pictures + story / Erin Lunsford
After 5 years of ready—and residing via a world pandemic—I’m lastly able to share Rhinestones. Launched on June 26, 2026, this album doesn’t really feel like a sophomore document to me. It looks like a reintroduction.
Many individuals know me because the frontwoman of Erin and The Wildfire, the place I realized to take up area, command a stage, and pour each ounce of myself right into a efficiency. However with Rhinestones, I wished to step into one thing quieter. One thing extra weak. I wished these songs to inform the reality.
The title Rhinestones represents greater than one thing that sparkles. For me, it symbolizes the stress of the music trade—the expectation to shine your self, beautify your self, and continuously carry out a model of who individuals need you to be. Sooner or later, I noticed I used to be exhausted by that. This document grew to become my method of setting all of that down and embracing the attractive, difficult mess of life in my 30s: navigating an unpredictable profession, looking for love and household, grieving previous variations of myself, and studying who I’m once I cease making an attempt to be all the pieces for everybody else.
Musically, Rhinestones is deeply rooted within the Appalachian sounds that formed me, however I by no means wished it to really feel trapped by nostalgia. I really like honoring the place I come from whereas nonetheless permitting the music to develop with me. The folks, Americana, and blues influences are nonetheless there, together with the guitar work that has at all times been such an enormous a part of my identification, however all the pieces serves the songs first. Each notice exists to assist the story.
This album is deliberately quieter than something I’ve made earlier than. Prior to now, a lot of my music was constructed across the power of a stay efficiency—the facility of the band, the joy of the stage, the vocal moments designed to fill a room. Rhinestones requested one thing fully completely different of me. It requested me to sit down nonetheless. To hear. To write down songs that weren’t making an attempt to impress anybody, however as a substitute mirrored the place I really was emotionally. That shift was each terrifying and extremely releasing.
One of many threads that runs via the whole document is the thought of house. Rising up in Appalachia will at all times be a part of me, whilst life has taken me far past these mountains. I do know what it looks like to depart house whereas nonetheless carrying it in all places you go. I do know what it feels prefer to miss a spot whereas additionally turning into somebody new. These contradictions discovered their method into these songs.
Group has at all times mattered to me, each on and off the stage. Whether or not I’m writing music or elevating cash for native meals pantries whereas touring, I need my work to create connection. I imagine songs have the power to remind us that we’re not alone, and that’s one thing I by no means wish to lose sight of.
At its coronary heart, Rhinestones is me reclaiming my very own story. It bridges the place I began with the place I’m at present, not by pretending I’ve all of the solutions, however by permitting myself to be sincere. Greater than something, I hope these songs really feel much less like a efficiency and extra like a dialog—one about identification, resilience, and discovering your method again to your self.
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