Colin Cutler is a writer and roots musician based in Greensboro, North Carolina. His most recent album, Tarwater, is inspired in part by the earthy characters of southern writer Flannery O’Connor, whose centennial is being celebrated this year.
There’s a line from Flannery O’Connor that feels like it could describe your whole album: “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet.” You titled your record Tarwater, which nods to her work but also seems to mark your own kind of meeting place. Can you talk about how that title came to you—and what crossroads you found yourself standing at?
“Meeting place” is a perfect phrase for what this album became. It brought together so many parts of my life—academic, personal, musical. I studied O’Connor in college, spent time at the National Humanities Institute, and I’ve been writing and performing folk music for over a decade. This project let me merge all that.
