Honky Tonk PhD, the newly released debut album from Oklahoma’s Krislyn Arthurs, overflows with attitude, darkness, candor and clenched-fist toughness. With such self-penned tunes as “Missin’ Man” (a first-person number about an abused woman who finally has enough), “Daddy Tried” (concerning a daughter’s penchant for bad romances), the trailer-park-queen anthem “Double Wide,” and the title track, in which Arthurs sings about coming “from a long line of losers,” this Medford-raised singer-songwriter conveys the image of an unapologetically tough tarnished angel who’s not to be trifled with. Her publicist, Brandy Reed, wrote me that she thinks Arthurs’ music “draws blood before you even know you’ve been hit” – an apt description of the effect conveyed by several of the songs on the disc.
Arthurs’ persona is nothing if not convincing. It is, however, also one that hardly emerged overnight. In fact, when her husband booked her first real gig – after she’d been writing, singing and playing her music mostly for herself for around two years while pursuing a career in dentistry– the performer her audience saw couldn’t have been more different.
“I had such severe stage fright, I didn’t know how I was going to make it through,” she recalls. “Usually, when I’d sing in front of anyone, my throat would go dry, to the point that I couldn’t even squeak out a word. Or I’d throw up. So after my husband told me about booking the show, I had three or four days to get myself mentally prepared. That day, I did not eat. I went to work, came home and played that night – my first show.”
For a while, it looked as though it might also be her last.
“It was in Pond Creek, Oklahoma, ten minutes from my hometown, at a bar that was, at the time, called Rand-Shan’s,” she says. “I had a little girl who was a couple of grades behind me in high school, and I’d invited her to come sit in and play guitar with me. We had never run a P.A. or a sound system, and we’d gone out and bought the cheapest rig we could find, just enough to have some sound. So we were doing the best we could, but unfortunately half the bar could not hear because there were so many people in there and they were so loud.
“About halfway through the show, the bar manager said, ‘Girl, you’re going to have to get this figured out, or we’re going to have to cut you off.’”
That little admonition became the pivotal moment in Krislyn Arthurs’ career. Admitting that she went into the bar without “any confidence,” she remembers that the manager’s warning triggered an immediate and powerful response.
“Something just came over me,” she says, “and I thought, ‘I don’t want to do anything else. I want to prove that I can do this. I love this.’
“So I finished the show, and from there, I’ve never looked back. I’ve booked myself anywhere and everywhere that would let me in. I’ve played for free. I’ve played for five people. I’ve played for anybody that would listen. And then, in 2020, after playing solo for five or six years, I decided to start a band.”
Since her Pond Creek epiphany, Arthurs has indeed racked up a lot of performances, both solo and with her group, headlining and opening. As an opener, she’s appeared with such fellow up-and-coming singer-songwriters as Braxton Keith, Josh Meloy, William Beckmann and Jerrod Niemann. Like Arthurs, they’re generally categorized as “country,” but – as is the case with a lot of acts from our region of the U.S.A. – they blend a lot of other influences into what they do.
So does Arthurs, who’s been compared to country stars like Miranda Lambert and Gretchen Wilson.
“I take those comparisons as a compliment, because I was raised on [Wilson’s song] ‘Redneck Woman’ and [Lambert’s] ‘Gunpowder and Lead,’” she says with a chuckle. “But I actually grew up as a scene kid in a farm town, so I was the odd one out. When everybody else was listening to traditional country, I was into the pop-punk scene. I’m influenced by a lot of that. I’m a huge Paramore and Avril Lavigne fan. I love the [Oklahoma-based] All-American Rejects and Fall Out Boy. I have a lot of punk roots and, to this day, I really enjoy that type of music. So I’ve tried to incorporate what I enjoy and still be traditional.
“My main goal with my career is never to really put myself in a box,” she adds. “We could go out and open for Stevie Nicks, or we could go and open for Cody Canada, or for Taylor Hunnicutt, who’s more Southern rock. It’s just so fun getting to be diverse, and, as an artist, to be able to showcase the many sides of myself.”
With the new album release, the side likely to get the most attention is the one I mentioned earlier – her unflinching willingness to explore and comment on the darker side of human nature, especially when it comes to male-female relationships. Well before the Honky Tonk PhD disc, Arthurs was writing and performing material like “The Judge,” a tale of domestic-violence retribution. In the music video, which can be viewed on YouTube, Arthurs is first seen getting a shovel out of the back of a pickup, and you know from the beginning she’s not going to be digging up nightcrawlers for a fishing trip.
“‘The Judge’ is one of my favorite songs, because in my mind, when I was writing it, I was thinking about what would have happened if the woman had stayed [in an abusive relationship],” she says. “It’s like this is what happens finally, you know. I’ve had family members who have had to call the police, and the police haven’t done anything about it, and if they try to, their hands are tied. They don’t have enough proof. And a lot of times, a domestic-violence situation doesn’t end until a catastrophe happens.
“I try to put as much realism in my music as I can, whether it’s about my life or somebody else’s life. I have great parents and a great family, but I saw quite a few things growing up. Sometimes, as a child, you’re exposed to things that make you have to grow up a little bit more, things that really stick with you.”
For her, one of the biggest of those things was domestic abuse.
“In the ‘90s and early 2000s, domestic violence was, a lot of times, swept under the rug,” she says. “Our grandparents, even our parents, maybe, thought it was acceptable. You were always told to stick it through – that you couldn’t just leave. Doing that wasn’t accepted, especially in our small towns. So, with my music, I want women to understand that they control the power in their lives.
“I feel like sometimes we’re not given our own power, that we’re not allowed to do something unless a man says it’s allowed,” she adds. “Thankfully, I don’t have to experience that, but I know there are so many women in the world who do, who struggle to get out of domestic-violence situations. I actually had one myself, before I met my husband. So I love having the platform and the voice to speak for people – men and women, may I say – to remind them that we have the power to control the narratives of our lives, and to make the best of our own situations.”
