SPOTLIGHT: Caleb Caudle Finds Touchstone in Simple Things on ‘Forsythia’ [VIDEO]
Stacy Chandler
Posted On October 24, 2022
Caleb Caudle plays "Forsythia" by the pond behind his house in North Carolina.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Caleb Caudle is No Depression’s Spotlight artist for October 2022. Read more about Caudle and his new album, Forsythia, here, and check out his essay about what nature has taught him, especially in the last few years.
The songs of Forsythia, Caleb Caudle’s new album, owe a lot to the great outdoors.
The woods of Tennessee and North Carolina provided solace when Caudle thought his music career might be running out of reach, and the time he spent walking among the trees taught him to worry less about the big picture and appreciate the small, simple things.
Among those simple things are items that delighted him as a child, when he was growing up near a small general store owned by his cousins. Those items get a mention in Forsythia’s title track, an ode to finding beauty close at hand.
“I used to go there and get hard candy, slingshots, harmonicas, and pocket knives,” Caudle says in press materials for Forsythia. “This is a song of my childhood and everything that shaped me into who I am today.”
The yellow-flowered bush in the title matters too: Ubiquitous in Southern yards in springtime, Caudle sees it as a harbinger for a bright future, a whisper to the child depicted in the song that down the road, everything just might turn out OK.
“The forsythia bush is all around North Carolina, and they bloom the brightest yellow you’ve ever seen,” he says. “In folklore it represents ‘anticipation,’ which I thought was beautiful and fitting.”
In the video below, Caudle plays “Forsythia” next to a pond behind his house in North Carolina, the perfect setting for a song about finding happiness right where you are.
