Austin Sawyer took home the 2nd Place prize in the 2022 American Songwriter Song Contest with his song “American Spirits.” Since landing the win, Sawyer (under the name Drumming Bird) has been touring, making major life changes, and working on a new album. Today (September 13), he released the title track and lead single from his forthcoming record. Listen to “Roadkill Poetry” below.
As luck would have it, Sawyer sat down with American Songwriter to reflect on his time since winning our 2022 Song Contest just days before the release of “Roadkill Poetry.” As a result, he spoke to us about the new song as well as what he has been up to since earning his win.
[RELATED: A Q&A With Austin Sawyer—2nd Place Winner in the American Songwriter 2022 Song Contest]
Austin Sawyer on Life Since His 2022 Song Contest Win
“It was a huge honor and I was super excited when I got the news,” Austin Sawyer said of his 2022 Song Contest win. “Funnily enough, for whatever reason the emails were going to my spam folder. So, a guy from back home who I used to play with in some writers’ rounds that I hadn’t heard from in several years sent me a Facebook message. He was like ‘Dude, congrats on second place in the American Songwriter thing!’ I was like ‘Oh! Sweet!’” Sawyer recalled.
Not one to rest on his laurels, Sawyer has been on the road chasing his dream. “I went on my first co-headlining tour in August last year. We did 20-ish shows in the Southeast and Midwest. So, that was really exciting,” he revealed. “I had been on tour the previous summer opening for Daniel Nunnelee across the whole country. But it was cool to take the risk to headline and see if people would show up and it was very well received,” Sawyer added.
However, his life has been more than just music. He’s taken big steps in his personal life as well. “Also, I got engaged last fall,” he revealed with a combination of excitement and pride in his voice. “That’s not music-related but it has been consuming a lot of time just wedding planning and stuff. It’s all good and exciting.”
New Music Is Coming
“After I did that tour, there was a bit of a lull. The music business tends to get quiet in the winter. But I recorded a new record back in early April,” Austin Sawyer said. “I Went out to LA to work with Mike Viola who is a really, really amazing creative producer. He’s worked with Dolls, Panic at the Disco, Andrew Bird, just all across the board. A bunch of cool people. So it was a cool opportunity to do that,” he added.
“We recorded in a home studio that wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet. We live-tracked everything in there. So, the feel of this record is very like you’re in the room. That is kind of what I go for, I want it to feel as personal and intimate to the listener as possible,” Sawyer said of the forthcoming album Roadkill Poetry.
“We did all the instrument tracking out there, I recorded the vocals back in Nashville and had some buddies here mix and master it. Now, we’ve got the first single from that record coming out.”
Austin Sawyer on “Roadkill Poetry”
That brings us to today with his latest single “Roadkill Poetry” hitting streaming platforms. “It’s a song about realizing your true self or your full self in the light of someone else’s love and how the right person can really frame you and build you up in a cool way to grow to realize yourself,” Sawyer said of the new single. “The flip side of that coin is that when you’re away from that person, you’re longing for them,” he added.
“I wrote parts of it while was on that tour last fall. I feel like that’s a common thread for songwriters, being out on the road and writing about the things you observe. I’m a very observationalist songwriter, so it was like compiling random things I would see on the side of the road in the middle nowhere Louisiana,” he said of gathering the pieces of the puzzle that would become the track.
“When I went to finalize the song, I went back to those funny things I saw as references. It talks about like seeing raccoons on the side of the road and the ‘save the babies’ billboards that you see all over the South. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of the hodgepodge of random imagery with this consistent theme of self-realization and love,” he explained.
While he doesn’t have a set release date for Roadkill Poetry, Sawyer is hoping to release it in early 2025.
Reflecting on “American Spirits”
“I wrote it in the fall of 2021, I believe. It was a combination of personal experience and grappling with where I stood with religion in my life,” Austin Sawyer said of the song that won the 2022 Song Contest. “That’s where it started. Then, it grew into there’s this context to where we are now and how we got here. It’s important to acknowledge that and use it to inform the decisions we make moving forward on a personal level and as a country,” he added.
Featured Image by Cait Hefferon
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