A name can work like a north star. Jason P. Woodbury and the Nightbird Singing Quartet points straight toward songs built for company—melody-first, ensemble-minded, rooted in the desert but restless for elsewhere. We sit with Woodbury to trace the long arc from church songleading and clarinet rehearsals to record-store immersion, music journalism, and a self-titled album that wears its influences lightly and its confidence quietly.
He talks about the records that calibrated his ear at Zia Records—the open-sky ache of Big Star, the haunted intimacy of Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos, Neko Case’s nocturnal drama, Destroyer’s wry sprawl, and the cosmology of Lee Scratch Perry—and how those discoveries rewired his sense of arrangement and feel.
We dig into the making of the record itself: some songs arriving whole, others pieced together from Dropbox shards and rehearsal-room patience. The quartet’s chemistry lifts the material into focus—power-pop hooks catching pedal-steel glow, soul-informed details settling into an alt-Americana, desert-rock atmosphere that feels lived-in rather than posed.
Beyond the music, Woodbury explains why he launched Always Happening Records—to put this album out on his own terms and build a flexible home for future ideas, from tactile seven-inches to Bandcamp-first releases. It’s a conversation about time, trust, and the strange joy of hearing a band take a song somewhere you couldn’t have planned.
If you’re drawn to independent music made in community—records that breathe, shimmer, and tell you where they came from—this one’s for you. Spin it loud, pass it along to a Big Star or Calexico devotee, and tell us the album that first flipped your lid.
