Premiere: Panorama of Hope Dunbar’s Sweetheartland

Whole album Premieres here

Hope Dunbar’s life could be a documentary remake of The Wizard of Oz: A house on the Nebraska plain, a pastor husband, two teenage sons living at home, a hit record conceived while the kids were at school and husband at work. A tornado of touring, interviews, and radio appearances seemed to turn her music upside down: the hustle became more important than the artistry, and in the end, Dunbar clicked her heels and went back home to the prairie.

In Hope Dunbar’s story, however, there’s a Wizard II. Dunbar and her sister-in-law Emily conceived a creative podcast, Prompt Queens. Each week focused on a new “prompt”—a person, a band, a movie or a word. The two would spend the week writing her own song based on that prompt, which they would premiere and discuss on the next episode.

“We were trying to model for our listeners—and for ourselves—that you can always write a song,” Dunbar said. In her version of writing as “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration,” she believes “The well is never dry. You don’t need an a-ha moment to write something meaningful. You can mine an idea that’s outside of your inspiration zone and bring truth and integrity to what you write.”

As Dunbar began to compose what became Sweetheartland, we can see the effects of her process in lines like “A gift card to a gasoline station is not a Valentine” on her cut “What Were You Thinking?” Her homage to Grammy-winner John Prine (his latest 2021 posthumously), is particularly intimate and touching.

Dunbar told Elmore about her creative journey to this point: “I thought Sweetheartland would be a departure from my New American Prairie sound. In fact, I think that was one of the decisions I had made going into recording this work. Because I’m a solo performer who rarely tours with an ensemble, I was imagining the fun and strength I could communicate with a band and how they’d be amazing to lean in to with some of these bigger songs I wanted for the album. What was astonishing to me (and perhaps I was the only one), was that the themes and voices on this record are akin to voices and themes I’ve written about in the past. There I was, thinking I was disguising myself inside the realm of a fuller sound and a stronger voice, but really, the greatest discovery for me was that this record feels like an extension of what I’ve been doing this whole time. It sounds like the sweet heartland—big, exposed, rhythmic, seasonal, dark and light, growing and dying, dreaming and living, while the wind blows across the plains. I’m really proud of that.”