5 December 2025 - Shawn Colvin - Steady On

Our penultimate American Autumn post is today.  

It was the easier Dakota, as Shawn Colvin was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. 

This song - her debut single off her debut album of the same name - would not be her biggest hit, but its modest success and heavy rotation airplay on VH1 would fuel her future successes.  

Plus, it's a really happy song, and I think it's a great 2nd-to-last song for this project.  I mean, I am smiling writing this post.  It's just happy.

The album won a Grammy in 1991 for Best Contemporary Folk album - which it really deserved.  She would go on to win two more in 1998. 

I wanted to choose a live performance that showcased JUST Shawn on a guitar, and I found this one, from 2019.  This is in conjunction with an acoustic version of the Steady On album in 2019, to celebrate its 30th anniversary (a year early).

It's still really happy, in its sparseness. 

4 December 2025 - Jewel - Foolish Games

Three guesses on her father's name.  

Juel Kilcher - yep.  Not Jewel at birth.  Indeed, she grew up near Homer, Alaska, singing and yodeling alongside her father.  

And yes.  She was on a few episodes of her family's show.  

This song - written by Jewel - the third single from her debut album Pieces of You, was nominated for a Grammy award and would go on to be one of her biggest hits and indeed, a song that still endures.

Did she perform the song live?  Of course she did, and you know I love featuring performances from the most unhinged festival of all time, Woodstock '99. 

No fires appear to have been started during her performance. 

On her Greatest Hits album, Jewel reimagined this song as a duet, with Kelly Clarkson.  They also performed it together - kinda - as a Zoom duet on Clarkson's talk show. 

By the way, she also has been known to yodel with her dad, even after her fame. 

4 December 2025 - Atz Kilcher - Can't Nobody But A Daddy Know

Atz Kilcher is best known for two things. One of them is being one of the stars of a Discover Channel reality show called Alaska: The Last Frontier - which is centered around the Kilcher family homestead outside of Homer, Alaska.  His sons - Atz Lee and Otto - also star on the show.   His daughter.... well, we'll get there (and some of you already figured it out).

He's also an accomplished singer/songwriter in his own right.  Here he is, in 2018 - at age 70 - just getting ready to start a national tour with his kids - it was a book tour, with a musical element.

By the way, he is also an accomplished yodeler....

3 December 2025 - Hands - New Heaven

Forget what I said about Wyoming yesterday.

North Dakota was really REALLY hard.

But I found Fargo's Hands, a Christian metal band who were really active in that community from 2007 to 2011.  

Today's very angry song is from their 2017 reunion EP New Heaven/New Earth, which is really excellent.

I have no idea if they are still together, but if they are, God bless 'em for making Christian metal.  

2 December 2025 - Chris LeDoux - This Cowboy's Hat

Wyoming was really hard, and this is one of those days I wish Scott - a country music lover -was still writing for us.  But I got it done.  

Chris LeDoux - from Wyoming - got a slow start to his music career.  

That's because he was a very successful rodeo cowboy.  But he did start recording while he was active in rodeo - in 1979, he released his first single, and released a few more prior to his retirement from the rodeo in 1986.  

This single, from 1991, was at the beginning of a string of minor country hits, which started in the early 1990s and continued for a few years.   

Sadly, LeDoux passed away kind of young, only aged 56, of bile duct cancer.  But his cowboy music lives on. 

If you really want to hear LeDoux play what would be one of his signature songs - I mean, he was a rodeo cowboy, for Pete's sake - try this performance from 1997.

1 December 2025 - Linda Ronstadt - It's So Easy

We're coming close to the end.  

Arizona was the 48th state.  

And huge hitmaker Linda Ronstadt is from Tuscon, Arizona.  

She had a string of hit songs in the 1970s - her huge voice bringing life to songs that would be both pop and country hits.  I'd say she was the Taylor Swift of her era... but literally every hit you know of hers is a cover.   

This song is one of them.  Originally recorded in 1958 by The Crickets - as in Buddy Holly and the Crickets - and written by Holly and Norman Petty, their version did not chart.    Ronstadt took their song to the top 5 in 1977 (and to the country charts, too!), adding a bit of a bite and snarl to the song.  

I have to be honest.  I grew up hearing this version of the song, and when I heard Buddy Holly singing it, it felt wrong.  This feels right. 

Of course she performed the song live.  Here she is with her band in 1980 - with the same snarl.

28 November 2025 - Nicolette Larson - Lotta Love

In a past life, this would have gone on Totally Covered. Or, maybe it did.  But I don't really think of it as a cover.   

Nicolette Larson was from Helena, Montana.   She was a backup singer for many artists, including Neil Young.... and she and Linda Ronstadt both sang backup on his 1978 album Comes A Time, which featured this song (Larson did not sing backup on that song).  Larson and Ronstadt have different recollections on how her version came to be.  Ronstadt said - in 2013, in her memoirs - that she made the suggestion and Larson's producer was appreciative.  

Larson's story is more colorful.  Her recollection was that she found a demo version of the song on a tape on the floor of Neil Young's car.... and he gave her the song.  

She took Young's melancholic song and turned it upbeat, with strings and horns.... and made herself a classic. Held until October 1978 - waiting to see if Neil would release it as a single (he did not - although it did end up being a B-side) - her version - her debut single - ended up being a top 10 pop hit, her biggest by far. 

It wasn't easy to find a real live version of this song.  A lot of her early ones were on TV and were lipsynced.

However, this performance from 1991 - six years prior to her untimely death - show that she still had it.

This live recording from 1978 is absolutely spectacular.