BETHANY RAYBOURN

Ruston-based singer-songwriter Bethany Raybourn’s music is categorized as country rock, but her assortment of musical influences, mostly roots Americana, surfacec in every song.

ARTICLE BY VANELIS RIVERA | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW BAILEY

For the past couple of years, Ruston-based singer-songwriter Bethany Raybourn has been sitting on two song ideas. “I work very slowly these days. I’m still just trying to do something with those two songs,” she says. “I think I need to change my attitude about it.” It’s been five years since the release of her self-titled EP. Since then, she’s busied her time as an eighth grade English teacher at Ruston Junior High, playing gigs only once in a while. “Even if I don’t feel that creative; at least what I do, I get to read the written word and help students develop in their writing and appreciate reading more,” she reveals. Raybourn’s college years may have been her busiest time creatively, but her body of work spans a lifetime.

Like most southern musicians, Raybourn’s musical upbringing began at church. Her father was a music minister in a small Baptist church in the Monroe area, though her family lived close to Calhoun. His musicianship allowed her to discover her talents. Sunday night singing at church was where she first learned to perform with people. When she was four, her parents took her to the back of a Christian bookstore lined with cassettes and listening booths. “That’s how people would prepare to sing specials in Baptist Church,” she says. She’d listen to Amy Grant tracks and sing them at church, though she “messed up a lot.” “I didn’t even know if I could sing on key at that age,” she laughs. Her father, who played keys and guitar, would write original songs and tour different churches, and she would tag along. That’s how she started to interact with music at a personal level. “I’m mostly self-taught in everything that I play,” she says, revealing she didn’t do particularly well with piano lessons. When she began at private school, she picked-up the flute and was then able to study the fundamentals of music. “Most of it I don’t really know anymore. I’m better at playing by ear,” she says.

As eager a student as she is a teacher, by fifth grade she was determined to learn as many instruments as she could and quickly fixated on the drums. “Any church setting, I would always watch the drummer and mimic at home, air drumming with drumsticks I stole from my brother,” she recalls. She would even watch MTV occasionally, keenly observing the modus operandi of drummers in their zone. “My mind started working that way,” she says, which gave her the boldness to finally get behind a drum set to coordinate a beat. One day at church, there was a need for a drummer, and she stepped up to the challenge. It was a sloppy first try, but it didn’t take long for her to “clean up” her method with some lessons and become the drummer at youth summer camps between the ages of ten and fourteen. Later in high school, once she got some wheels, she found herself attending more music events. Exposure to local bands encouraged her to perform in all-age shows, which is when her attention turned to writing.

Though she was an avid journaler in high school, she didn’t value reading as much. It took her a while to gain an appreciation for how her literary studies, in particular poetry, would affect her songwriting. “I started writing terrible basic songs, but I knew I could turn them into more. I just had to start somewhere,” she says. During her senior year, around 2003, she began to attend an open mic at a coffee shop in Antique Alley: “The after nine show.” People started listening and showing up for seventeen-year-old Raybourn, who would play every week after her shift at Chick-fil-A. “At that time, The Vidrines were becoming The Vidrines. They were building that whole entity that they are,” she says, speaking to how closely she felt immersed in the growing Monroe music scene. After high school, she was ready. “All I want to do is play music and make art,” she recalls thinking. She ended up receiving a scholarship to Louisiana Tech University, where she met a strong group of creative musicians and songwriters deeply involved in the indie rock genre. It was the most creative time of her life. From playing solo “here and there,” she got the exciting opportunity to perform at the Louisiana Folklife Festival, which used to be held in Monroe. “I can’t even believe I got asked to do that,” she beams. Looking back, she had no idea what she was doing. Still, she showed up with a few songs and from there began a growth mindset of writing better material and learning how to complement her lyrics on the guitar.

Once she graduated, she had no idea what to do with her liberal arts degree, so she “stuck it out a bit” waiting tables at Sundown Tavern. During that period, she met now husband Josh Russell, another creative entity in her life that supported her music career. For a while, they “jammed” together, which is when his father, local musician Monty Russell, began taking note. He asked Raybourn to open for him on a couple of gigs, though she thought he was just being nice, because she was dating his son. After a few times, he revealed he wanted to produce some of her songs in Nashville. At that point, her only studio experience was when she did solo demo-type recordings with friends and played with the popular indie rock band, The Upstairs Divine in college where she was their multi-instrumentalist. “It meant a lot to get those songs [recorded with Monty Russell] out. I’ll have that forever,” she says about the EP she released in 2015.

“All my favorite songs I’ve ever written, were ones that came out in half an hour and wasn’t planning to write,” she says. Currently she relates, it’s been challenging to sit down and “crank out” songs, however. “My mind doesn’t work the way it used to,” she says, but she’s actively trying to find a place for creating new material again. When she first started composing, she didn’t understand the power of songwriting. “I thought if you played, you naturally wrote songs,” she admits, but the more she wrote, the more she appreciated the process. Raybourn draws inspiration from conversations she overhears, and most of the songs in her EP she attributes to her creative coming-of-age during her college years, which were filled with “heavy realizations and hurdles.” The opening track of her EP, “Good Heart” is based on words her mother gave her about some struggles she was grappling with in college, as well as a conversation she had with a roommate about a romantic relationship. “If you have a good heart/ You have to use it right,” the song goes, embracing the importance of taking advice. “That was kind of a growing up moment in my life.” Still, some songs strongly apply to her present, like the rock-based “Enough,” written eight years ago. “The chorus is about not having much, but having it all. It’s a mantra that I have to remind myself,” she says. Other songs have more whimsical origins. “Buried Myself,” a melancholy tune with somber imagery, was written from a dream she had where she raised a child, sent them off to live their own life, only to end up losing them. “It’s a metaphor for putting your ideas out there, and sometimes they kind of fade away or we forget about them,” she says.

On Amazon music, her EP is categorized as country rock, but her assortment of musical influences, mostly roots Americana, surface in every song. “I came of age musically with the indie rock vibe. Wilco was a big stepping stone for me,” she says. When she’s solo, she tends to play more folk, but in a band she’s a little bit of everything she’s experienced, and that begins with Lucinda Williams and Neko Case. “I keep coming back to them,” she unveils, admitting she listens more to female artists. Recent on her playlist is New Orleans-based band Hurray for the Riff Raff, a mixed bag of country and alternative indie, as well as the folksy and introspective Sharon Van Etten. “There are certain artists, when I hear them, I just know. You connect with them more.”

Raybourn never feels her songs are completely done, but she tries not to be hard on herself. Her advice to other musicians is, “For one, don’t take yourself so seriously. Don’t forget where you came from.” She continues, “When it comes to playing music, play even if you don’t feel like it. A day is never wasted if you can create.” She considers her songs an immortalization of her life. “Someway, I hope everyone has something to leave behind. Leave your mark on the world, even if it doesn’t seem like that big of a mark.” She gets to take her recorded songs with her wherever she goes. They are her forever companions.

Check out Bethany Raybourn’s Facebook page and look up her EP on Amazon Music and iTunes.