Hunter Metts talks ‘A Crater Wide’ and plays live at WXPN

Hunter Metts grew up 30 minutes south of Nashville and spent his early 20s writing software before letting himself become a musician. That history sits behind his EP A Crater Wide, which the Franklin, Tenn. songwriter discussed with Mike Vasilikos during a recent visit to the WXPN studios.

“It’s been a bit of a confusing journey,” Metts says. Both his parents moved to Nashville from rural Mississippi and Texas to pursue music, and that’s how they met. “Music was always around as a kid, but they never had their, like, moment. It never really panned out for them. Looking at their situation through my adolescent years, I kind of resented music and the music industry for a long time.”

Out of high school he went to coding school and worked as a software developer for two years. It didn’t hold him. “I would come home every night after work and make music, make music, make music. It finally got to the point where I just moved back with my parents so I could do music full time.”

“There’s a lot of clichés,” Metts says about Nashville. “The Broadway scene, the songwriting rounds. There’s a lot of noise to break through. Most of the time I consider myself pretty reclusive and just head down, hoping that I’m doing something different.”

So to make A Crater Wide, he went a long way from Music Row. “I packed up all my stuff, all my guitars, drove to Colorado, and I ended up sleeping at that studio where I made the EP.”

On “Blue Ridge Run,” songwriter Leif Vollebekk plays piano and sings backing vocals, a collaboration that started when Metts asked his producer, Andrew, whether someone could bring a fresh ear to a half-finished piano line. “Andrew was like, ‘well, let me just see if this guy Leif,'” Metts recalls. “And meanwhile I’m like, ‘Leif?’ It’s like one of those moments where it’s like, play with your heroes, work with your heroes.”

That collaboration proved even more fruitful for Metts: he joined Vollebekk for six shows in November last year, including a Nashville gig.