The Young Fables – singer/guitarist Laurel Wright and guitarist/singer Wes Lunsford – have been one of the hardest-working acts in Nashville for a decade now. Playing hundreds of shows year after year, making records, shooting documentaries and more, industry heavies like Shania Twain and Travis Tritt have sung their praises. They continue to write and record and hone their sound, an amalgamation of the country music of old performed by a stellar roots vocalist, with a guitarist whose rock and jazz chops had taken him to China to gig before the two teamed up.
The duo’s new album, Short Stories, is an 11-track project produced by Bobby Hamrick (Elle King, Luke Bryan), Kyle Dreaden (the Pink Spiders, Maggie Rose), and player/producer/engineer Colton Carnley. “We did it differently than we’ve ever done a record before,” Lunsford said, “because we were just thinking about doing singles at first. So instead of amassing a big library of songs and then picking our favorites like we normally do, we would write them and then record them to keep it fresh and exciting for us. It was a cool process, a little different than normal. Between our last record and this one all these songs are new. We just recorded as we went, so it’s been a long process but it’s been really fun.”
“Instead of using full band and going in and taking like a month to record the record, we did it over time,” Wright said. “We, along with the producers, played the instruments so we didn’t really use a band, we got to play everything and really sit with it and craft it.”
The Young Fables and their manager, Patryk Larney at Hope Tree Entertainment, are not only excited about the new release, but about a couple other developments, including a new deal with international music company BMG for things like publishing representation and song placements. “So we just signed a publishing deal with BMG,” Lunsford said, “and it’s been awesome, we just sort of like fell into it. It’s just like a perfect partnership.”
“We had a mutual friend introduce us to Chris Oglesby over at BMG,” Wright said, “and all four of us, with Patryk, really hit it off. They do a lot of stuff like sync placements too, so there’s a lot more opportunity (than trying to do it ourselves).”
Wright, Lunsford and Larney are also celebrating the commercial release of TYF’s documentary The Fable of a Song, which Larney produced and which has won several awards, including the Audience Choice Award at the 2021 Nashville Film Festival. The film, which had begun as a look into the process behind writing a song and its eventual journey as a finished project, took a dramatic turn when Wright’s sister and father both passed away within months of each other. “The documentary is now finally available on Amazon Prime,” Lunsford said. “We ran it on the film festival circuit but it wasn’t available to anybody who wasn’t like a Kickstarter follower. But it just landed on Amazon Prime at the beginning of the month.”
The Young Fables will be performing songs from their new album at a record release party at the Basement East in East Nashville this Sunday, October 20th. Follow them at theyoungfables.com.
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