LISTEN: Crys Matthews is "Waking Up the Dead"

Crys Matthews ain’t scared of no ghosts. In fact, she communes with them on her new single “Waking Up the Dead.” Matthews is a consummate political songwriter and spiritual guide, and on her new single — off her upcoming album — Matthews recounts a moment she had in a Quaker cemetery, showing the ghosts there that their long-sought cause of abolition has been realized.

A daughter of the South by way of Nashville now and North Carolina forever, and the self-proclaimed poster child of intersectionality, Matthews is boldly answering those questions on her new album aptly titled Reclamation.   

Recorded in Nashville, TN at Sound Emporium Studios, Reclamation was produced by Levi Lowry (co-writer of Zac Brown Band’s hit song Colder Weather). The project features her partner on and off stage Heather Mae, her friends and fellow singer-songwriters Kyshona, Melody Walker, and Chris Housman, and some of the best musicians in Music City like Megan Coleman, Megan Elizabeth McCormick, Ellen Angelico, Ryan Madora, Jen Gunderman, and Michael Majett. 

“This album is both sonically and ideologically the fullest representation of who I am as an artist and as a human,” she says. A preacher’s kid, a Black woman, a Butch lesbian, and a proud Southerner who sings social justice music right alongside ‘traditional’ Country and Americana music, Matthews is reclaiming not just of the space Black artists have been denied in Country and Americana music, not just of the space LGBTQ people have been denied in communities of faith, not just of the autonomy women have been denied over their own bodies, she is reclaiming the South that raised her.

CrysMatthews will be on tour with Julian Taylor in November and with Flamy Grant, Jennifer Knapp, Spencer LaJoye, and Heather Mae as part of the Make the Yuletide Gay Tour in December.

Crys Matthews — Official, Instagram, TikTok

Be a part of queer history when you support Rainbow Rodeo — the only queer country magazine!