Caitlin Canty last played a session for Radio Heartland in 2018 — and just like many of us, a lot has happened in Canty’s life since that time. There have been some big-time milestones, like marriage, children, and relocating from Nashville to her home state of Vermont. And always the artist, Canty has released a couple albums in that time, too; 2023’s Quiet Flame and now, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, released on October 2, 2025.

Back on the road in support of her latest album, Canty and her band visited The Current studio to play a session for Radio Heartland. Watch and listen to the performances above, and watch the interview — and a bonus song — in the video below. Beneath that, you’ll find a full transcript of the interview as well as the lyrics to Canty’s song, “Don’t Worry About Nothing.”

Interview Transcript

Mike Pengra: Caitlin Canty, welcome back.

Caitlin Canty: Thank you, Mike.

Mike Pengra: It's so good to see you again.

Caitlin Canty: You too!

Mike Pengra: And so much has changed since the last time I saw you. Let's see ... you've become a parent. You got married. A tornado kind of wrecked your neighborhood. You moved to Vermont. Let's see, where do we start?

Caitlin Canty: That's a lot! Bullet point updates. Yeah. 

Mike Pengra: Yes. Tell me how life has been since the last time I saw you.

Caitlin Canty: Well, I no longer live in Nashville. We're up on a top of a mountain in southern Vermont. I have two little boys and a brand-new record. I think it's been a couple since I've seen you last. And we've moved close to family. My brother's little ones and my folks are nearby, so I'm entrenched in the world that I grew up in. So it's been good to come home and intentionally raise my kids in this idyllic land that I grew up in, hoping they can have the same happy life I started out with.

Mike Pengra: I've never been to Vermont, but I'd love to go sometime. I hear it's a lovely place.

Caitlin Canty: It's so beautiful. I love it.

Mike Pengra: Yeah. So you were raised there, and then you moved to Nashville, lived there for a while. What was that like? What kind of a transition was that?

Caitlin Canty: I was definitely ... I was raised in town, moved to New York City for about a decade, which was a big difference, and then from there, went to Nashville, and Nashville felt like such a neighborhood city. We lived outside of the — we lived in East Nashville, and it was so green and lush and like a jungle. Didn't feel like the concrete New York, and the attraction for me was music, of course, but like the pace, how people used their porches, used their downtime, to actually make music. In New York, it was always a scheduled thing off in the distance, like, "I'll see you in two months and we'll hang for five minutes and maybe try to write a song." You know? In Nashville, it felt like there's spontaneity because of the closeness, the proximity, and the gentle winters — there's snow for, you know, one exciting day. You have to clear your car off and make a snowman that lasts five minutes.

Mike Pengra: They have no idea, do they?

Caitlin Canty: Yeah, that was, like, very exotic to me, to live way further south. That's where I met my husband, and that's where we lived for, I think, about eight years.

Mike Pengra: How long have you lived back in Vermont then?

Caitlin Canty: It's fresh! It's very new.

Mike Pengra: OK.

Caitlin Canty: Yeah. A lot of people keep thinking we're driving all the way from Nashville, but we're driving all the way from Vermont on this tour, so not a big difference.

Mike Pengra: So your new record is out. It came out in October.

Caitlin Canty: Yes!

Mike Pengra: That right?

Caitlin Canty: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: Wow. Album number five?

Caitlin Canty: Yes.

Mike Pengra: Yeah. I understand you were, like, eight months pregnant when you recorded these songs. How did that go?

Caitlin Canty: Yeah, first and last time I'll be doing that. I was planning on actually coming out in your neck of the woods, I had a tour anchor ready to go, and I had to cancel it because I was due maybe a few weeks before. But instead I had this urgency and a real, true deadline to get this record done. I had songs after Quiet Flame that were burning a hole in my pocket. And I was talking to my friend, Maya De Vitry, who's a brilliant songwriter, about this feeling when songs are like fully realized and they're still fresh enough, there's something you really want to capture then, if you can, on tape. You know, instead of — they're gonna change no matter what — so there was that urgency of those songs that were ready to go.

