NASHVILLE, TENN. – Charles Wesley Godwin’s stunning seven-song EP Lonely Mountain Town is out today via Big Loud Records. In the 17 months since the release of his breakout album Family Ties, Charles Wesley Godwin’s career has been on a decidedly upward trajectory. Appearances on Colbert, Kimmel, CBS Saturday Sessions, and even ESPN’s Sportscenter. Festival debuts at Bonnaroo and Stagecoach. Opening stadium shows for Luke Combs while the crowds at his own sold-out headline shows swell into the thousands. Instead of dwelling on any chatter that accompanied such a revered release, he did what he always has done: Godwin simply kept on writing. The result of such dutiful persistence was one of Godwin’s most prolific years yet: the musician estimates he wrote nearly 30 songs in 2024, and, in the process, most excitingly arrived at Lonely Mountain Town.
To celebrate the release, Godwin will play a free show at the Station Inn in Nashville this Saturday, March 1 (doors at 2:30 p.m., show at 3 p.m.), and then return to the Grand Ole Opry that evening. The Station Inn show will be an uncharacteristically intimate show for Godwin, who sold out two nights at the Ryman Auditorium when he last headlined Nashville in late 2023.
Lonely Mountain Town is a quieter, more contemplative affair than Family Ties, to be sure. But it also contains some of the most thrilling songs of Godwin’s career to date. “It was really cathartic for me,” he says of re-teaming with his longtime producer, guitarist and bandmate, Al Torrence, at Torrence’s Music Garden Studios in New Brighton, PA, to complete a handful of moving and at times melancholy cuts that ring with surefire sincerity and truth. Godwin notably recorded his vocals separately for the first time in his career in order to give them even more life and resonance.
Written principally on the road, Lonely Mountain Town is at its heart a collection of snapshots and quiet moments in life. The sort of poetic musings that find Godwin raking through situations with a fine-tooth comb and peeling back the layers on the most delicate situations thrown our way. “These are character songs,” Godwin explains. “Most of them aren’t about my life. They’re just little pieces that I’ve taken from traveling.”
