When Lydia Loveless first heard that Bloodshot Records had reached out to discuss the possibility of releasing their new record, the singer and songwriter initially responded with bemusement.
“I think I kind of laughed,” said Loveless, 32, whose new record, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again, arrives Sept. 22 on Bloodshot. “It was one of those conversations where somebody [in my management] was like, ‘Now, I don’t know what you’re going to think of this…’ And as they're talking, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, God. This is going to be something terrible.’ Then it was just, ‘Bloodshot is approaching you about the next record.’ So it was like, ‘Oh, it’s only that. Okay.’”
Loveless first signed with Bloodshot in 2012, releasing a trio of full-length albums with the label before the relationship imploded in 2019 when the musician accused Mark Panick, the life partner of Bloodshot co-founder Nan Warshaw, of a pattern of sexual predation.
In the years since, the label has undergone a massive overhaul (Exceleration Music acquired Bloodshot in 2021 and Warshaw and fellow co-founder Rob Miller are both out), while Loveless simultaneously negotiated one devastation after another, telling Columbus Monthly that “COVID blew up my life, and then I blew up my life again when I broke up with my boyfriend [in 2021].”
Regardless, Loveless said they still had to work through a range of emotions after they received the call from Bloodshot, excited by the potential but also wary of how the reunion might be perceived.
“I think there was a little bit of dread that people would think I was some kind of sellout, but I’ve also never given a shit about that in my life,” they said. “I guess I always knew it might be an option to go back to Bloodshot. I just didn’t want to deal with uncomfortable situations. … I do want to be successful, and having someone give you money helps you succeed.”
This reality hit home while Loveless shopped the new record to labels during the pandemic, describing the process as “awful and depressing.” “It was like nobody cared,” said the musician, who self-released their previous record, Daughter, in 2020. So when it arrived, the offer from Bloodshot offered not only a degree of reprieve, but also another full circle moment for Loveless, whose life has been full of these as of late.
“The label has changed entirely but being under that [Bloodshot] name there’s still a sense of it being a bit of a return,” Loveless said. “And then there’s also the aspect of me returning to Columbus. My life has been pretty catastrophic and spiraling for two years now, so it feels nice to have things happening that are getting me back on my path, for sure.”
Loveless attributed much of this newfound stability to the burgeoning community they uncovered within Secret Studio, the Franklinton recording studio and art space co-founded by Amy Turn Sharp and Keith Hanlon. The studio served as an early crash pad upon Loveless’ return to Columbus and now doubles as a place of employment, with Loveless having joined the studio as a recording engineer in January 2022.
“People have asked me a few times over the years [about producing their records], but my focus was always on the shit I wanted to make,” Loveless said. “But obviously life has changed, and the music business is changing, and I’ve grown up a lot. I was so young when I started, and all I ever really cared about was doing my own thing. Now I just like the art of creating music. And being in the studio is definitely my favorite aspect of that.”
The new songs reflect this more communal aspect, with Loveless describing Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again as a comparatively full-band rock record born of the long-developed chemistry between the players, who include guitarist Todd May, pedal steel player Jay Gasper, bassist Mark Connor and drummer George Hondroulis. (Drive-By Truckers multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez also contributed to recording sessions for the album.)
This interplay surfaces on first single, “Toothache,” a relatively breezy rocker born of “the millions of little things that pile up when you’re broke and overwhelmed until you snap over the dumbest thing,” Loveless said in a press release. Conceptually, Loveless said the record is rooted in the idea of rebuilding, focused not just on the accumulated damages of recent years, but the determination it took to move beyond them.
“When I was writing the songs on Daughters, I was very much in a place of sadness,” Loveless said. “I was a fucking wreck making this record, too, but I had to do so much survival that I was actively shoving all of that to the side. … Everything in my life shifted so much it was to the point of asking, ‘Where am I going to live?’ And that basic need became more important than just being sad about my romantic life.”
Loveless was further buoyed by the production work they have undertaken at Secret Studio, which helped the musician learn how to slow down and embrace the process as they entered into sessions for the new record at the Tractor Shed near Nashville.
“I’ve never had real, gainful employment, or even much stability, so I guess I’ve always been making music from this sense of can’t fail now!” Loveless said, and laughed. “I think when I was younger it was, ‘I have to do this because I’m a young, dumb, poor kid with no skills whatsoever.’ And now it’s like, ‘This is my skill.’ And it’s also something I enjoy, and I’m doing it in a more collaborative way. … I’m trying now to enjoy the process as opposed to just struggling and running to get to the end result all of the time.”
