The night before his last day in the studio, Bo Staloch was scrolling through his voice memos when he landed on a piece of a song he had forgotten about. “I was like, shoot, I wish we had worked on this with Brad,” the Austin-born singer-songwriter recalls. He texted it to producer Brad Cook at 11 p.m. When Staloch got to the studio the next morning, the plan was simple. “We’re like, let’s just do it today,” he says. “I wrote it all. We recorded it all. Basically, everything was one take. And then Brad threw on this master class of a bass line, and I remember just watching him. My jaw was on the floor.”
The song was “I Won’t Be There Waiting for You,” and it is the one Staloch is most eager to play live when he hits the road in February. “It’s so fun to play live, and I think a room full of people that know that song and love that song is just going to be so much fun,” he said during an 1824 virtual press conference Wednesday, days before the release of his new EP, Too Big, Too Big. “It’s got such fun energy, and I can just imagine people dancing.” The Nashville-based songwriter made the record with Cook, whose credits include Bon Iver, Waxahatchee and Mavis Staples, at Cook’s home studio in Durham, North Carolina. It blends alt-folk, Americana and indie rock around coming-of-age themes of love, loss and friendship.
Staloch has a clear idea of what holds the record together. “I think the thesis is just a 20-year-old feeling the weight of the world, as a 20-year-old does,” he says. “When you’re feeling that weight, it can drive you to feel nostalgic for what once was, or eager for what’s next.” The title track, he explained, came out in one rush. “I wrote it pretty stream-of-consciousness. Those were the words that came to me, and I wanted to really lean on that, because obviously something was coming out of me that needed to come out.” Asked which song best represents the project, he picked “Too Big, Too Big.”
“It is the culmination of all the weight on someone’s shoulders trying to figure their life out,” he said. “But if long-winded, I would say all the songs.”
Much of the EP lives in humanity. Staloch named the films Before Sunrise and About Time as narrative touchstones for that territory. “Those in-between moments are where humans are as human as we ever are,” he says. “We’re so awkward and so emotionally dumb sometimes. It’s as raw as we get in those in-between moments.” That idea drives “I Won’t Be There Waiting for You,” whose narrator swears off a relationship he is plainly still in. “The narrator is honestly trying to convince themselves that they won’t be waiting for this person, even though on a real note they know that they will be,” Staloch says. “I think it’s so human to portray yourself as one thing, and know deep down that you’re another.”
The setting helped. Recording in a producer’s house, Staloch said, dissolved the usual studio formality before anyone played a note. “You’re walking into somebody’s space, and Brad and his wife and everyone involved just welcomed me with the most gracious arms, and it felt like I was walking into my own home,” he says. “It created just this warm, honest, open energy that we could all feel, and it kind of opened our pores of creativity in a really cool way.” He also keeps a short list of artists who refuse to stay in one lane: Ben Howard, who “threads that line so well of being a full-blown rock artist and then having the most intimate and quiet and gorgeous songs,” and Bon Iver, whose records, he said, are all different while he “just stays true to himself.” Lately he has been listening to Damien Rice and the late Glen Hansard.
The song that gave him the most trouble was “Dreams.” “We had so many iterations of the song, and I think we all felt that song had something special, and we all just wanted to get the song right,” he says. “Sometimes it takes months and months to figure out what is best for the song and what best honors the lyrics and the music.” During the call, Staloch screened a rough cut of a live session of the track, filmed with his band at a friend’s ranch-barn property while they were all in Austin for Austin City Limits. He plays a guitar in the footage signed by Willie Nelson, Ray Price and Merle Haggard. His mother got it signed when the three were touring and their bus was parked down the road from a ranch. “Unfortunately, it’s the best sounding guitar that I have, so I have to play it,” he says. “But it really should be hung up in a museum.”
Austin City Limits (ACL ) was the other big moment of the fall. Asked by us what it meant to play the festival as an Austin native, Staloch said it felt unreal. “That was a complete dream,” he says. “The first weekend I had to sprint off stage because I was bawling my eyes out after the show. To be playing for my entire family and all my friends that I grew up going to ACL with, it was just a complete dream come true.” Texas, he added, is also what he would like interviewers to ask about more. “There are so many values of being from Texas, like family and loyalty and being true to yourself and confident while being humble,” he says. “Mainly that helps me walk into sessions knowing who I am and knowing what I want.”
His biggest headline run yet begins February 3 at The Basement East in Nashville and includes stops at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, Bowery Ballroom in New York and Lincoln Hall in Chicago, among 20-plus dates. He has opened for artists he admires, and he says the lesson that stuck was a simple one. “A lot of the artists do so well communicating with the people in the room and putting down the veil of being a showman,” he says. “You can be a showman still, but we’re all people.” He is also curious what the crowds will teach him. “Live shows are such a litmus test to what songs connect hardest,” he says, “and sometimes those aren’t the songs that stream the highest.”
What he wants fans to carry out of the room is the same thing the EP gave him. “Nothing is truly ever too big,” Staloch says. “If you recognize that someone else, whether it’s one person or the whole entire room, has felt a similar way to you, I think that takes some of that weight away. And I also think naming your emotions takes the power of the emotions away.” He pauses on the way to a larger point. “I hope we can all leave that room with a newfound piece of self.”
Featured Photo Credit: Travis Bailey
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.