Melissa Carper and Theo Lawrence Duet Together

“I don't know why we have so many lying and cheating songs on this album,” Melissa Carper told the crowd assembled at Analog at Hutton Hotel from beneath the wide brim of her hat. By this point Thursday night, I had lost count of how many songs she mentioned that were about infidelity and distrust, but that theme goes back to the earliest days of country music. Carper honors that lineage by playing the sort of tunes I might have expected to hear on the radio in my grandmother’s living room, which was faithfully tuned to 650 WSM her entire life.

The singer-songwriter and stand-up bassist, an Arkansas native residing in Austin, Texas, was dressed in a manner normally acceptable only for Dust Bowl ranch hands and players onstage at a honky-tonk. But she and her fellow Austin transplant Theo Lawrence made Analog, a venue inside a hotel up the street from the honky-tonks, close enough. Lawrence, a songsmith and guitarist who grew up in Paris — the one in France, not Texas, Tennessee or elsewhere — has been writing songs with Carper since 2023. Much like the cicadas, the two Texans spent the end of last summer here in Nashville making a racket, though it had more of a groove to it. Their sessions marked the fourth time Carper made a record at The Bomb Shelter with Andrija Tokic, a studio wiz who has spun pure gold with artists ranging from international sensations The Alabama Shakes to punk hero Jay Reatard and criminally overlooked locals The Outlaw Lovers. The show marked the first time Carper and Lawrence played those songs in town since the recording.

After tornado sirens rang all through the night before and flash flood warnings buzzed all day, the skies were dreary and I assumed sleep-deprived fans might be on the dreary side too. While the room wasn’t overflowing, the crowd was larger than I might have expected under the circumstances, and was bopping along with rollicking country champs Mose Wilson and Hannah Juanita when I arrived. The pair have established themselves independently but play together frequently, and announced that they recently recorded a few duets, a few of which they sprinkled into the set. Wilson also announced that his new album is set for release in July.

Lawrence and Carper opened their set with “Thank You, but No Thank You,” the first song released from their album Havin’ a Talk, forthcoming via Lawrence’s own Tomika Records. It’s a fun song full of clever wordplay, sweet harmonies and high-spirited fiddling. The set bounced between each artist’s solo work and the new songs they’ve worked on together over the past two years. Both excel at making music that’s witty and inviting. Carper’s playfully brash songs will rattle around in your head for days. Lawrence’s vintage croon recalls both the twang of Johnny Horton and the countrypolitan charm of Ray Price. Lawrence’s fellow Frenchman Thibault Ripault backed the singers on a second guitar, and drummer Camille Lewis (also of Austin’s Sentimental Family Band) and fiddler Katie Shore each took turns singing songs themselves. Keyboardist Emily Gimble shared a wild connection to the group’s Texas forefathers, mentioning that her granddad played with Bob Wills before taking the lead on her own version of Wills’ classic “A Sweet Kind Love.”

The songs feel very traditional, clearly inspired by the country music of the ’50s and ’60s, but never cartoonish in the way that gives “revivalists” a bad name. And not all of the tunes are about cheating and lying. In one song, they discuss vacation destinations; in another, Carper and Lawrence fight over the same woman’s affection. The duo has a knack for going back and forth with sharp but good-natured jabs. And what’s more, you could feel their kinship seeing them interact onstage and tell stories about making music together. It’s clear the pair are a mighty creative match, and the full album can’t come soon enough.

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