Gracie Yates - Live at The Burl | Rugged Revival
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There's a particular kind of magic that happens when an artist has been carrying a song for eight years and it still feels like a confession. For Gracie Yates, that song is "Honey"—a meditation on unrequited love and relationship hardships that she wrote at sixteen and still performs with the kind of authenticity that makes you believe she's living it in real time. When she mentions during her interview at The Burl that the song earned her first real tattoo, you understand immediately: this is an artist for whom music isn't decoration. It's identity.
Yates represents something increasingly vital in the contemporary roots music landscape—the emerging generation of Appalachian songwriters who've grown up saturated in regional sounds and are now synthesizing them into something distinctly their own. At twenty-four, she's already figured out what takes many artists decades to understand: the power of specificity, the resonance of songs that refuse to look away from difficulty, and the importance of showing up consistently in venues that matter to her community.
I wrote it when I was 16 and I'm 24 and I still love that song.
— Gracie Yates
The Lexington, Kentucky songwriter took the stage at The Burl as part of the "For The Love of Appalachia" showcase, a competition where five artists vied for the kind of opportunity that changes careers—a fully-funded UK tour. In her conversation with Rugged Revival's Kenzie Traylor, recorded backstage at that legendary venue, Yates comes across as refreshingly grounded. There's no affected humility here, no strategic name-dropping. When she talks about The Burl itself—playing there for the first time and immediately naming it her favorite local venue—it rings true in a way that most artist platitudes don't.
What's immediately striking about Yates is how she's woven the DNA of her region into her songwriting without sounding nostalgic or derivative. She mentions her love of bluegrass influence and her habit of dropping unexpected banjo into the mix, an approach that suggests someone who's listened closely to the traditions around her while refusing to be bound by them. Those new songs she's working on, the ones featuring banjo, represent exactly the kind of forward-thinking traditionalism that keeps roots music vital rather than museum-bound.
It's about unrequited love and hardships and relationships and it still is something that speaks to me today.
— Gracie Yates
The interview touches on something essential about place and artistry. When Traylor asks about her first memories of growing up in Appalachia, Yates immediately points to live music and the experience of watching performances in different venues. It's a telling answer. This is someone for whom the musical landscape of her region wasn't something she learned about academically—it was the texture of her childhood, the sound of home. That kind of deep immersion shows up unmistakably in an artist's work. You can't fake it, and audiences can hear it immediately.
What emerges from this conversation is an artist comfortable with collaboration and community, someone who's not precious about her work but passionate about it. She's already collaborated with artists like Smileo and the Ghost across state lines, and she's openly enthusiastic about future partnerships. There's a generosity in that openness, a sense that she sees the broader independent music community as something to strengthen rather than compete within.
Yates also comes across as someone with genuine roots in her place. Her bourbon preference isn't a marketing choice—it's just what Kentucky girls drink. Her instinctive love for Lexington, her familiarity with both Red River Gorge and Cumberland Falls, her ability to navigate the bluegrass and outlaw country question without sounding like she's reciting a script—all of this suggests an artist who isn't performing Kentuckiness. She's just living it.
At a moment when independent Americana and roots music can sometimes feel dominated by artists positioning themselves as outsiders looking in, there's something refreshing about Yates' straightforward commitment to her region and her craft. She's not trying to escape Appalachia or prove something to it. She's simply making music that speaks to what she knows and inviting others into that space.
For anyone interested in the current state of Kentucky's independent music scene—and by extension, the broader health of American roots music—Gracie Yates is worth paying attention to. She's got new material coming, she's serious about her collaborations, and she's the kind of artist who shows up for her community. That full episode conversation captures something genuine about what it means to represent a place and its traditions while pushing them forward. That's always worth listening to.
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