The sound of Wyoming captured in The WyoFolk Project

Apr. 7—Wyoming has never sounded this good.

The WyoFolk Project, a compilation of 14 songs from as many Wyoming singer/songwriters, was officially released today, and from the opening banjo stomp in Jalan Crossland's "Standing Up Again" to the teary-eyed closing ballad of Issac Hayden's "Green Pastures," the album is a snapshot of what Wyoming has to offer musically to the rest of the world.

The album features prominent musical talent from across Wyoming, like Encampment's Alysia Kraft, Laramie's Shawn Hess, Lander's Christian Wallowing Bull, Pinedale's Jason Tyler Burton and more. All contributed songs were specially recorded around a year ago for the album.

Ultimately, WyoFolk delivers more than an assortment of high-quality folk songs — it's also a catalog of Wyoming's musical footprint, one that's intended to stand the test of time.

"I think this will be a cool historical document that will live beyond all of us," said Aaron Davis. "That was the number one goal — to have a snapshot, historical recording in the way that the Lomax family did with early American music."

Davis is the primary reason that the WyoFolk project exists, and he just might have been the only one who could have made it happen.

Aside from assembling the artists and contributing a song to the album, he also recorded, engineered and produced every song that appears on WyoFolk from his studio in Hoback, which he's owned and operated for six years.

It's also not his first time taking the lead on a project, though it was his first time simultaneously being the audio engineer and producer.

Davis is best known in Wyoming for being the founder of, and a performer in, the WYOmericana Caravan, a small show that traversed the state for roughly 10 years, featuring different local musicians at every stop. During these travels, he had the opportunity to befriend and perform with more artists than most musicians have the chance to, most of whom appear on the album.

Davis fully intends for this album to be a spiritual successor to the Caravan by not only giving artists a platform, but delivering a faithful assortment of the music that makes Wyoming unique.

"I just got to know more little towns and more artists around the state," he said. "It just seemed like pooling resources together with other artists in Wyoming was really a great thing to do because our touring markets are so few and far between.

"People tend to look at big cities for music scenes, and I tend to think Wyoming has one large music scene, like Denver or Seattle, rather than individual towns."

Because he toured, performed with and befriended all but one of the artists featured on the album, the recording sessions were familiar and comfortable, allowing him to better capture the sound that each musician sought to achieve.

Forming a cohesive sound is important in a compilation project. The songs must flow together, which can be tricky when bringing together musicians from different corners of a state as vast as Wyoming. The final result is a track list that successfully balances diverse emotions and mindsets, despite the musicians' varying backgrounds and musical styles.

It's even more difficult to ensure that the album accurately represents Wyoming.

"I think it's always evolving," Davis said of Wyoming's sound. "I think one word that comes to mind is 'grit.' In terms of the artists that are on this record, I would (call it) 'roots' music.

"Even though there's all kinds of genres on the record, it's not heavily produced or slickly produced. It's a pretty organically presented record, just meaning there's not a ton of treatment."

As Davis mentioned with the Lomax family, the album could almost be considered a compilation of "field recordings."

To put this in perspective, songs are typically recorded in isolated sections in order to be more easily edited and spliced together for the final product. However, the recording process of WyoFolk required each musician to set up in Davis's Three Hearted Recording Studio and play their song through in its entirety.

A mistake, in most cases, meant the artist would have to restart their song from the beginning.

This recording process made an impact on Shawn Hess, a Western singer/songwriter based in Laramie. In the past, he played with a bluegrass band out of Cheyenne, where he was raised.

Now, he works his day job as a bartender at The Ruffed Up Duck in Laramie, writing and recording songs that, more often than not, show him lamenting over lost love — as is the case with his song, "Till it Ain't."

"Do you want to know her name or what?" Hess said when asked about his inspiration for the song. "I feel like a lot of us have been in that situation where you have a thing with somebody that means a whole lot to you, and it kind of goes by the wayside. Times come when you want to give it another shot, but it always seems to end the same way."

The song fits comfortably within the WyoFolk track list, which, in some ways, is to be expected with Hess's Western style of music. But the project still made an impression on him, and as he begins to work on his third album, he expects the atmosphere will be similar to that of "Till it Ain't".

"The first album, I was just kind of figuring things out. And the second album, I set out to make a honky-tonk record," Hess said. "With this third one, I feel pretty strong about the songwriting, and I think it's gonna focus more on that.

"It's going to be a more stripped-down project with the instrumentation, more focused on the song and the songwriting."

On the other end of the spectrum, some artists had to step out of their comfort zone for the project — especially beloved southeast Wyoming musician Alysia Kraft, known for her past projects The Patti Fiasco and Whippoorwill.

Based out of Fort Collins, half of Kraft's time is spent performing in Wyoming. While she still writes a portion of her songs with an acoustic guitar, her style has developed to better fit within the pop/indie rock genre — best seen in her 2022 solo debut, "First Light."

Despite her music becoming more cleanly layered as she's continued into her solo career, Kraft contributed a standout track to the record. Though it may no longer fall within her typical styling, "The Road that Goes to Nowhere" is an especially cutting emotional outpouring with soft instrumentation and a voice that complements the piece in a way that only Kraft's can.

"I think it's very special, and I love that, in a way, this song has a place to live in the world via this compilation," Kraft said. "It's a song that I would have had to think about in terms of how I fit it into my current work. But it was a song that I definitely needed to write to process some things.

"I'm really glad that it gets the opportunity to live, and to live up against so many other great songs by Wyoming writers."

Will Carpenter is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's Arts and Entertainment/Features Reporter. He can be reached by email at wcarpenter@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3135. Follow him on Twitter @will_carp_.