Some albums feel carefully assembled; others feel discovered. On Country Love Song, Kevin Farge delivers the latter—a sprawling, 27-track journey that unfolds like a landscape rather than a conventional record. Written and recorded in a cabin overlooking a Costa Rican surf break, surrounded by mango trees and shaped by years spent living between cultures, the album weaves together folk, alt-country, slowcore, Brazilian jazz, orchestral indie pop, and American Primitive guitar traditions into something remarkably cohesive and deeply personal. Across its generous runtime, Farge explores themes of belonging, memory, movement, and contentment, guided by a warm, unguarded vocal presence that makes even its most ambitious moments feel intimate. Featuring collaborations with artists including Gregory Rogove and Little Wings’ Kyle Field, Country Love Song is rich with musical conversation while remaining firmly rooted in Farge’s singular perspective. The result is a record that feels both grounded and expansive—an invitation to slow down, listen closely, and inhabit a world where different traditions, places, and experiences meet in harmony. We spoke with Kevin Farge about the making of Country Love Song, life in Costa Rica, and how a lifetime spent between worlds shaped his most immersive work to date.
Country Love Song is unusually expansive in scope—what was the original seed that eventually grew into a 27-track album?
Listening to the sounds coming out of the guitar.
You recorded in a Costa Rican cabin surrounded by nature—can you describe a moment during the sessions where the environment directly altered a song’s direction?
When I was recording “The Wind’s Dance Across the Island” the horses that lived next to my house kept neighing when I would get to the bridge. I thought it deepened the mood, and it might have even contributed to me keeping that arrangement. I used to sing to those horses and they would come to my window.
The album moves fluidly between genres like folk, Brazilian jazz, slowcore, and alt-country—how do you personally define or avoid genre boundaries when composing?
I hear these songs in my head. When it comes to making an arrangement, I try to find something that suits its rhythm. I draw from the music I know, and I try to make something fresh and interesting that I haven’t heard before.
Collaboration feels foundational here rather than supplemental. How do you decide when a song needs another voice, and how do you preserve your own identity within that process?
Sometimes when I’m working on a song I think, “It would be great if we had a great percussionist like Greg Rogove here.” Then I think, “Why don’t I just ask him to play on it?” I think it’s usually more interesting to have more voices. Everyone does things differently. With a great band the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
“Memphis” with Little Wings has a distinct emotional softness—what was the dynamic like in the studio or remote exchange that led to that tone?
We’re those dudes. That’s what we’re like.
“Frijoles,” featuring Gregory Rogove, has a rhythmic looseness that feels almost spontaneous—was that track structured or discovered in real time?
Recording in a cabin in Costa Rica, with no one on the clock, meant I could rearrange the arrangements and try new things. Go surfing. Have it playing in my head. Come back home. Hear something new in it. There was a lot of scope for spontaneity at every stage of the process, but the songs were more composed than improvised. They were allowed to gestate and blossom over time. There are layers and layers of discovery that went into “Frijoles,” and to listen to it is to discover it all over again.
“Never Gonna Back Down” feels like a working-class anthem with layered instrumentation—what emotional or narrative idea were you building toward there?
My personal experience is that you have to struggle to achieve anything. I’m not into just going with the flow. I think the way out is through. How does someone get good at surfing? By catching a lot of waves. It takes years of beatings—taking waves on the head and getting tumbled around. How does someone get good at skateboarding? It’s by falling down and getting back up again. Social and political movements have to create movement. Change is met with enormous resistance. Change requires the application of force. I think that to achieve anything you have to struggle to overcome obstacles in your path. You’re going to have to fall down and get up thousands of times in your march forward. I wanted to make a song that was about the feeling of getting back up again. That’s life.
The instrumental “Pastoral” draws on global traditions and textures—how do you approach cultural influence without it becoming imitation?
Sincerely loving and respecting something. Several of the songs on the album were music I heard in dreams: “Pastoral,” “Piano Chords,” “Mariel Pt. 2,” and the instrumental sections of “Pretty Kids” were music I heard in dreams.
There’s a strong tension throughout the album between stillness and motion—was that contrast something you consciously designed, or did it emerge naturally during sequencing?
I’ve noticed that in Hayao Miyazaki’s movies he works in these scenes where nothing happens, they are just still and meditative. Like the train scene at the end of Spirited Away. I feel like these scenes let you absorb and process your emotions, all that the previous scenes have brought up. It gives you space to do that before moving on. I’ve tried to use instrumental songs in this way on Country Love Song.
You’ve spoken about growing up between cultures—how does that experience shape your sense of musical identity and belonging today?
I never felt like I belonged growing up. In the United States. In Costa Rica. With the normies. With the outsiders. I think that experience has shaped my desire to make art to satisfy myself, not to impress anybody. Not trying to fit in meant I could just be myself. Tell the stories of people whose stories weren’t being told. I want to connect. Make the world a more beautiful, meaningful place.
Songs like “Mariel Pt. 2” feel almost meditative—do you see those quieter moments as emotional anchors for the album’s larger structure?
That’s a nice way of putting it. Yes. I think the different songs add up to a large picture of the human experience. You can only do so much in one song.
How do you personally experience repetition when listening back to such a long album—do certain tracks start to change meaning over time?
A lot of times a song you didn’t think much about when you made it ends up becoming everyone’s favorite later. I also had the experience with this album that a couple of songs that we put the most work in to are now my favorites to listen to. It was like every time we worked on them, they just got better and better. I’m surprised by that.
What role does improvisation play in your writing and recording process, especially in such a remote and fluid environment?
There’s a lot of spontaneity that goes into making music, but these songs were largely composed. There’s very little improvisation on this album.
The album resists passive listening—it asks for attention. Was that an intentional artistic stance, or a natural outcome of how the songs developed?
Going way back this is how listeners have described my music to me. I don’t know why this is. Maybe it’s the focus I bring to making music. I do make a conscious effort to cut out all the fluff and keep only the parts where I say something. It’s just the interesting bits and nothing else. Sometimes this reaction reads to me as a complaint, like people are complaining that I’ve made the evening’s main entertainment. “You mean it’s music that I actually have to listen to? I would rather listen to music that I don’t have to listen to.”
Looking back, do you see Country Love Song as a document of a specific period in your life, or more like a shifting, ongoing creative world you could return to in future work?
Country Love Song is like a cabin you can go to whenever you want. I think the things I found here will be developed further in future work.
Connect with Kevin Farge: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, BandCamp, Website
