Speaking just before the release of his debut album Dark Black Coal, Logan Halstead said he considers himself “just a kid that got lucky.” The 19-year-old, who was born in Kentucky and grew up in West Virginia, recognizes plenty of irony in his career path.
“I guess you could say I got lucky growing up with all this social media, which is pretty ironic because I hate it. I hate being on the phone. I hated being on Instagram and all that,” he admitted. He was “the guy with the guitar at parties” who found himself “down on [his] luck, trying to turn things around.” Then he posted on Facebook “Dark Black Coal,” a song he had written when he was fifteen. In about four days, he had a couple hundred views and was getting attention from music producers.
Halstead also finds his getting into country music ironic. As a kid, he says, he was into Metallica, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, “everything rock and roll, metal, and of course I had a lot of love for Waylon and Merle,” he added. At the time, country music was “Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, and all the trucks and beer,” he said. “Nobody was talking about us.”
Us, in his case, is the people from the region where he grew up. He attributes what some have referred to as his wisdom beyond his years to growing up where he did. “Living through hardships and seeing everybody else living through so many hardships gave me some wisdom about life in general,” he said. “I always say I had a shitty childhood, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
That tension between pride in a place and yearning for something better has fueled Halstead’s songwriting. Hearing other singer-songwriters—Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Nick Jamerson—singing about his area has been a boost. As he listened to those singers while going back and forth to work, he realized, “Hey, it’s all right to be who you are, a poor kid from Appalachia who knows nothing but coal.”
“Our area is finally being talked about. We’re not shoeless, toothless hicks. People are getting to hear our stories and figure out what it’s like growing up in this region,” he said. His songs reflect much of the dark side of an area where coal mining for decades was considered the only way of life and where illegal drugs are now taking a toll. In “Good Old Boys with Bad Names,” the opening track on the album, Halstead sings of “the snorting and stealing, drinking and dealing ways of our dark world.” He turns to dark humor in his most recent single “A Man’s Gotta Eat,” as he sings of “selling my food stamps just to make ends meet,” pills and oxy, and stealing copper wire to survive.
“I have a tendency to make really sad songs sound happy,” says Halstead. “I have really dark lyrics.”
Amid those dark lyrics, Halstead includes “Mountain Queen,” a love song that speaks of longing to “waltz through the holler while the mountains sway” or “dancing in the dark to a banjo tune.” The next track “Kentucky Sky” is as much a long song about a place as a girl, as he sings of “watching snowflakes fall” and such simple beauty as a “redbird [sitting] on a fence post.”
Halstead sees in the theme of many of his songs the idea that when he goes back to Boone County, he realizes there is nothing better.
“It’s the most beautiful place in my mind,” he says, “but there nothing there now that the mines are shut down. There’s two gas stations and a Family Dollar. It saddens me. I would never leave there if there was opportunities.” While most young people want to grow up and leave, he says, they find themselves working on a job every day far from the mountains. With the opportunities so thin, he notes, many turn to drugs for an escape. “It’s a lot easier to get on drugs than to think about turning your life around,” he says.
Logan wrote most of the lyrics for the album, noting that while he has been writing songs since he was around twelve or thirteen, these are the ones he felt were ready as he has built his fan base and begun performing live. He also recorded “The Flood,” by Kentucky singer-songwriter Cole Chaney, who suggested Logan include this song, which he had been performing, in the project. Chaney also recommended Halstead put his spin on the Richard Thompson song “Vincent Black Lightning 1952.”
In advance of the album’s release, Halstead has been able to travel as far away as Idaho and Texas, with plans to play in California soon. “I’ve gotten to go to all kinds of places that I never dreamed of. Growing up in West Virginia or Kentucky, everybody gets to go to Myrtle Beach once a year.” He considered the chance to record at Nashville’s iconic Sound Emporium “a wild experience for kids like me.” The album on the Thirty Tigers label was produced by Lawrence Rothman, with Kristin Weber, Dennis Crouch, and Ethan Ballinger providing instrumental back-up.
As the album tour progresses, Logan Halstead will be sharing his own authentic story and his own part of the country with audiences. Some are likely to recognize their own lives in the lyrics.
