CAVALRY ARRIVES

Texas country band Flatland Cavalry touring into OKC with new album `Homeland Insecurity'

Texas country band Flatland Cavalry is in the lineup for a Zoo Amp concert

Frontman Cleto Cordero admits that even his bandmates initially weren't sold on the idea of calling Flatland Cavalry's sophomore album “Homeland Insecurity.”

“They didn't like it. They thought it was political,” said Cordero, 27, the bandleader and primary songwriter for the Lubbock, Texas-based country-folk band. “All the songs I was writing had this insecure kind of feel to them. … `Living By Moonlight,' is a song about `I've hung out at this bar

for a long time,' and then you start looking around you and the people around you never left the bar. … And you realize, `I don't want to be here 15 years from now.' You have that song and you have `Pretty Women,' which is about women feeling insecure of who they are because somebody hurt them a long time ago and kind of rocked their world.

“All the songs kind of had to do with

this sense of `What is life all about? Why are we here? Why do I feel the way I do about things?'”

Flatland Cavalry — Cordero, lead vocals and guitar; Reid Dillion, electric guitar; Jonathan Saenz, bass; Jason Albers, percussion; and Wesley Hall, fiddle — is circling back to Oklahoma to perform Friday night at Oklahoma City's Zoo Amphitheatre. Texan Casey Donahew is headlining the show, stepping in for Oklahoma's Turnpike Troubadours, who announced in May they were going on indefinite hiatus. Along with Flatland Cavalry, the bill also includes Jason Boland & the Stragglers and Giovannie & the Hired Guns.

“I really adore Jason Boland. I think he's a great writer and has an incredible band. Casey Donahew I grew up listening to in Texas. It will be a rowdy show,” Cordero said.

Making new music

Released in January, “Homeland Insecurity” follows Flatland Cavalry's breakthrough 2016 debut LP “Humble Folks” and initial 2015 EP “Come May.” The intriguing title comes from a lyric in the new album's anthemic closing track, “Years from Now.”

“In the time from then to now, we've kind of grown a lot as people and musicians and storytellers. … So, the songs are a little bit of a different timbre and caliber,” Cordero said. “And it's been really fun to play live.”

Still, he said the band learned firsthand with its second LP the challenges of making new music in the midst of relentless touring. For “Homeland Insecurity,” Flatland Cavalry returned to Lubbock to reunite with producer Scott Faris.

“Thinking about it sometimes, I go back to the vortex of what it was to create it, and it was kind of just a madness, honestly,” he said. “You go out on the road on a run, you're gone two or three weeks, you don't even know what day it is … while trying to create and then hopping back in the studio right when you're off the road. You kind of just live day-to-day.”

Going the distance

Among the changes in Cordero's life is his recent engagement to Oklahoma reddirt singer-songwriter Kaitlin Butts, the native Tulsan who sweetly sang with him on the Flatland Cavalry ballad “A Life Where We Work Out.” Although Butts initially moved to Texas to be closer to her fiancé, this month she relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, to develop her music career.

“She just needs a team, and I think that's the best land of opportunity for her to make a record. … I think she's talented enough to be a Nashville star, but that's not what it's about. I just think that's what she needs to do, to go over there to see what's in her and to put out beautiful music. I support her. I don't care if she wants to move to Canada to make music if that's what makes her happy,” Cordero said.

“We started off three years long distance, so the distance just is what it is. But it's just another chapter in your life; it's not forever.”

Both of them will be spending much of the fall on tour, including a road reunion Sept. 19-21 during Tahlequah's Medicine Stone music festival. As Flatland Cavalry has trekked in support of “Homeland Insecurity,” Cordero said it has been gratifying to have fans sing along with the new music.

“I think our fans have grown kind of with us,” he said. “When people are singing the songs, it's not about like, `Oh, they're singing your songs; pat yourself on the back.' It's like, `No, we're here together.' People, they picked up that vibration and it's not so much about you — it's about them. And that to me is what makes it rewarding: We can provide a service every night, to offer up our talents and our voices and our songs. And hopefully, people leave a little bit happier than when they walked in.”

“I go back to the vortex of what it was to create it, and it was kind of just a madness, honestly.” — Cleto Cordero, Flatland Cavalry frontman