**Unearthing “Coyote Brother” by Coyote Brother: A Country Gem That Knows Your Secrets**
There are albums that seem to seek you out, quietly slipping into your life when you need them most, threading together the loose, raw edges of your heart with careful hands. This is precisely what happened to me late last December when, in a moment of restless Spotify digging, I stumbled across “Coyote Brother”—an eponymous album released in 2019 by the duo Andy Stockdale and Johnny Fritz.
Let me be honest: I’d never heard of Coyote Brother. The album hadn’t charted, no major outlets were buzzing about it. Even the country scene’s more passionate corners of Reddit rarely whispered its name. And, yet, by the time the second track rolled in, I felt like I was listening to the private diaries of two men who understood what it meant to be lost, broke, and still stupidly hopeful.
I have struggled with loneliness for most of my adult life—a gnawing sense of being not-quite-where-I-should-be, haunted by memories of places I left behind and relationships that crumbled quietly, like dry leaves underfoot. “Coyote Brother” met me right there.
The opening track, “Nashville’s a Jungle,” sets the tone with lazy, almost forgivingly slack guitars and weathered harmonies. “You think by now I’d have learned my way, / but the city’s teeth get sharper every day,” they sing, and there is no bravado in the delivery—just weary gratitude for another dawn, another attempt. I sat in the kitchen at 1 a.m. the first time I replayed that line, thinking about all the cities I’ve tried to make my home—San Francisco, Chicago, even a three-month stint in Oslo—only to find myself ricocheting off the guardrails of their indifference.
What sets Coyote Brother apart is a refusal to draw clear lines between nostalgia and hope. Take the third track, “Ohio I’ll Be Fine,” where Stockdale and Fritz trade verses heavy as river stones: “I packed up my sadness in a fiberglass shell / and I drove it as far as I could stand / but every new sunrise just looked like the last / and the money ran out with the sand.” I have never gone broke in Ohio, but tell me, who among us hasn’t wished our sadness was a thing you could simply pack up and send away?
The production is beautifully spare—no stadium gloss, no guest rappers, mostly acoustic guitar chased by brushed drums and the kind of pedal steel that seems to echo even after the song cuts out. This is a country album in the truest sense: not just in genre, but in disposition. It lingers in the overlooked spaces: worn barstools, cheap motels, phone calls that go unanswered.
There is a sentimentality to Coyote Brother that never curdles into self-pity. “Little Blue,” midway through the album, carries a sweetness reminiscent of John Prine at his most meditative. “That little blue car we drove / back when the summer was long / You were holding the map with a pen / while I just tried to drive straight along.” The specificity of memories, with their baked-in ordinariness, always wrecks me. I think about my ex, who used to sketch maps on diner napkins for places we never went. I think about how love often feels most intense when remembered quietly, years later, sitting alone in your underwear and microwaving leftovers.
It is tempting, in this Spotify-driven era, to skim tracks in search of a single catchy hook or viral chorus. Coyote Brother won’t reward you for that. These are not pageant-ready singles but confessions muttered in the rear booths of roadside bars. Each listen, I found, peeled back another layer, another moment when Stockdale and Fritz seemed to be singing directly to the part of me that remained a little boy—bewildered, apologetic, hungry for reassurance.
On “Ain’t It Lonely,” the album’s centerpiece and my personal favorite, the chorus lands like an invitation and a warning both: “Ain’t it lonely, how we tell ourselves it’s fine? / Ain’t it something, to be brave and left behind?” I had to stop and sit with that lyric—because I have always believed in being brave, but the cost of that bravery is sometimes only evident in the long, echoing emptiness that follows hard decisions. When my father died, I told everyone I was handling it. I was ‘brave’—until, one evening months later, I found myself crying for no reason at the back of the 147 bus.
But “Coyote Brother” also holds out the possibility of hope. There’s a peculiar warmth to the closing track, “Under the Weather,” as the pair harmonize: “If we’re lost on the highway and nothing seems right, / I’ll find you again when the sun makes it light.” That promise—to be found again, even after long wandering—felt like a balm. Some wounds aren’t meant to be fixed, only witnessed.
That’s the magic here: the witnessing. The recognition. The specifics of Coyote Brother’s world—dimmed headlights, missed connections, hungover Mondays—become universal. And yet, it’s an album that requires your presence, your patience, your willingness to admit the things you haven’t quite gotten over.
Of course, nothing is perfect. My one critical note: the album risks meandering on the back half, with a couple of tracks—particularly “Backwards Armageddon”—treading melody and theme too similar to others. While the rambling style suits the introspective heart of the record, I occasionally wished for bolder instrumental or lyrical risks to break up the gentle melancholia.
But maybe that sameness is the point—heartbreak and hope, in the real world, seep in quietly and stay until you notice all your furniture has changed. Coyote Brother doesn’t chase after novelty; instead, it offers a place to be still, to feel, to remember who you are under the dust and disappointment.
I found myself there. Perhaps you will, too.
Kroes den Bock