There was the clear, I know what happens when a baby comes now; it's not my first time, and so I wanted to get it done. And it just ended up being that the band I wanted to work with, we pushed it right to the last, like, physical moment I could get behind a guitar.

Mike Pengra: Gotta go to the hospital!

Caitlin Canty: Yeah. No, it wasn't like that close! It was just, it wouldn't have been comfortable to do it much longer. But it was such a, it was such a beautiful time. Sam Kassirer, I went to his studio in rural Maine. It's like a rambling farmhouse with all of the comforts of, you know, a rambling farmhouse, but also like pro gear, and a guy who knows what he's doing and has done it a million times. He played on it, co-produced with me, mixed it. I mean, it was very much my — it was my first time working with Sam. I don't know how I could work without him now! He's such a great musician and thinker about music, trying to capture something while it is alive and not push it too much into perfection.

In the band, I had already, you know that everybody I had asked for my first calls, and they were available. So it was Rich Hinman on pedal steel, who I used to tour duo with back in the day; and Ray Rizzo on drums, who I had played only one time with, but it was at a songwriting camp, where I had just written "High on a Lie," actually, and I was showing it to everybody, and I was like, "Ray, will you bang on some drums there for me?" And he was just, he did this thing that made me feel like "I need to make a record with him someday," and it was so different the way he interpreted the song. It felt so right.

Mike Pengra: A drum fill or something, or...?

Caitlin Canty: Yes! It was just a duet with me and Ray on this fresh song I'd never played with anybody, and he reminded me a little bit of Billy Conway. There was some ... Billy would listen to the lyrics so sharply, and his level of engagement was just so you could do a duo song with him. Ray is, you know, another magical beast like that.

And then Jeremy Moses Curtis, can't make a record without him on bass, and he just really, he made Reckless Skyline with me. He was in that band, which was a record I made a little over a decade ago, and it was the one that kind of put me on the road. It sent me off on that direction. It really launched that. And then Matt Lorenz was also part of Reckless Skyline, and he sang backing vocals on this, and he's like, we're both Vermonters. We were like, the same age and have same little ones, and so it feels like he's my brother singing along in the same like mindset as me. And Sam played some keys, too.

Mike Pengra: So this record, while you were recording it, well, you've become a parent since this all happened. How did that affect the songs that you wrote for this record?

Caitlin Canty: It changes so much. You'd mentioned the tornado, and parenthood happened around the same time. In East Nashville, we had, where we lived, that huge tornado that came in March 2020, just breathed on us. We were right on the edge of it. You know, our neighbors lost their roofs, and our neighbors one block up lost their entire house. And our front door used to have, like, a little forest, a little pocket park in front of it, and that was just tinder, matchsticks. When you opened up the door the morning after, it was like, the reality that you're so accustomed to with your your eyes, you know, every day, your little nest and your home, was just smashed to bits. And then the pandemic a few days later. And then becoming a parent a few months later. So all that stuff is like one event; I don't know which is about being a parent, which is about the the rest. It was just like... 

Mike Pengra: Yeah, right?

Caitlin Canty: What is life now?

Mike Pengra: Yeah!

Caitlin Canty: There's a before and after, and I'm on the other side now. I don't know. I think I had either heard an interview with Josh Ritter or read something that he had been asked about becoming a parent, becoming a dad for the first time. And I remember, it was a long time ago, and he had said it had sharpened his focus, his time, he had less free time, but it had enhanced the power in those minutes that he had. And I was like, "Yeah, right! Sure. Nice way to think about it." But I think it's totally true.

There's less of a ... You can't spend time on something that doesn't really matter. It's like, if a song is important, there's an urgency to get it down and get it done and get it out of that place where it goes and then maybe sits in a notebook and isn't discovered for a long time until you get back to it. I can't do that. I don't have time for the little things that aren't that good and aren't good enough to save and revisit. It's just like, "If that's great, I'm going to chase it." So it has kind of laser-focused the songs for me, I think, and sharpened that. And definitely put me in different pair of shoes.

You know, being a parent changes your view of the world, and that's exciting. I mean, it's new world to live inside of, and to watch little ones. My favorite part is watching little ones in their creativity and their relationship with the world and the wonder and everything. That's so important for any person, but especially for someone who is a creator as an adult, you know, an artist as an adult, it's like you're still trying to keep that child part alive all the time, and you have to battle a lot of the world to keep that spark and everything alive. And so it's such a, it's nice to have two little guides at my feet. When they, like, they approach a piano, and they're just, like, full of so many beautiful things.

Mike Pengra: What are their ages?

Caitlin Canty: Five and one-and-a-half. 

Mike Pengra: Wow.

Caitlin Canty: Yeah.

Mike Pengra: Great ages.

Caitlin Canty: Yes! I liked every age, though.

Mike Pengra: Yeah. Well, gosh, let's see, a tornado, a pandemic, moving to a whole new place, kids, marriage, a lot has happened since we've last talked.

Caitlin Canty: It's definitely taken a beating on my touring.

Mike Pengra: Yeah?

Caitlin Canty: It has not given ... I haven't dropped the the drum beat of writing and making records and, you know, listening to music. That's why this tour we're on right now is so exciting for me. It's like being a kid again! Like the first time.

Mike Pengra: We'll I'm so glad to have you back in town.

Caitlin Canty: Thank you!

Mike Pengra: It's nice to see you again, and congratulations on this record.

Caitlin Canty: Thank you.

Mike Pengra: I would love it if you would play that guitar and do one more song for us.

Caitlin Canty: And the record is called Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove. And this song, actually, that I'll play for you, is, my mom is the voice of this song. This is her perspective. I can't take credit for her way of walking through the world.

Mike Pengra: This is her talking?

Caitlin Canty: Yeah, exactly.

Mike Pengra: Gotcha.

Caitlin Canty (singing “Don’t Worry About Nothing”)

You built a colorful castle
Just to see it get knocked down
By some mean kid who likes to hear the sound of breaking
Feel the power in making nothing
Where something once stood strong

Don’t worry about nothing
A new day keeps coming
Even the morning learned how to break
Now you have a blank page
You’re holding a clean slate
Just like the pavement after a hard rain
Don’t worry about nothing
A new day keeps coming round the bend

Those old trees got knocked down by that big storm
Now every time the wind blows it takes one more
Now every time the wind blows you run and shut the windows
And lock every door

Don’t worry about nothing
A new day keeps coming
Even the morning learned how to break
Now you have a clear view
A forest you can see through
Clear to the dawning of a new day
Don’t worry about nothing
A new day keeps coming round the bend

Your friends are speeding by so fast
And that ain't cheap gas
Driving their dreams past your little home
While you’re stacking green wood
And if things go like they should
You’ll watch it dry out good
And go up in smoke

Don’t worry about nothing
A new day keeps coming
Now there is nothing in your way
Hey you got a blank page
You’re holding a clean slate
Just like black pavement after a hard rain
Don’t worry about nothing
Our day is coming round the bend

Caitlin Canty: For you, Mike.

Mike Pengra: Wow, that's it. 

Caitlin Canty: Thank you.

Mike Pengra: We're done. That was so good. You got me. Right to the heart. Thank you.

Caitlin Canty: Thank you.

Mike Pengra: That was fun.

Gallery: Caitlin Canty studio session

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Songs Performed

00:00:00 Strangers / Lovers
00:03:39 High on a Lie
00:07:45 Open the Window
Bonus Song
00:10:55 (of interview video) Don’t Worry About Nothing

All songs from Caitlin Canty’s 2025 album, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, out now.

Musicians

Caitlin Canty – lead vocals, acoustic guitar
Jeremy Moses Curtis – electric bass
Will Seeders – banjo, pedal steel
Jeff Berlin – drums

Credits

Guest – Caitlin Canty
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Video – Eric Xu Romani
Camera Operators – Eric Xu Romani, Autumn Haeg
Audio – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Caitlin Canty – official site