Festival Review: 30A Songwriters Festival 2025
The name most commonly invoked on the stages of this year’s 30A Songwriters Festival was that of a person not even there: John Prine. The giant of folk and Americana songwriting died very early in the pandemic, but his presence still looms large.
Was the next John Prine onstage somewhere at this year’s 30A? The odds are pretty good. For the past 16 years, the organizers of the 30A Songwriters Festival have brought together over 125 of the best songwriters on the planet – some little known, some legends – for four days over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend along 20 miles of the Gulf Coast in Florida.
I got to about 20 sets this year. Here are some of the best shows I saw, including some contenders for America’s best songwriter.
Brandy Clark
Any list of America’s best living songwriters should include Brandy Clark. Her songwriting canon is filled with evocative imagery: She captures the awkward insecurity of a couple bumping into her partner’s ex: “This would be a real good time to hold my hand.” She considers the things she wanted to be in life, but now, after a breakup, she just wants to be a better person: “I want to be who you thought I was.”
She wrestles with self-doubt in the Grammy-winning “Dear Insecurity”: “I’ll never find a way to get you gone / Wish I could find a way to know you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.” She tells potential romantic partners to love this mess or move along: “If you want the girl next door / go next door.”
She captures the financial desperation of small town life in 19 words in “Pray to Jesus”: “We pray to Jesus and we play the lotto / Cause there ain't but two ways / We can change tomorrow.” (That song influenced producers to pick her and writing partner Shane McAnally to write the music for the Broadway musical “Shucked,” now touring the U.S., she told the 30A audience. “They wanted someone authentically country,” she said, noting that she’d never told that story before.)
Cat Ridgeway
Some people at Cat Ridgeway’s 10:30 a.m. show likely were there early for Clark’s set at noon, but they got a pleasant discovery and a rousing wakeup call. Ridgeway had played a few sets solo during the fest, a setting that revealed the strength of her lyrics and songs, not to mention her charm. But the songs – many from her upcoming album, Sprinter, set to release March 28 – really came alive with her full band, the Tourists.
Long-distance relationship tale “Go Long” sparkled with lush vocals and a chiming guitar riff. Title track “Sprinter” features growling guitars, thumping bass and a loud-soft dynamic throughout, a hard rocker that belies its serious subject matter.
A dynamic performer, Ridgeway bounced around the stage and leaned into her vocals, playing percussion on her banjo before taking a turn on drums during an extended take on set closer “Aspen.” The band’s set was a welcome reminder of the enduring power of guitar, bass, drums and, what the heck, saxophone in the hands of a gifted songwriter and performer.
Hayes Carll
The long line of Texas songwriting greats includes Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson and, I’d argue, Hayes Carll. Like those greats, he can make you laugh out loud at one song and cry at the next.
There’s the deep and devoted love in “You Get It All” and the missed-connections heartbreak of “It’s a Shame.” And there’s the tale of his wild-child lover in “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” who tells him “You be the sinner, honey, I'll be the sin,” and the get-out-of-jail-free card afforded by “Bible on the Dash.”
Carll hesitated after the first verse of “Bible on the Dash,” strumming and singing “and then some more stuff happened that I’ll tell you about soon.” A local hero (OK, it was me) called up the lyrics on his phone and gestured to Carll. “Is that them? Shout out the next line,” he said.
The between-song stories are as good as the songs, like this one: His hero Ray Wylie Hubbard came to a gig early in Carll’s career. Carll introduced the next song as one he’d just written. “Hope you like it,” he said, then launched into Wylie’s “Mississippi Flush.” Wylie, fortunately, laughed.
Abe Partridge
Abe Partridge is like no one else. He didn’t become a musician until middle age: He’d been an evangelical minister in rural Kentucky until doubts crept in, then served two Air Force tours in support of the war in Iraq until doubts crept in there, too. Along the way, he began writing songs in a bid to “not lose my mind,” and now he’s a musician and folk artist with a fervid following. And he’s funny as hell.
