Charles Wesley Godwin's 'Family Ties' aims for Springsteen-level career acclaim
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Charles Wesley Godwin talks about Bruce Springsteen in 2023 in the same way people who reviewed Springsteen's debut album compared the "Greetings From Asbury Park" performer to Bob Dylan almost 50 years ago.
Godwin, 31, sits at a Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood coffee shop where he played the early-morning release party for "Family Ties," his September-released debut album from Big Loud Records.
"Springsteen and Dylan are the master class of performance and songwriting," Godwin says. "Like both, I don't have the best voice in the world, so I make up for it by (metaphorically) putting time in the woodshed with my writing."
"Family Ties" includes "10-38," a song that provides an ending to "State Trooper" from Springsteen's 1982 album "Nebraska." Godwin's song is about the police officer responding to the call nervously, alluded to in Springsteen's recording.
The emerging superstar at Americana's crossroads with country music speaks to The Tennessean with haggard bags under his eyes as heavy as the expectations of having debut record success similar to that of his Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping friend Zach Bryan.
The performer has been tired for at least a decade, though.
He's married with two kids, and every day, he's running one step further away from being a West Virginia University graduate, either working as a caretaker for his elderly neighbors across the street from his childhood home or teaching high school history in Charleston, West Virginia.
For Godwin, though, there's no shame in either labor.
However, he's still — to borrow a famous Springsteen album title — apparently "born to run" to far greater acclaim than he ever imagined was possible while playing in coffee shops in Morgantown.
A 1973 New York Times review of "Greetings From Asbury Park" notes that the album finds Springsteen as a "word virtuoso" whose "great swatches of local color blend into a landscape of remembered adolescent scenes and dreams in the swamps and seasides of Jersey, in the slums of New York."
Swap the swamps of Jersey for the coal mines of West Virginia and you're not far removed from Godwin's bread and butter as an artist 50 years later.
For Godwin, achieving worldwide renown will include bringing his roots — both familial and tied to his collegiate years — along for the ride. Yes, he's a WVU graduate, so the "Take Me Home, Country Roads" you hear on "Family Ties" is more an ode to postgame celebrations at Milan Puskar Stadium than it is to John Denver.
Moreover, the album's title track is surprisingly more profound than it reads.
"My family is where my heart was when I started writing," Godwin begins.
Prior acclaim for the artist arrived from 2021-released murder ballad epics like "Cranes of Potter," plus gritty rural-themed performances on self-released albums like 2019's "Seneca" and 2021's "How the Mighty Fall."
However, the stress of balancing family life with his burgeoning career left him thinking much less about the mountains that lined trips to Echo Mountain Recording Studios in Asheville, North Carolina, and Church Recording Studio in suburban Pittsburgh.
Instead, the therapeutic value of unleashing truths born of digging into his family history, plus overcoming depression and inner conflicts, has created a "straight up" album that relies on using songwriting to achieve groundbreaking feats.
"Miner Imperfections" vibrantly finds comparatively "innocent" and empathetic songwriters like Godwin unfurling stories from their "strong, silent" Appalachian patriarchs, whose time spent as coal miners, day laborers and pastors "shaped them into hard, tough people."
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Now approaching middle age and with a wife and children of his own, Godwin finally has an intellectual depth and scope aided by hindsight's perfect vision to shed a tear at how metaphorical cuts heal as calluses that, as they smooth, still provide care.
"Them city folks would shame him if he let them / But he's proud of his miner imperfections," sings Godwin.
The twist of phrase, complemented by the ease of Godwin's weathered vocals, allows it to settle with a gentle efficiency that causes deep thought.
"Putting generational trauma into words has arrived at music that resolves painful parts of my life for me and my family," he says. "Things I can't say and thanks I can't offer in conversations are in songs (on 'Family Ties'). For anyone in my generation, the boom in singer-songwriters doing this type of work is a step in the right direction."
"Getting back to the meat and potatoes of what country music is about" is how Godwin describes the album's title song, which works as "honest, humble accountability" for fathers everywhere.
There's a sheen of rock 'n' roll star as upper-middle-class laborer that feels apparent when Godwin refers to the work of taking a red-eye flight home to be a husband and parent after four consecutive headlining arena gigs. This notion is different than that of the male Nashville stars of recent vintage whose families arrived to them after years of dogged road warrior work.
Godwin creates an analogy between his work and his fellow 2010s-era college graduates who eschewed starting young families for the "heartless" pursuit of becoming C-suite executives. Instead, the burgeoning country music star wants to see more people willing to do the work of attempting to create a work-life balance.
Within that work, Godwin believes that the slivers of joy found in making those attempts, alongside financial comfort, allow for the presence of a love-driven "fullness of life" that is "worth more than money."
When asked to describe the greatest value he could derive from the success of his debut major label album and a year wherein likely millions will grow comfortable and familiar with his art, Godwin responds with an answer driven by his love of where his heart has allowed him to arrive:
"A two-bedroom and one-bathroom house packed full of my family and friends."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Charles Wesley Godwin aims for Springsteen-level career acclaim
