Singer/songwriter Brit Taylor has been living in Nashville for 18 years but themes from her Eastern Kentucky home always enters her songwriting. Her new album due March 6 is called Land of The Forgotten on RidgeTone Records and Thirty Tigers. Taylor worked with the person who knows her best and whom she trusts the most, musician and husband Adam Chaffins.
They just dropped the new single "Warning You Whiskey" about an Appalachian woman who is fighting the demons of alcoholism that are plaguing her husband instead of fighting him. About the protagonist, Brit admits "I’m not sure if it’s healthy, and a therapist probably wouldn’t recommend it, but that’s what these Appalachian women did. It’s what my mamaw did.”
I recently spoke with Brit about the new album, working with her husband, and why women need to be fearless in their songwriting. You can also see the official music video for "Warning You Whiskey" below.
Laura Shine: Hi Brit, great to hear you have a new album. Land of The Forgotten is the title and I saw where you said "this album feels like driving home". Can you talk about what you meant by that and how the album represents that feeling for you?
Brit Taylor: One of the records I wore out on my drives from Knott County to Nashville and back was Patty Loveless’ On Your Way Home and her Mountain Soul record. I’d drive through Somerset and London, and then I always loved getting to Hazard and seeing the mines on the left because it meant I was close to home. Even today, repeatedly listening to those records still reminds me of home. To me, it's just how home sounds. Patty is also from eastern Kentucky and grew up in old regular Baptist churches like me. There’s something both beautiful and dark about the hills of eastern Kentucky. The cry of the steel guitar and the lonesome sound of the fiddle mimic that.
I know you worked with Adam Chaffins as the producer for the album. Oh, and he also happens to be your husband! How was it working with him? Did you two meet through music?
It’s always an honor to get to work with my husband on music. We both have our own solo careers, so, a lot of the time, we get pulled in different directions. He knows me better than anyone else in the world. Most of all, he knows and understands what I want. He also understands that I don’t always stick up for myself, especially when I think someone has more experience than me, but he always pushes me to stick up for myself and to get what I want, and for that I’m forever grateful. I think that’s why I love this record so much. He made 100% sure that I got it exactly the way I wanted it.
You prepped for the record by listening to other artists who had worked with their spouses on their albums. Who did you listen to and what did you learn from that?
Yes! I just started making a playlist of all songs that I really like – those songs that I would listen to on the drives from Nashville to eastern Kentucky and back. I started noticing a common thread in them all. Most were produced by Frank Liddell and Emory Gordy and were very acoustic driven. They were country songs influenced heavily by bluegrass in one way or another. I sent it to my husband, and he realized that a lot of the same musicians were on those songs in the playlist as well. So we hired them! Everything about this record was very intentional and thought out for about a year.
I'm hoping you can share more about this quote by you that says “I think all female singers are different from one another at first but then we’re told to conform and fit into this neat little perfect box if we want to be successful. Sadly, most of us do just that. At this point in my life I am so over it and refuse to water myself down to fit any sort of narrative. I’m no longer sugar-coating my life experiences to make a softer, more commercial lyric. I think there are so many women out there who need fearlessly honest songs again.” Were you told to conform? Has that been your experience and if so, how? And why do you think women are in need of "fearlessly honest" songs right now?
I remember writing with a hit songwriter when I was going through a divorce. I had something I wanted to say and write about, but he told me we had to make the characters in the song “just dating” because marriage and divorce just didn’t make it onto the radio anymore. If you’ve ever been through a break up and then a divorce, you know those things aren’t the same. I grew up on songs like “D I V O R C E” and “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” - both hits. I didn’t write with him again.
I think there’s a whole market of women who aren’t being spoken to. If everything is being written from a 20-year-old’s perspective, where are the songs for women in their 30s and 40s and 50s and up – the women who are going through real life hard shit, stuff like divorce, motherhood, caring for aging parents and also need the songs about the beautiful silver lining and coming out happy on the other side of those things.
Heck, I listened and loved those songs in high-school and felt every single word. I’d cry to Patty Loveless’s song “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye” about aging parents AND divorce! I wish there were room for both perspectives on the radio because all women deserve to be spoken to, to find that voice of relatability, empowerment, and assurance.
Watch the official music video for "Warning You Whiskey" now streaming and will appear on Land of The Forgotten by Brit Taylor on March 6, 2026.
