|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
When indie-country musician Claudia Hoyser visited Nashville for the first time, she attended a special album-release performance by Jerrod Niemann, who took the crowd through his record, playing live songs and sharing stories about how they came to be.
That warm, intimate energy is what inspired the acoustic show featuring songs from Hoyser’s newest album, “Before the Dawn,” at Record Archive today.
“Ryan Hurley (Hoyser’s fiance and artistic collaborator) and I are going to play through the album cover to cover and tell stories about the songs and how they came to be,” Hoyser says. “Stories that I don’t typically have the time to tell or you won’t hear at other shows.”
The show will also serve as a vinyl release party ahead of the album’s streaming launch on Jan. 9.
“This is the first time we’ve ever done vinyl, so I’m really excited for that,” she says. “I only did a short run, so I wanted to offer it first to anybody who could come out for the show at Record Archive and want to celebrate the music.”
“Before the Dawn” combines the singer’s raw emotional voice with atmospheric guitar to create heartfelt stories about heartbreak, burnout, resilience, and love. The lyrics embrace emotional contradiction and tangled narratives, both inviting and rewarding multiple listens.
For example, Hoyser describes the album’s namesake track “Before the Dawn” as a “cryptic love song” with the speaker tiptoeing around their true emotions.
“Nowadays, a lot of songwriters, especially in the country world, love to get right to the point and boldly say exactly what they mean,” she says. “I think when people are truly in love or have fallen out of love, they tend to dance around what they want to say because it’s not always the easiest to do.
“So, it might not make sense the first time you listen to it, but ‘Before the Dawn’ is like a diary or note going through these possible scenarios showing that, no matter what, love is seeping in, whether you want it or not,” Hoyser adds.
“Girl in Blue,” which leads off the album, similarly describes a complex, contradictory notion. As Hoyser imagines it, although the song’s subject has recently been heartbroken, she has been pulled out for a night on the town.
Although she is not looking for connection, the chorus refrains, “boys love a girl in blue,” and people are drawn to her all the same.
“Sometimes when people are feeling down and the world reaches out to lift you up, maybe you’re not ready for it,” Hoyser says. “We get really good at putting on a happy face and showing up for other people, even when we’re not feeling it. So, with this song I just wanted to say ‘hi’ to people who might be feeling that way.
“I feel like I finally got to say some things that I had been carrying around and going through for a long time and cast them off as almost a diary entry with this album,” she adds. “I think people will find that relatable.”
With a “Yankee twang” and no experiences with horses, the Fairport native says she was intimidated at first by the country scene. However, fans have embraced her music, connecting with the lyrical complexity and universal themes in her songs.
“I realized at a certain point it didn’t matter where you’re from. People from all over the place have stories about heartbreak and family and relationships and hometowns,” Hoyser says. “That is what country music is all about.”
Performing in her hometown is special for Hoyser, and she calls Record Archive iconic. Several upcoming performances, including a New Year’s Eve celebration, are around the region, where she still spends a lot of time.
Hoyser also recalls how it helped her get into music and the country music scene to begin with.
“I was offered an internship locally at GFI studios and I thought, ‘When am I going to have a chance to work in music again?’ I thought I would have to get a job in marketing or something,” recalls Hoyser. “And it was a local radio station, Big Dog Country, that played one of my demos and that really set the tone for me thinking I could do this for a career.
“Fast forward, we got a chance to open for Chase Rice last weekend at Anthology,” she says. “It’s really cool when those two sides of my world come together. When all the people who came to see me at these small acoustic shows, or all the small pubs that I’ve played at for 10 years, they get to come see us open for someone (like Rice) in downtown Rochester at a ticketed event.”
The singer says part of her future plan is expanding her “Hoyser Country” brand, which started as an inside joke in her “Hoyser Country Monday” series. Hoyser would hide a moka coffee pot somewhere in the background of her social media videos, eventually leading to a coffee and coffee-infused whiskey line. She describes the taste as “a smooth Madagascar blend with vanilla.”
She will continue to perform in shows scheduled for 2026 at venues in New York, Montana, and Florida. In the next year, she hopes to dig even deeper as an artist and develop new music with releasing another album as the ultimate goal.
The vinyl release will be at Record Archive at 5 p.m. Admission for the event is free. “Before the Dawn,” upcoming shows, and merchandise can be found at Hoyser’s website.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected]