{"id":63766,"date":"2026-05-03T14:09:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T14:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/troy-cartwright-on-ten-year-town-nashville-songwriting-scene\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T14:09:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T14:09:49","slug":"troy-cartwright-on-ten-year-town-nashville-songwriting-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/troy-cartwright-on-ten-year-town-nashville-songwriting-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Troy Cartwright on ‘Ten Year Town,’ Nashville Songwriting Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tEven by Nashville\u2019s run-yourself-ragged standards, Troy Cartwright<\/a>\u2019s workload stands out. At any given moment, he\u2019s juggling three jobs, all of which carry full-time demands. Cartwright is a prolific songwriter in Music City, an independent artist grinding out a career, and the host of a podcast shining a light on the pressures and rewards of writing country songs.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March, the Texas native and Ten Year Town<\/em> host<\/a> released the EP Etc. All the Rest<\/em>, his first new release since 2024\u2019s full-length, Bygones<\/em>. Raised in Dallas, Cartwright was captivated by the open spaces in West Texas, and Etc. All the Rest<\/em> is steeped in metaphors and imagery that evokes those spaces.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA lot of records that I have always loved for years and years are ones that have a little bit of a sense of place,\u201d Cartwright says. \u201cLike Nebraska<\/em> by Bruce Springsteen or Southern Accents<\/em> \u2014 Tom Petty \u2014 where the context is dripped in there, but it\u2019s baked into the whole record. This EP is a part of a larger record that\u2019s coming out this year, but I just wanted to make something that had a sense of place.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I started writing this thing, I was just thinking about how, when I was six years old, my great grandfather passed away. He had died in Dallas, but he lived his whole life out in Lubbock, and that was the first road trip I\u2019d ever been on. When you\u2019re young, you remember strange things. And having grown up in Dallas, I had never seen that kind of space before. Sure, all space looks the same, but West Texas \u2014 it\u2019s flat, it\u2019s huge, the sky looks bigger somehow. That feeling stuck with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe title track is something adjacent to a love song, featuring a guy waking up hungover in a hotel room with little recollection of the night before, making a call to his significant other in which he can only muster, \u201cI love you baby, et cetera, all the rest.\u201d Cartwright wrote the song while driving to a show after a friend told him about waking up drunk in a Palm Springs hotel. He says the lyrics came quickly.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

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