Earlier this month, Flatland Cavalry released their new album Flatland Forever. The collection serves as a retrospective of the band’s first ten years. The songs, mostly taken from previous releases, show how the band’s members have grown as musicians and performers over the decade since they first came together.
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Ahead of the release of Flatland Forever, frontman Cleto Cordero sat down with American Songwriter to talk about the new album, the last ten years, Flatland Cavalry’s Red Rocks debut, and more.
Flatland Cavalry’s Red Rocks Debut
To say that it has been a big year for Flatland Cavalry would be an understatement of the highest order. Earlier this year, they received their first ACM Award nomination and headlined the iconic Ryman Auditorium for the first time. More recently, the band made their headlining debut at Red Rocks in Colorado.
“Exhilarating, magical, blessed truly. It was everything we hoped and dreamed it would be plus more,” Cordero said when asked how it felt to play the legendary amphitheater for the first time. “Friends and family were able to make the trek to witness it as well. It was so special,” he added. “I remember when it was all over after the last song was played, I looked out into the audience and cast a glance one last in the direction of where my family was sitting. I kind of had that feeling like Ricky Bobby, ‘That just happened.’ It was incredible. There’s nothing like the first time,” he recalled.
“We had a technical difficulty, ironically, in the most revealing part of the show, the acoustic portion. My guitar just started making some alien sounds. There was a frequency thing going on and I was about to play ‘Tilt Your Chair Back’ and I just said, ‘Well, this song is about being at peace wherever you are. So, I guess we’re going to put that to the test right now,’ as 16,000 eyeballs are looking at me,” Cordero said. “I broke the ice and people started laughing. Despite all the things that tried to go wrong, it was like someone put in a cheat code where we couldn’t get tackled like on Madden or something. Everything was happening perfectly.”
Looking Back on the Last 10 Years
Flatland Cavalry has been at it for ten years. Cordero and the other young musicians that make up the band have given a large portion of their lives to the pursuit of making music. During our conversation, Cordero reflected on the journey.
“Ten years ago, we were in our early 20s. I was 22, turning the page from being a college student towards the next chapter of life which is however you want to write it, really,” Cordero recalled. “It was like either go work for the man if you will, and get a job. I had seen all my brothers and sisters do that and there’s nobility in providing and working and doing what you have to do. I learned that from my parents,” he added. However, that wasn’t the path he saw ahead of him. Instead, he chose to follow the dream of being a musician.
“It’s been an exhibition of faithfulness, perseverance, and hard work and dreaming,” he said of making Flatland Cavalry what it is today. “I have this confidence and belief now that if there’s anything you can set your mind to and work towards and feel it with your whole heart, there’s nothing that can stop you from doing it other than yourself,” he added, revealing one of the most important lessons his career has taught him.
“So, I have that confidence and belief and I’m grateful that it was forged over ten years of trials and tribulations and failures and all these things. I’m proud for us all, speaking for all of us in the band. I’ve seen them all grow as musicians and performers. Seeing them happy and doing something that they want to do feels really good.”
The Growth and Evolution of Flatland Cavalry
While Cleto Cordero is proud of all of Flatland Cavalry’s work, he will be the first to tell you that he and his bandmates have grown as performers and as individuals over the last decade. “If you listen to all of the albums over the years, you can hear the natural growth in it for me as a singer and songwriter,” Cordero said.
“My first bass player had a barbed wire tattoo on his bicep that people would make fun of him for and stuff. He told me, ‘Bro, I got that when I was 18 and I’m not ashamed of any of my tattoos. That’s who I was in that moment. It’s a snapshot of who I was.’ I feel the same way about what we’ve done,” he explained. “Everything is a snapshot of where we were at the time. If we keep aspiring to make music that’s easy on the ears and heavy on the heart, bringing people together and creating community through music, I hope we can do it as long as we want to do it,” he added.
Building the Tracklist of Flatland Forever
“I worked diligently to curate the playlist. I started with each EP or each project and selected at max four or five songs from each,” Cordero recalled. “Then, I counseled with management and stuff about how big the project should be. From there, I started to omit songs that I didn’t think were essential to telling the story of how it all began,” he added.
“For example, a song like ‘Summertime Love’ is kind of like my barbed wire tattoo. I feel like I’ve grown as a songwriter and singer and everything since that song was recorded. But there’s also a part of me that felt everything in that song and lived it,” he explained. “That was the first song that got me off the couch when I was having a panic attack realizing that graduation was upon me and wondering what I was going to do. I picked up the phone and called Scott Farris and we recorded ‘Summertime Love’ as a single which eventually birthed Come May. That’s where the story began,” Cordero recalled, highlighting the significance of the song.
Cordero didn’t get deep into metrics and numbers. For around half of the album, he judged which songs should be on the album by how Flatland Cavalry fans reacted to them live. The other half, he said, were “selfish choices.”
Cordero on His “Selfish” Picks for the Album
“Like, ‘Tilt Your Chair Back’ is probably never going to be shouted from the mountaintops or anything but for it to have a place on the record, it gets a chance to be listened to. It’s not buried in the middle of an album. I’m glad it gets a chance to live like that,” he explained.
“There wasn’t much arguing or back-and-forth or anything like that. It was pretty simple to put together,” he said of the band’s input on the tracklist. “Then, recording the new songs like ‘Three Car Garage’ and ‘Chasing a Feeling.’ That idea was birthed from not just wanting it to be a greatest hits compilation but having something new for fans who weren’t new to us who had been with us to be like ‘Oh that’s cool, I can see how Three Car Garage fits in the Come May era and how Lubbock fits with Humble Folks,’” he explained.
“‘Countryman’ was supposed to go on Welcome to Countryland,” Cordero revealed. “It was the 15th song that we recorded but when we put them all together, it was the one that was lacking. So, our producer insisted that we omit it. But we always had it. So, I redid the vocal because I’m further along now than I was then. And, I feel like that song is super appropriate for the time we’re living in now,” he added. “I’m just grateful that all the songs, old and new, have a chance to live together in one place,” Cordero said of the album as a whole.
Flatland Forever is available to stream everywhere now.
Featured Image by Fernando Garcia
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