Abby Payne takes you on a Night Ride through her past in her restless, soul-searching new single — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
A preview of the Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s upcoming fifth album, the cathartic and captivating Night Ride finds her metaphorically journeying through the darkened streets of Manhattan, revisiting personal landmarks and wondering who she’ll be when the sun rises on a new day. Set against a track that begins with anxiously pulsing keyboards and gently thumping drums — and slowly builds into an explosive juggernaut of heartland-fuelled pop-rock — it channels the haunted, romantic desperation of Bruce Springsteen, voiced with the earthy wisdom of Bonnie Raitt.
All of that makes perfect sense when you hear Payne explain the song’s backstory. During the darkest months of the pandemic, she says, she often found herself staring longingly out of the window of her Brooklyn apartment. Eyes fixated on the sprawl of Manhattan across the river, the pop-rock Americana artist would imagine her vibrant life before the lockdown. The sentiment wasn’t so much nostalgia as it was the angst one feels when their life is changing in ways out of their control.
These were times of sleepless nights and hustling to pay the bills. As a self-soothing ritual, Payne found catharsis in blasting Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark, prancing around like Courtney Cox in the song’s iconic video. She also took comfort in songwriting, and, for the first time in years, found herself writing autobiographically after years of fictionalized narrative songwriting.
“I chipped away at Night Ride during the darkest days of the pandemic,” she recalls. “As with most people I knew, the time alone made me introspective and also caused bouts of insomnia. Out of extreme caution, my husband and I never traveled into Manhattan at this time, so as I lie awake at night I would mentally ‘drive through’ the parts of the city where formative things had happened to me. I felt myself changing and thought maybe revisiting my past would help me navigate that. This became Night Ride… These memories took on a metaphorical meaning in the song as I looked to my past, linking it with Manhattan locations where important things had happened.”
Although fuelled by yearning and uncertainty, anthemic hooks and poetic self-reflection lend Night Ride a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel uplift. Her lyrics crackle with tension, imbued with a literate flair:
“I look for answers in the streets
I ask the ghosts that dwell in me
But maybe I should let them be and watch the road
Only see the road ahead of me.”
Fittingly, it would be the first song Payne would play with her band when the lockdown lifted. “When my band was able to rehearse again, this was the first song we played,” she recalls. “I’ll never forget how good that felt, and I kind of relive it every time we perform it. When we recorded it last winter, I brought in the producer Wil Farr. He produced two of my past albums but had since moved away. So this really felt like a homecoming of sorts, up in the snowy woods in the Catskills, making music during the day and drinking Negronis at night. It felt very good and very right, and I think that comes across in the recordings.”
Sessions for the singles and the upcoming album feature Payne’s longtime band of in-demand sidemen who over the years have developed telepathic musical chemistry. These players are Payne’s husband Kenny Shaw on drums, Chris Anderson on bass, Todd Caldwell on organ, and Farr on guitar and backing vocals. Collectively their resumes include working with such artists as Dispatch, Pete Francis, Constantine Morales, Ariel Posen, Rebecca Haviland and Whiskey Heart, Rachel Platten, Postmodern Jukebox, Great Big World, Graham Nash and more.
Payne grew up singing with her musical family on a dairy farm in Western New York, later studying jazz voice. She’s a fixture on the New York City scene, having performed at many of the city’s most venerated venues. Her musical The Gunfighter Meets His Match was selected for the 2018 New York Musical Festival. Payne is a founding member of the Round Table, a female artist collective that seeks to create more community and opportunities for women.
Jon her on a Night Ride above, hear more from Abby Payne below, and cruise over to her website, Facebook and Instagram.
