Oklahoma continues its century-long track record of raising impressive roots and country music talent. The state that gave us Woody Guthrie, Leon Russell, Vince Gill and the Turnpike Troubadours has, in recent years, spawned John Moreland, John Fullbright and Kaitlin Butts. When I sat down in September with Ken Pomeroy, the state’s most exciting emerging songwriter, I dropped a name to break the ice and buy a little cred about Tulsa, where Pomeroy lives and works. I asked her about the exceptional musician and scene-maker Jared Tyler, a valued friend of mine, and the guy who first told me to keep on the lookout for the 23-year-old Native American artist.
“I've known Jared for so long, or I guess he's known me for so long,” she says at the outset of Episode 337. “I started playing music really early on, and Jared was one of the first people that welcomed me in the scene.”
Raised in Moore, a small town north of Oklahoma City, Pomeroy had her first life-changing experience with music when she fell in love with John Denver’s bittersweet 1969 hit “Leaving On A Jet Plane.” That’s where the blend of narrative, emotion, and melody that only songwriting can deliver truly amazed her, and she covered it countless times when she started performing for audiences almost a decade ago. She agrees with Tyler’s assessment that she’s shown dedication and ambition ever since.
“My ambition, both fortunately and unfortunately, has been really strong ever since I started doing this when I was 14 or 15 years old,” she says. “You know, I never really had a choice to not do this. From the beginning, it was such a huge outlet for me. I feel like I had to grow up pretty quickly. And I think songwriting specifically was a huge way for me to stay sane and not turn to drugs or something like that.”
She’s guarded about the details of her youth, no surprise since that’s not long ago for her, but she’s outspoken about the power of music and storytelling to spread the burden of growing up in an America where mostly what she’s known is political backlash, social media-fueled rancor, and the isolation of the pandemic just when she was trying to transition from high school to college. “I figured that I wasn't the only one that felt so deeply about everything, and I wanted other people to not feel alone,” she tells us.
Cruel Joke was anything but a carefully planned national debut. In fact, Pomeroy says that even though she recorded an independent album (Christmas Lights In April) way back in 2018, the post pandemic years found her in a rut, playing in a bluegrass band around Oklahoma City. By then, she’d made common cause with multi-instrumentalist Dakota McDaniel, whom she describes today as her “musical partner.” And he tried to shake her out of her ennui by suggesting cutting some of her newer songs.
She had to muster up some motivation, but when she heard her demo of a song called “Cicadas,” she got more excited. Then, in a welcome development, a music supervisor working on the Native American-centered TV series Reservation Dogs reached out and took “Cicadas” for a featured appearance in Season 3 of the show. That encouraged a lot more recording and set in motion the events that would lead her to Rounder Records. The tracks Pomeroy made with McDaniel were touched up by Rounder’s in-house master Gary Paczosa, and they came out sounding lush and beautiful enough to lighten the record’s emotional load.
It begins with “Pareidolia,” a word that refers to the human brain’s involuntary tendency to find patterns in images, “Heaviness makes a place in the middle of your eye, Counting the faces you see in the sky,” she sings. Other elegantly melancholy songs you’ll hear in the hour include “Flannel Cowboy,” one she describes as a lot more “sarcastic” than the love song it may appear to be, and “Coyote,” a lonesome duet with the aforementioned John Moreland.
You’ll also hear Pomeroy discuss her Cherokee heritage, including the way it weaves into her musical outlook. “I see it as a continuous job,” she says. “I think that I have a job to, you know, carry on tradition that was taught to me. I have a job to try to protect the land. I have a job to stay connected to nature. I have a job to become a good ancestor. And I have a job to kind of protect the path for those coming after me. Being connected to something that has been something for so long feels really good. It feels very grounding.”
Pomeroy is set to open two dates for Shane Smith and the Saints at Ryman Auditorium in February of next year. She’ll also be on the Cayamo Cruise and at Knoxville’s prestigious Big Ears festival in 2026.
