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Ken Pomeroy will break your heart. She’ll do it with a single line––sometimes, just one word. The pain begins as an empathetic ache. Then, as Pomeroy sings her stories, you begin to see yourself in her hurt and hope. And you realize: We’re in this together.
“A lot of the topics that I’m writing about are heavy, and I feel like it was hard for me, growing up in modern music, to find something that touched on deep topics and wasn’t just sad music,” Pomeroy says. She pauses, then starts to laugh, softly and darkly, adding, “But I do write for the disturbed.”
Pomeroy’s outstretched hand to the wounded manifests as startlingly good songs. Her soprano is comforting––almost sweet––but perhaps most powerful delivering a devastating line. A deft guitarist, she opts for beds of rootsy strings that can soothe or haunt. But it’s her writing that really shines and stings. “Writing was and is the only way I can fully express an emotion and feel like I got it out,” she says. “I feel like once I get it out into a song, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. If it’s a traumatic thing that happened, I kind of act as if it’s gone.”
Writing as a cathartic release has culminated in Pomeroy’s highly anticipated new album, Cruel Joke. The 12-track contemporary folk collection creates a wild but safe space of Pomeroy’s own––a space that, like 22-year-old Pomeroy herself, is brutally honest, proudly Native American, and undeniably brilliant.
People have noticed. Pomeroy’s “Wall of Death” made its way onto the Twisters soundtrack, while Hulu’s Reservation Dogs featured her soul-mining gem, “Cicadas.” Tour dates with Lukas Nelson, Iron & Wine, American Aquarium, John Moreland, Kaitlin Butts, and more followed. “A lot of really cool things are happening, but it hasn’t set in. I haven’t had time to bask in it,” Pomeroy says. “Even when I started playing music, I never thought, ‘I’m a musician. I chose this life.’ I feel like something way above me pointed at me and said, ‘Okay, here’s your path.’ And I’ve just been following it kind of blindly ever since.”
Raised in Moore, Oklahoma, Pomeroy is Cherokee. Her mamaw gave her the name ᎤᏍᏗ ᏀᏯ ᏓᎶᏂᎨ ᎤᏍᏗᎦ, which means “Little Wolf with Yellow Hair.” Parts of childhood were incredibly hard. “My mom wasn’t around––my biological mom,” Pomeroy says. “I had my dad and stepmom, but I feel like I was always put in a position to make an adult decision when I was a kid. I had really adult-sized feelings that I didn’t know how to process and get through.”
Pomeroy started writing songs at 11 years old. She remembers why––and in signature Pomeroy fashion, it’s somehow disorienting and charming, all at once. “I think I wanted to be a songwriter because of John Denver,” she says. “I heard ‘Jet Plane” when I was like 6, and I became infatuated with it. My stepmom burned a CD of just that song playing 18 times in a row, and I listened to that for years. That type of music was new to me. I didn’t know you could feel a certain way listening to music. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to do that for other people.”
With Cruel Joke, that’s exactly what Pomeroy has done. Raw and visual, her songs dare the rest of us not to feel––and offer companionship when we inevitably do. “I broke you like a mirror into pieces / A few of me staring back in disbelief,” Pomeroy sings in the first two lines of “Flannel Cowboy.” With tenderness, she consoles a love that’s treasured but unrequited––and illustrates immediately her penchant for shocking with blunt beauty. Layered over strings, “Cicadas” offers more heartbreaking self-reflection. “That’s truly a self-realization song––me accepting parts of me that I wasn’t super happy with at the time, but also realizing that the good parts of me, which could be the cicadas, are always there, pushing to be front and center,” Pomeroy says.
Pomeroy weaves patterns of self-reflection and self-realization throughout the album. “Coyote,” featuring fellow Oklahoma songwriting stalwart John Moreland, is a vulnerable admission that sometimes, she has herself to blame. In Native stories, a coyote can be a troubling omen––and one with which Pomeroy often identifies. Rich imagery from the natural world, spanning earthbound creatures such as wolves and dogs, to astral bodies like the sun, fill Pomeroy’s songs. The vignettes serve as a moving example of embracing tradition, extending it, and making it personal. “Growing up Native, there are a lot of signs and works that include animals. Most every tale includes an animal somehow,” Pomeroy says. “I think that was just subconsciously ingrained in me. I realized listening back to the songs: There are so many animals on this album. I am really excited that those teachings made it in there. It’s special.”
Pomeroy wrote the sweetly sad “Grey Skies” when she was just 13. The song is a remarkable snapshot of a young songwriter who was already formidable. Anchored by banjo and Pomeroy’s supple voice, “Wrango” is an ode to innocence and a best friend.
Several tracks feature gut punches––so many, it’s an unmistakable hallmark of Pomeroy’s writing. In the shuffling “Pareidolia,” images of bucolic destruction build up to a wry realization: “I guess a cruel joke is all we can afford.” The song is a tribute to Buck Meek, one of Pomeroy’s songwriting heroes. In other tracks, Pomeroy opts to lead with the blows. “Stranger,” a standout, opens with solo acoustic guitar, and then: “The wind keeps on hitting me like my mother used to / Unlike her, I feel like it doesn’t want to.” Pomeroy delivers the lines with a dewy, fresh voice, and clear diction. Pomeroy says writing the song was hard, and that she grew from it. “There are so many ways to handle what you’re dealt. If you don’t handle it the ‘right way,’ you’re going to fall off the edge. That really scared me and forced me to understand my emotions a little bit more.”
“Innocent Eyes” is another deeply personal reckoning with trauma, sung over sparse acoustic guitar. Pomeroy wrote the song after a smell unlocked memories she didn’t know she had. “I had a whole new book to read about myself, and it scared me how much your mind can hide stuff from you to protect you, especially as a kid,” she says.
Moody highlight “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes” is a favorite of Pomeroy’s. It’s also a love song––and, according to Pomeroy, the only technical love song she’s ever written. “I feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothes,” she says. “I’m really hard on my songwriting, but in this song, I nailed exactly how I was feeling, and how to get it out.”
That’s the entire point for Pomeroy––and why she’ll keep writing. She is chasing that sublime satisfaction that only comes with capturing a moment or a feeling that otherwise is gone forever. “I want people to hear my songs and think, ‘Wow, I went through something similar, or this line reminds me of something that happened in my life. Someone else feels it, and I’m not alone.’” Pomeroy sighs. “That’s what I want: People not feeling alone.”
