Eighteen-year-old Heber City folk singer-songwriter Canyon Cottle’s debut album, “September,” which was released in February, is littered with nods to the Wasatch Back.
“Kids Up in Kamas,” for example, is an ode to both the eastern Summit County town and Heber City’s agricultural roots.
“I’m almost jealous of the kids up in Kamas for having everything that this town was. … Things (have been) growing exponentially, especially after COVID,” Cottle said. “That entire town just reminds me of what it looked like (in Heber City) before I was born. When I was younger, we’d drive up and go to the swimming pool. It looked almost like a ghost town in certain spots because it was just so quaint.”
The second track, “Pine Canyon,” refers to a scenic drive on the titular Midway road.
Meanwhile, the title track mentions driving past a tree in front of a house with initials carved into it. This lyric is not based on a specific location. It was, in fact, by Cottle’s grandmother after he showed her the song during a camping trip.
“She was like, ‘Can I write some lyrics for you? It needs to be more preppy and lovely and happy and goo-goo eyes.’ I was like, ‘OK, Grandma, whatever. I’m writing songs about painful crap,’” Cottle joked. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, but what about love and romance?’”
A tree with initials carved into it is something Cottle would brand as cliché. Incorporating the lyric anyway is Cottle’s embrace of the simple, tender aspects of life and a shout-out to both his grandmother and the countless engraved aspens in Heber City.
The album’s structure is based on the progression of the seasons. Cottle wrote “Lovely, Aren’t They” on the banjo in the driveway of his house, taking inspiration from the falling leaves surrounding him. In the song, he likens the arrival of autumn to the death of a relationship.
“For a lot of people, that’s the most heart-wrenching, painful thing to ever experience, watching something wither and die. For me, that’s pretty natural. That’s normal. I watch crops die and disappear in the fall. The corn stalks kind of wither and go away, and you have to clean them up, and leaves, and all the things. That’s life,” he said.
Lead single “Smoke in the Sky” also takes inspiration from a breakup. Cottle’s gravelly growl at the beginning of the acoustic chorus intentionally imitates a chainsmoker’s cadence.
The song’s guttural feeling clearly resonated with listeners. Despite being the first song the teenage songwriter had ever released, it was a breakout hit, with over 175,000 streams on Spotify alone since its release last April.
The experience inflated Cottle’s ego quite a bit, he joked.
Canyon Cottle’s stage presence is inspired by performers like Billy Joel and The Backseat Lovers. Credit: Photo by Lucy Randal, courtesy of Canyon Cottle
“Spotify has an app where you can check your stats 24/7 and look at things. Not the most healthy thing you could do with your life,” Cottle laughed. “(A few days after the song was released), I’m in the commons of Wasatch (High School), and I flip it up to see if anyone looks over my shoulder to look at the stats with me. And there were 40 people listening to the track at the same time.”
Cottle attributes the song’s popularity to its catchy hook and producer Luke Despain’s placement of the song on official Spotify playlists. On top of that, the stylistic influence of the stratospherically popular folk singer Noah Kahan probably helped.
Having a song with more streams than there are people in the entire Wasatch Back has been surreal for Cottle: getting side-eyed in school hallways, being asked for a few autographs and being recognized in Walmart by a little girl who called him that “singer guy.”
It’s a far cry from Cottle writing his first songs on guitar and piano in his freshman year, often procrastinating math homework at the Wasatch County Library by going down a rabbit hole of live performances by artists like The Backseat Lovers, a Provo-formed rock band, and Billy Joel. Those influences, along with performing in Timpanogos Valley Theatre and High Valley Arts productions as a kid, formed Cottle’s stage presence.
“It was cool to be able to lay my heart out for people to look at — which is the weirdest thing to say — and to have them take pictures,” he said. “It’s exciting because your heart races. You get on stage, and then it’s like the mic disappears because you close your eyes, and then you just play, and it turns into fun.”
Songwriting is fulfilling for an entirely different reason, he said.
“I think songwriting takes in all the different parts of your brain and meshes together what a human sounds like,” he said.
Now that Cottle has graduated from high school, he’s ready to explore whatever challenges the adult world throws at him through songwriting. He plans to move away from the obvious Kahan influence to a raw, emotional indie sound inspired by artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Lizzie McAlpine.
“I want them to feel it more. I feel like there’s a lot of wholesomeness in the music right now,” he explained. “(I want to write) songs with deeper harmonies and melodies that kind of converge, and then build, and then drop and disappear out of nowhere, where it’s just stomach-dropping.”
Cottle hopes to continue writing music throughout his life and to make it a full-time career, whether by opening a recording studio or becoming a professional songwriter.
He’s both excited and concerned by the idea of becoming as famous as someone like Kahan, whose tiny hometown of Strafford, Vermont, has become a bit of a tourist hotspot for superfans because of the lyrical references to it in Kahan’s songwriting.
As someone who’s experienced more fame than most teenagers, Cottle has had concerns about the same happening to Heber City if he were to become a sensation. For now, Cottle is content with being beloved locally.
No matter what the future holds for him, Cottle hopes to look back on this season of life with fondness.
“I think I’ll look back (at) now knowing that I tried to embody some sort of positivity or hope,” he said.
Cottle’s next performance will be from 9 to 11 p.m. on Saturday at Jade’s Cafe. He will also be performing at the Heber City Red, White & Blue Festival on Saturday, July 4.