March 3, 2026, 5:09 a.m. ET
- Singer-songwriter Caitlin Canty moved back to her home state of Vermont from Nashville in 2023.
- Her latest album, “Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove,” was inspired by her Vermont roots.
- Canty recorded the album while pregnant with her second child, finding the music a bright spot during a difficult pregnancy.
- She has several live performances in March.
Caitlin Canty was giving her son a bath at her home in East Nashville when she started singing a song she was writing in her head.
It had been eight years since she moved from Vermont, but the lyrics were very much rooted in the Green Mountains. She asked her mother, who was visiting from up north, to take over bath duties so she could retreat to another room and record the nascent song into her phone.
That track, “Dear Home Again,” is on Canty’s album from October, “Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove.”
Floating on a misty Celtic melody, she evokes her place of birth like a hazy dream with a few simple images. (“The swaying fields, goldenrod blue aster/ The gentle woods, the cooling shade/ The laughing stream through the greening pasture/ Oh will I see my dear home again.”)
“The vision in my mind, and what I hope is evoke by the words if someone is listening,” she said, “is specific to Vermont.”
She was imagining returning to her home state. That happened in 2023 when she and her husband, banjo player Noam Pikelny of the Americana band Punch Brothers, moved to southern Vermont. Canty hoped to come back home so her children — she now has two boys, ages 5 and nearly 2 — can experience an idyllic life like she had growing up in Proctor.
“I do feel a return to my roots,” Canty said told the Burlington Free Press recently, “and a gift to feel I’m reliving those days in my little ones’ eyes at this sweet time.”
Fans of Canty’s music have been able in recent years to see her in northern Vermont opening for likeminded acts such as Anais Mitchell and The Milk Carton Kids. She’ll headline her own concert Saturday, March 7, at Higher Ground in South Burlington. She’ll play a southern Vermont show Friday, March 13, at the Bennington Theater.
What it’s like to raise a family in Vermont
The pause on touring during the COVID-19 pandemic forced “retirement for a year,” Canty said. She came back home to visit family and would stay for months at a time. Her brother had moved to Danby in southern Vermont, Canty said, and she and Pikelny fell in love with the area.
The birth of her first son made living near where she grew up more desirable. “Once you have little ones, boy, is it hard to leave the grandparents,” Canty said.
Her dream of heading back to Vermont was vivid. She wanted her children to live in a small town where everyone knows you and everyone cares about you.
The dream has unfolded pretty much as Canty hoped. She said she’s enjoying watching every bit of wonder from her two “little creators.” She is finding inspiration for her own creativity by seeing the world through their eyes.
“This is a really precious time,” Canty said.
Making art in a world of ‘AI weirdness’
Canty was nearly eight months pregnant with her second son when she recorded “Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove” in Maine at the studio of Sam Kassirer, known for his work as a keyboardist with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter.
“There’s definitely an urgency that the songs had, burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to get them down before they were too old,” Canty said. “When you are expecting a baby, there is a very hard deadline. I really wanted to honor those songs before I turned my attention elsewhere for a little bit.”
Her first pregnancy went smoothly. Her second did not.
“It wasn’t a walk in the park,” Canty said. “The music was the real bright spot.”
She worried that her struggles would make the recording session troublesome.
“Once I got there (to the studio), I was just exploding with excitement and focus and four pure days of music,” she said. “Altogether, it was just a very good feeling amongst us as friends and collaborators, and we were on a mission together.”
Canty worked in the studio with Kassirer and fellow Ritter collaborator Rich Hinman on guitar, as well as another Vermont native, Matt Lorenz of The Suitcase Junket. The result on “Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove” displays Canty’s stylistic range and subtly powerful vocals.
On “Open the Window,” Canty’s voice gives off a bluesy Bonnie Raitt aura. “Strangers/Lovers” has the twang of a hang-on-for-dear-life slow dance at the end of a long night at the roadhouse. (“Now if I set this room on fire/ It wouldn’t spark your attention/ We’d have to be strangers to be lovers again.”)
“Night Owl/Mourning Dove” sounds like a glimpse into her life now that she’s back in Vermont. (“I might stay in the mountains/Never come down, never come down/In the blue-black morning the first light cold/I see how I could let go.”)
On tour, Canty said it’s been “a cathartic thing” to play her songs in light of events such as the shootings in Minneapolis by federal agents and “AI weirdness” that’s creating detachment from what is real. Her music, she said, is all about being real.
“I’m not performing. I’m feeling these things,” Canty said. “I don’t ever want to get into a ‘performance.’ I really am into the honesty of what I’m doing.”
She said a song of hers from 2020, “Where Is the Heart of My Country,” spurred a standing ovation mid-song on a recent tour stop. Fans are seeking “real music coming from acoustic guitar and actual humans playing this stuff,” she said.
“People feel multiple burdens coming on their shoulders,” Canty said. “Things are changing very quickly, and I don’t think everyone’s feeling great about it.”
That includes Canty herself.
“I feel like maybe I need this connection, too,” she said.
If you go
WHAT: Caitlin Canty with Annie Lynch
WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 7
WHERE: Higher Ground Showcase Lounge, South Burlington
INFORMATION: $25. highergroundmusic.com
Also,
WHAT: Caitlin Canty
WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Friday, March 13
WHERE: Bennington Theater
INFORMATION: $25-$30. benningtontheater.org
Contact Brent Hallenbeck atbhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.
