MARGO CILKER
LITTLE WHITE CROSS
OCTOBER 9, 2026
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“You could definitely call it a concept record,” says Margo Cilker, “if that concept is that I got really sad and went to Texas.” She’s referring to her third full-length album, Little White Cross, recorded with Bruce Robison in Lockhart. “I had some material so dark I didn’t think I’d show it to him. Then I remembered this is the man who wrote ‘Travelin’ Soldier.’” Laughter escapes her—sincere, contagious, flecked with irony. It’s Cilker’s essential contradiction, a capacity to bring harsh realities forward with affable warmth. “Life is nasty, brutish, and short, as they say. But if I can romanticize one tiny detail, that gets me to the next day.”
Cilker struggles to pin down the precise source of her sadness—though, who can blame her? “Hardships that once felt rare, like gun violence, wildfires, abuse, now feel nearly constant,” she says. “It wasn’t always like this.” The grief Cilker reckons with is cumulative and collective, the stuff of profound suffering from which we’re all just one degree removed, if we’re lucky. “It seems like the rate of tragedy keeps intensifying,” says Cilker. “How do any of us cope?”
Title track “Little White Cross” references one humble approach. Written by her friend Christy Hays, it’s a song Cilker gravitated toward for its masterful blend of realism and poetry, and for its loving reminder that life is perpetually subject to unforeseen wreckage. Little white cross on the side of the road / Little fake flower and a crown of gold / They were going so fast how were they to know / They'd be a little white cross on the side of the road. Cilker’s rendition feels country-classic, her vocals fluttering with the human fragility Hays’ lyrics illuminate. Beyond the stark imagery of a car crash, Cilker situates the song in the grander context of repercussions—what we’ll answer for as individuals, as a society, as a species.
Cilker was raised in California’s Santa Clara Valley, a place once upon a time more famous for apricots than silicon. Now based in the rural Pacific Northwest with her husband, working cowboy and fellow singer-songwriter Forrest VanTuyl, her relationship to the land remains deeply rooted. Cilker’s album hums with the ancestry and expanse of the American West, beckoning listeners to—at the very least—pause, witness, contemplate. “Something I’ve learned living alongside ranchers is to always carry a reverence for those who came before us,” she says. “It’s that pause to remember that pushed me to make this album.”
So, Cilker travelled to Texas with her “pedal steel secret weapon” Eric Heywood, and a batch of originals she hadn’t even yet demoed. Robison, whose songwriting and producing credits sparkle on hits from Charley Crockett, Lee Ann Womack, George Strait and The Chicks, assembled a top tier band—Geoff Queen (Hayes Carll), Beth Chrisman (John C. Reilly), Lisa Pankratz (Dave Alvin), and Scott Davis (Band of Heathens) among others—and co-produced the album. When Cilker revealed to him the saddest of her songs, she says, “that’s when I felt the whole thing take shape.” The pair made a conscious choice to let despair lead, recording directly to tape in an all-analog setup and situating Cilker’s originals among a thoughtful selection of covers; there are six on the album, songs Cilker had taken to playing as a way to process her own pain. “When I find a song that really speaks to me, it helps me make sense of things,” says Cilker. She embraces the longtime tradition of Texas troubadours trading songs—Willie, Waylon, and The Flatlanders in particular—the art of transforming one work into something distinct, while honoring its original soul. “Writing can be a lonely affair,” she says. “But that exchange, that open spirit, it feels essential to art for me.”
The process of writing her own songs, on the other hand, can be intense, veering almost supernatural. “I often feel haunted by stories, kept up at night by a kind of external pressure to tell them,” says Cilker. “I’ll write a song just to alleviate the grip it has on me.” Album standout “Molly and Me” emerged from that very kind of unconscious urgency. Written about the teenage sister of an armed suspect in a mass shooting, from the perspective of her best friend, it’s an artful and affecting display of human complexity. And her mom did what she could to listen / And it’s true that we sincerely miss him / It’s just a shame they had to die when he did / None of this will ever be undone. Cilker withholds no nuance in conveying the unthinkable, allowing human suffering its due specificity. “Just because something horrible happens time and time again, that doesn’t make it any less horrible.” The final line—Is this all we’re made of?—echoes on. It’s a recurring question across Cilker’s new album, mystified and infuriated. An earnest inquisition and a wail of desperation.
In conversation, Cilker embodies a kind of cowboy humility, a down-to-earth humor edging on self-effacing. It’s inviting, lovable, and in notable contrast to the esteem bestowed upon her by major tastemakers since her debut album ‘Pohorylle,’ released in 2021. Rolling Stone proclaimed, “Cilker shows that she is as interested in reinvigorating Southern country-folk storytelling tropes as she is in exposing their flaws.” Pitchfork praised a “country artist who pushes against conventions of the genre that don’t fit her perspective.” And the list of Cilker supporters only grew with the release of 2023’s ‘Valley of Heart’s Delight.’ NPR noted, “Cilker's sound is classic cowboy country, but her sensibility is totally now.” Bandcamp deemed her “the future Lucinda Williams of the West.” Lists of the year’s best music from Uncut, No Depression, Paste, Stereogum, and several more bore her name. None of it appears to have gone to Cilker’s head. In fact, her commitment to making music free from industry measurements has only intensified.
Cilker recently launched Fossil Records with friend and fellow musician Avery Hellman, a label motivated by artist solidarity above all. “Right now, it’s all in the family,” says Cilker. “People we love, driven by a shared devotion to songwriting.”
And why? Because for Cilker, songwriting is a contribution to humanity, a way of making the world a better place. “You don’t know what people have lived through, what another person is carrying with them,” she says. “Every time I’ve written something about hardship, or gone to a place people don’t want to go, there has been someone who tells me they needed it.” Like venom spun into antidote, or ashes feeding the earth, Cilker’s sadness arrives as its own part of nature’s cycle. Pain consumed to soothe.
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