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Growing up, Jenny Lewis wanted to be a rapper. Born into a musical family, with parents who were musicians and vaudeville performers, Lewis found music early on. “[It] was the family hustle,” she tells American Songwriter.

Lewis was discovered at three years old by a talent agent who saw her in a restaurant. Then, it was Lewis’ charisma and acting ability that became the family hustle. But at ten years old, she began writing raps and then poetry. She liked words and lyrics. She got a Casio keyboard next and started plunking away on that. As a teenager, she got an acoustic guitar and learned a few chords from a Beatles songbook.

Today, Lewis is a beloved indie rocker and she’s currently on tour with her group The Postal Service, which is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their iconic LP, Give Up. For Lewis, who recently played Madison Square Garden as part of the trek, the tour is the culmination of a life of work.

Ketch Secor knows what it’s like to pass through your town. The frontman for the platinum-selling band Old Crow Medicine Show has been doing it now for a quarter-century. Yes, Secor has long been on the road, bringing his rollicking blend of old-time and rock ‘n’ roll music to fans all around the country and beyond. 

Old Crow, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2023, released its latest LP, Jubilee, on August 25. With so much time and experience, Secor knows what it feels like to travel down those same roads, and see those same tall mountains or rushing streams. Yet he’s older now. The country is older, too. So Secor muses on all of this, and inevitably it seeps into the songs and his musical mission. 

When country star Scotty McCreery was 15 years old, before he broke through as the winner of season 10 of American Idol thanks to his smooth country singing voice, his parents forged his name on an application to a hyper-local singing competition, Clayton Idol, in his home state of North Carolina. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the teenage McCreery won that competition, even if he didn’t originally want to participate, due to nerves and stage freight. Thankfully, though, for him, his parents were supportive of his talents. So much so that they pushed him past what he thought his limits were. Not long after winning Clayton Idol, a 16-year-old McCreery won American Idol, the second youngest ever to do so. Now, the platinum- and gold-selling recording artist and songwriter, who released his latest single this month, “Cab in a Solo,” is at the top of his game. But it took a little push.

When someone sits down to write a new song, much can go through their mind. Many, hoping to write a hit track that the world enjoys, think about that very fact. They wonder something like, How can I write the most popular song ever? But this aim is folly, of course. The real—and only—way to write something that resonates with people is to write something that resonates with a single person. Namely, yourself. For the Kentucky-born songwriter and performer Tyler Booth, who is experiencing a moment of late, that was his chosen route. Now, Booth is set to release his newest EP, Keep It Real, on Friday (September 15). It’s a record that is both of him and boundary-pushing. Just as it should be.

Treetop-touching vocalist Josh Kiszka says the new album that he and his Greta Van Fleet bandmates have put together, Starcatcher, had less to do with tracking and more to do with transcendence. In other words, he says, the album seemed simply to discover itself as he and his compatriots listened. To keep up with it, the musicians harbored an open mind and a taste for the essential aspects of each song, from the bones of the compositions to the theories behind the lyrics. It was a metaphysical trip as much as a musical one.