” “Crazy I Can Be” and “Midnight, I’ll Always Be Yours.”
This project finds Butts bringing the characters in her songs to life in an incredibly theatrical way, it really is like a Broadway show on film, and even though she had a lot of fun putting it all together, at the end of the day, Butts hopes that “Hello, Honky Tonk: The Mini Musical” is an outlet for her fans to get to know her more deeply, and also find “their own lives” within it as well:
“All these songs are very deeply personal to me, and I relate to them word for word. But my intention is never just to be relatable. I hope people find their own lives within the whole thing.”
It was quite a huge project to take on, I can only imagine everything that went into putting this together, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in country and I am so here for it.
You can watch the full 30-minute mini musical here:
Butts will hit the road for her Hello, Honky Tonk Live and In Person Tour, with December dates in Texas and Oklahoma.
HELLO, HONKY TONK Tour Dates:
Dec. 10 — College Station, TX — Harry’s Northgate
Dec. 11 — Helotes, TX — Floore’s Country Store
Dec. 12 — Corpus Christi, TX — Brewster Street Ice House
Dec. 17 — Oklahoma City, OK — Tower Theatre
Dec. 18 — Fort Worth, TX — Billy Bob’s Texas
HELLO, HONKY TONK tracklist:
Introducing: Hello Honky Tonk (Kaitlin Butts)
I Wanna Be Bad (Kaitlin Butts, Natalie Hemby)
The Bartender (Kaitlin Butts, Tofer Brown, Natalie Hemby)
Never Really Mine (Kaitlin Butts, Lola Kirke, Maggie Antone)
I Make Cowboys Cry (Kaitlin Butts, Shane McAnally)
The Joker (Kaitlin Butts, Jessie Jo Dillon, Sasha Alex Sloan)
Everybody Wanna Sing a Country Song (Kaitlin Butts, Tofer Brown, Luke White)
What More Could You Want (Kaitlin Butts, Tofer Brown, Natalie Hemby)
Still Got It (Kaitlin Butts)
Crazy I Can Be (Kaitlin Butts, Tofer Brown, Lauren Hungate)
That Makes One of Us (Kaitlin Butts, Lori McKenna)
Hell I Don’t Know (Kaitlin Butts, Natalie Hemby, Luke Dick)
Bacon Naked (Take It From Me) (Kaitlin Butts, Natalie Hemby)
Midnight I’ll Always Be Yours (Kaitlin Butts, Jessi Alexander, Jon Randall)
