One Year of Tennessee Vibes

No single piece of my writing has ever caused such a domino effect before. Quite by accident, I started a country/roots/Americana music newsletter one year ago today!

A year ago today, I wrote my first musician profile since 2017. Back in the days when Twitter was still called that, Maria McKee retweeted my profile of her and it put some wind in my sails for about five years. There’s still a gentle breeze from that early success.

At Christmas 2024, I came across the duet between Lilly Winwood and father Steve of Higher Love. Gosh, she was a teenager with a cold when they recorded that! This was nothing short of major talent and it led me to Lilly’s 2022 album Talking Walls and, in particular, the track Sleep Issues. Man, I was experiencing some sleep issues at that time, and her music found the right ears on the right day.

Cyrena & Lilly

The profile was always intended to be a one-off piece, and I posted it up on my main catch-all blog for my random musings over on Ghost. It wasn’t long, however, before I followed a trail from Lilly to her friend and regular co-conspirator Cyrena Wages. In fact, as I look back now, I realise it was two months down the line before I got around to writing about Cyrena. Just as Lilly’s music reached me at the perfect moment, it seems my profile of CW reached her at a pivotal moment too. To my everlasting surprise, she actually quite seemed to like my writing! Two more different people it would be difficult to imagine.

I just realised why I wanted to write this post. There is a message, unusually. I hope I am allowed a message after 52 weeks and well over 100 articles. The domino effect came about completely unplanned and unexpectedly. Cyrena’s early encouragement led to more articles, led to me reviewing half of her upcoming 2026 release, Miss Melancholia. It led to a proposal for a country music book that has not quite happened (yet) but indirectly led to a two-book contract to write about Fleetwood Mac, my favourite band of them all.

And so the message is really two messages, and the first (if you have not spotted it) is JFDI. Or, as Cyrena might put it, FAAFO. Whatever that creative project is that you never quite got around to? Get around to it today! You can have no idea where it may lead. It might not lead anywhere in particular, but it will put you in the game. If you’re in the game, amazing things might happen.

The second message is that even the softest whisper of encouragement can really give someone a boost, especially if that person is a stranger. A small boost today, like the butterfly effect, can make a big difference.

You can find out more about Lilly Winwood here and Cyrena Wages here and, with the wind in the right direction, they will both release major new albums in 2026.