Kaitlin Butts has “a lot of anger.” She channels it into her songs, so she doesn’t have to “hide a body.” That sharp edge makes her a dynamic performer, as she demonstrated in her recent performance at Union Stage.

It makes sense that Butts would carry around anger; she’s seen some things and been through some hard times. As she revealed, almost breaking down while introducing “Won’t Always Be This Way,” she and her mother had to flee an abusive situation. She spoke passionately of how abusers just want their victims to “disappear,” even going so far as issuing a cease and desist letter to force them to stop talking about what happened.

At Union Stage on Oct. 22, Kaitlin also recalled her mother’s advice in “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me),” from her latest album, this year’s Roadrunner, talking about how we forgive family for behavior we would never accept from our friends. She said we shouldn’t, and that if someone “makes you feel small or disrespected,” you shouldn’t hesitate to cut them out of your life. (At my height of 5-4, most people make me feel small just by existing.)

Country music, she argued, is about everyday lives and everyday people, and sometimes this means it has to get into unpleasant subjects — like domestic violence. It also means talking about the lives of working people who are only barely getting by, like the tale of the struggling waitress in the title track of her 2022 album, What Else Can She Do.

Not all of Butt’s songs are nearly so heavy, or even serious at all. “Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice,” another Roadrunner cut,  was the product of her work with a group of songwriters who shared prompts on which they would write songs.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma (she went to college in Oklahoma City), one of Kaitlin’s formative influence was the western-themed musical Oklahoma. Roadrunner, a sprawling, 17-track album, is her response to Oklahoma. Kaitlin started things off with the album’s lead track, a cover of Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” She also played the title track as well as “Other Girls (Ain’t Havin’ Any Fun)” and “Hunt You Down,” a Kesha cover. For the acoustic portion of the evening, she did two more songs off the album, “Spur” and closing track “Elsa,” about an elderly woman with dementia she got to know before she passed. “She had an amazing life,” Kaitlin said. “She used to live in Germany, and she used to play guitar, but she forgot how.”

Watch the official music video for “Roadrunner” by Kaitlin Butts on YouTube:

As a native of Oklahoma, Kaitlin’s music can be characterized as part of the Red Dirt movement in country music. It can be tricky to explain exactly what Red Dirt is; it’s associated with Oklahoma and parts of Texas. As was the case at her show Tuesday night, Red Dirt is heavily influenced by rock, and often features loud guitars.

Other songs included “White River,” “Blood,” “Marfa Lights,” and a cover of Lead Belly’s “In The Pines.” Butts closed the main set with the Chicks’ “Sin Wagon,” and played Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova” for her encore. While her music in unquestionably country, it also includes a lot of pop influences. The evening started off with an opening by local artist Caleb Williams, who played originals, including “Fire” and “Blue,” as well as a unique cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain.”

Full of attitude and sass, Kaitlin delivered her songs with a punch, and her band added plenty of muscle, making for a thrilling show. If you like your country music with some force and bite, you’ll love Kaitlin Butts.

Here are some photos of Kaitlin Butts performing at Union Stage on Oct. 22, 2024. All pictures copyright and courtesy of James Todd Miller.