“Abe Partridge’s 403rd Freakout” is an 800-word contemplation of life, time, consciousness, war, science and art, which among other things imagines how the world might be better off if John Lennon and Albert Einstein had switched places. “Alabama Astronaut” is a tale of trailer park residents fighting off an alien invasion.
Partridge brought his daughter to the stage for a sweet, shy duet on a tender song, “Simplicity.” Love isn’t a feeling or emotion, he says – it’s what you do. “It’s when you decide to give yourself freely / Yeah, it’s simple, really.”
The dB’s and Chuck Prophet
I got my weekend off to a rocking start with sets by the dB’s and Chuck Prophet. Both were great reminders of what rock, and power pop in particular, should be: FUN.
The dB’s took me and much of the crowd back to our college days, some (cough, cough) years ago. “I want to say they were the ‘80s, but I don't remember the ‘80s,” guitarist and singer Chris Stamey said.
The band bridged the gap between the power pop of Cheap Trick and the jangly indie rock of R.E.M., putting out two albums in the early 1980s before splitting into various other projects. They’re reunited, older and grayer, and damn if they don’t sound as wired and vital as when they were skinny kids playing student union shows in Reagan’s America.
Two songs into his set, Prophet invited people to come down and fill the space between the stage and seats. “Ladies and gentlemen, the dance floor is now open!” he declared, as his band slipped into a slinky Latin groove.
The show, like Prophet’s latest album, “Wake the Dead,” explored his love of cumbia, a style of Latin music that blends African, European and other influences. It proves to be a good match for Prophet’s wry and humorous storytelling like “Jesus Was a Social Drinker,” “Ford Econoline” and “Sugar Into Water.” The set sent the crowd into the night on a giddy high.
Steve Poltz
Steve Poltz is a nuclear-powered force of good feelings, splitting the atom of goodwill with neutrons of wit and intelligence. And so positive! On Saturday night of the 30A fest, he ad-libbed lyrics about the restaurant manager feeding him sushi, about the NFL game playing on the TV above the bar at stage right, including the score and “holy shit, the Commanders scored again,” and about the manager saying they usually turn off the TV during the set but Poltz saying, “no way, I got a thousand bucks on the game!”
He got the crowd to sing the chorus of “Folksinger”: “Folksinger, folk folk singer” twice, then “now let’s whisper it,” and then “now let’s just think it.” The crowd went obediently silent. Elsewhere, he weaved in lyrics from Styx, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.
He wrapped up the set with a story and a joke about how he came to appreciate the Grateful Dead. “I had to have a stroke to appreciate the Grateful Dead.” He invited the crowd to stand up, to put their arms in the air and then to let them fall on their neighbors’ shoulders. Arm in arm, swaying with the music, the audience of disparate people sang the Dead’s “Ripple” loud enough to wake Jerry Garcia: “Let there be songs to fill the air.” We floated, smiling and giddy, into the night air.
Bee Taylor
A year ago at a different festival, a friend of mine sent me a text: “Bee Taylor. Whoa.” He was right. Bee Taylor is a force on the stage, not so much a drama queen as a queen of drama. Her music feels like life lived large.
“10 Foot Pole” is a funky, sax-led kiss-off, while the equally funky “Hurt Me” sounds like Motown meeting the bass line of Waylon Jennings’ “Ain't Living Long Like This.” The ribald “Peaches” – “Southern peaches make the best pie” – is decidedly not about dessert. Well, not in the traditional sense.
The sassy “Company” will be used in chef Ouita Michel’s upcoming reality cooking show, “You Belong Here,” and it won’t be surprising if more of Taylor’s songs aren’t used that way. “Ethereal Love,” with a soaring vocal, swooping “ooo-ooos” and burbling sax, seems ready-made to be the soundtrack for a rom-com movie montage.
Taylor’s music plays with rhythms, vocal styles and lyrics, baking in surprise and delight. There’s a musical theater sense that any song can contain anything.
Find out more about 30A Songwriters Festival at the links below:
