1. IT HURT HER TO HURT ME ...... 3:20 7. I’LL PLAY THE FOOL ...... 3:28 2. BABY YOU WIN ...... 2:47 8. THE MAN I USED TO BE ...... 3:03 3. TILL THE RIGHT ONE COMES ALONG 4:49 9. A LIE IF YOU MUST ...... 3:47 4. MORE AND MORE ...... 3:34 10. THE END OF THE LINE ...... 3:54 5. OFF THE WAGON ...... 5:08 11. SWEET TOOTH ...... 2:58 6. HANGING ON ...... 2:48 12. THE ODDS WERE GOOD ...... 4:32

RELEASE DATE JULY 13, 2018 CLIFFWESTFALLMUSIC.COM

ew York-based country songwriter CLIFF WESTFALL writes songs about heartache, loss, addiction… you Nknow, funny songs. Or he can turn on a dime and dive headlong into a sentimental weeper. The Kentucky native delivers with a mixture of wit and bravado that, for Westfall, is central to what is all about. On his new album, BABY YOU WIN, to be released July 13, 2018, he’s assembled a crew of some of New York’s best musicians to explore a new idea of Americana, drawing inspiration from sources often forgotten by the current country scene.

“I feel like the humor of people like Roger Miller, Don Gibson, and Del Reeves is neglected nowadays,” Westfall says. “A lot of current country music makes you want to ask, ‘Hey, does anybody remember laughter?’ And you know, it’s not really anything against what anyone else is doing, it’s just that the ability to laugh at your troubles seems to have gotten lost.” The songs on Baby You Win are bitingly acerbic, dependent on the twisty puns, bittersweet humor, and turns of phrase that used to define country music. Westfall’s a true son of Kentucky and an honest student of the genre, but refuses to be constrained by its definitions. He cites Chuck Berry as his favorite lyricist, arguing that some of Berry’s songs were much closer to their country cousins than lines of race and genre might have suggested. This is Americana outside the box, made by an artist gleefully rifling through the dusty record bins of American roots music and converting them into something new. To record Baby You Win, Cliff Westfall enlisted producer BRYCE GOGGIN (Pavement, the Ramones, Antony and the Johnsons, • PRODUCED BY BRYCE GOGGIN (PAVEMENT, THE Evan Dando, Phish, Akron Family) and renowned New York RAMONES, ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS, EVAN DANDO, guitarist GRAHAM NORWOOD. The three drew from their PHISH, AKRON FAMILY) & GRAHAM NORWOOD extensive connections to assemble a band with a massive list of credits on the scene, like electric guitarist SCOTT METZGER • AMERICAN COUNTRY ROOTS MUSIC FROM A (Shooter Jennings, Phil Lesh, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead), pedal KENTUCKY COLONEL AND 8TH-GENERATION steel player DAN IEAD (Norah Jones, Valerie June), bassist NATIVE SON JEREMY CHATZKY (Ronnie Spector, Laura Cantrell), drummer DAVID CHRISTIAN (Danger Mouse, Mary Timony’s Helium), • FEATURING MEMBERS OF PHIL LESH, NORAH even the keyboardist from ’s E Street Band - JONES, RONNIE SPECTOR, VALERIE JUNE, CHARLIE GIORDANO. The album was cut and mixed over just DANGER MOUSE, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S at Goggin’s studio. “A lot of it was pretty organic,” E STREET BAND Westfall says. “That’s how Bryce works and I was lucky enough to have a band good enough to make that work.” • FINALIST — CHRIS AUSTIN SONGWRITING CONTEST AT MERLEFEST 2018 The songs on Baby You Win draw from Westfall’s abiding love of great songwriting. He has an obsessive passion about the smallest details of his favorite songs and albums and he’s lived a life chasing those obsessions. He used to sneak into a friend’s family diner in the wee hours of the morning, after the Owensboro bars had closed, to eat biscuits and gravy and listen to the jukebox’s only two Dwight Yoakam 45s over and OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING over again. Westfall’s love for Yoakam translates to opening AND START WRITING SONGS song “It Hurt Her to Hurt Me.” His interest in Jerry Lee Lewis’ late 60s Mercury Sessions can be heard in “Till the Right One “I spent a long time out of music, but I always wanted Comes Along.” A bit of pops up in “I’ll Play the Fool” to get back into it. I thought for a while that I would and the 70s harmony haze of Laurel Canyon comes around in become a college professor -- I was on my way to a “The Man I Used to Be.” Ph.D., studying southern culture and the legal system, but I figured out eventually that even though I loved the Cliff Westfall was born and raised in Owensboro, not far from subject, I didn’t really have the temperament to settle tiny Rosine, Kentucky where Bill Monroe invented bluegrass down and spend the rest of my life as a teacher. And music, and he grew up listening endlessly to Kentuckians like all that time, a lot of my best friends were musicians. The Everly Brothers who changed the path of popular music. So a few years ago, hanging with some friends who Though he got his start playing cowpunk music in Kentucky, he were playing SXSW, I thought, ‘I really have to do this soon left his home state behind for the bright lights of New York now.’ I’d flown into Dallas, so I had a bit of a drive and City. “The term ‘country music’ is almost a misnomer anyway,” wrote a couple of songs on the way back, one of which argues Westfall. “A big part of the original audience was I still play, and I’ve been at it ever since.” people a generation or two removed from the farm who had migrated to the city. People more familiar with factory work and honky tonks than with the back end of a mule, you know? The music they wanted to hear was as much about cutting loose, dancing and having a good time as it was about sadness and hardship. That was kind of the story of my family. Or maybe I’m just attracted to neon lights, I don’t know.”

That is to say, country music was born in cities big and small, throughout the South and wherever Southerners ended up, as much as it was in the country. And though rural America is endlessly mythologized today in modern country music, the city is still at the heart of country, and still a source of new inspirations and influences on the traditions. On Baby You Win, Cliff Westfall brings his Kentucky roots to a very urban New York world, opening up the old country sounds to a much wider vision of Americana.

DWIGHT YOAKAM NICK LOWE PUBLICITY: DEVON LEGER [email protected] RODNEY CROWELL ROBBIE FULKS 206.557.4447