Ken Pomeroy wants you to feel her empathy.
The 22-year-old singer-songwriter may be sharing her hopes for Cruel Joke, her 12-track album that drops on May 16th, but she’s also articulating the reason she makes music at all. “From the beginning, the goal for me — my mission statement, I guess — is just not wanting people to feel alone,” she tells Rolling Stone.
Pomeroy is a lifelong Oklahoman and native Cherokee whose sound bridges the gap between country and folk. Her songwriting is heavy and occasionally dark, but always drawing upon her life experiences. She has spent the last two years headlining bars and listening rooms and opening large clubs and theaters for the likes of John Moreland, Kaitlin Butts, and American Aquarium on their U.S. tours.
Cruel Joke is her second record — following 2021’s Christmas Lights in April — but her first since fully committing herself to a solo career. Recorded and produced with her partner and collaborator, Dakota McDaniel, the album is a snapshot of Pomeroy’s life and worldview. In early April, Pomeroy and McDaniel stopped by their favorite local music shop, Guitar House of Tulsa, and broke down the album for Rolling Stone. At times, she processes trauma and heartache on the record; at others, she crafts narratives rooted in her native heritage.
“I never purposely do anything to try to put it in there, it just naturally comes out,” Pomeroy says of her songwriting. “Storytelling in music is such a traditional root of so many native cultures that I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m doing this now. I think I have a lot of traditional elements in my songwriting. Nature is a very common theme. Animals are a very common theme, with what they stand for in native culture. Folktale-esque elements are also in there. But I never try to force it.”
Pomeroy was raised in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, surrounded by music. Her father was in a band and ran a venue in their hometown. Her favorite group growing up was the Dirty River Boys, an independent Texas outfit that Pomeroy credits with opening her eyes to where music could take her. “Dirty River Boys were my, ‘Holy crap, this is cool,’ moment. It wasn’t local, but it was achievable. I could meet them. I could do what they do,” she says.
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Along with McDaniel, a fellow musician, Pomeroy spent her late teens and early 20s playing solo shows around Oklahoma City and occasionally joining bands — most notably playing with Kyle Nix and the .38s on their 2023 record After the Flood, Vol. 1. She relocated to Tulsa before she wrote most of Cruel Joke and fell into the city’s independent Red Dirt scene.
“I was in a weird place, musically, where I was just playing with people who didn’t get it, or didn’t get what I was trying to do,” Pomeroy says. “I was being told by everyone that I needed to not do folk music, and that I needed to pursue this, like, rock band thing I was doing. And I just went, ‘This is terrible. I want to play my music.’”
McDaniel recalls having an epiphany after both he and Pomeroy had a bad night of shows in Oklahoma City. “We were sitting in my car, and I go, ‘We should make a record,” he says. “Instead of me playing guitar or bass for local musicians or you doing whatever your band wants you to do, we could just go make sure that each other’s visions are getting fulfilled.’”
Two of the songs on Cruel Joke will be familiar to fans of the FX series Reservation Dogs. Creator and director Sterlin Harjo — like Pomeroy, a native Oklahoman — chose “Cicadas” and “Pareidolia” to be featured in the show in 2023. “That kick-started a bunch of things for us,” Pomeroy says.
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“One of the things I like doing with Res Dogs is boosting local musicians,” Harjo tells Rolling Stone. “There’s not much of an industry for them other than live music, and this gives another avenue for an artist to make money. I also think it makes my show better. Populating the show with local musicians helps me tell the story that I’m trying to tell… Ken is amazing. Her music stops you in your tracks. She’s native. She’s country. She’s got Red Dirt in her veins. You can’t really ignore someone who is that good.’”
Not long after the Reservation Dogs appearance, she found another of her songs, “Wall of Death,” featured in the soundtrack for 2024’s Twisters, released just as she finished her run opening for Moreland. In October, Pomeroy would release “Coyote” as a duet with Moreland — a fellow Oklahoman and an artist whose style and approach heavily influenced Pomeroy.
“I was such a huge fan of his when I was a kid,” Pomeroy says. “I have such a deep, ingrained memory of listening to ‘3:59 a.m.’ while jumping on my trampoline as a kid, thinking, ‘This is so good. How is he writing things that make me feel like this?’ So, obviously, it was really sick that we got to tour with him. Now, we’re buddies. He’s jaded, just like I am, so we can talk about that, too.”
The two put that rapport on display in “Coyote” as they swap verses and lyrics like “I know I’m the coyote/I bite just ’cause I’m scared,” over a string-laden waltz. It’s one of a handful of songs on Cruel Joke that pulls in the animal imagery Pomeroy often finds in her songs. “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes” is another, but it’s a love song — “The only love song I’ve ever written” — and Pomeroy’s personal favorite on the album.
The record is not overtly political, but she does find herself assessing the state of the world while wondering if an all-powerful deity could, or should, intervene, on “Days Getting Darker.”
“I was never super into, or not into, God,” Pomeroy says of the song’s inspiration. “I was just in this indifferent space, and I never felt pressured into anything. But I did go to Catholic school, and I got to learn a lot about it, and I feel like I am pretty educated on at least the basics. With all the current climate, and seeing people in my family being affected by opiates, and not being able to get what they need health-wise, I saw that and thought, ‘This sucks. What’s stopping this greater power from doing anything about it?’”
Pomeroy has album release shows set for Nashville, Brooklyn, and Tulsa, before a pair of major summer festival appearances at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Jackalope Jamboree in Pendleton, Oregon. She will spend July as the opener for Iron & Wine and I’m With Her on a tour of theaters and amphitheaters before making her debut at the Newport Folk Festival. Outside of a goal to tour Europe, Pomeroy says she’s content with how far her career has come.
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“I just, like, want to be happy with it, you know?”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose fourth book, Never Say Never: Cross Canadian Ragweed, Boys From Oklahoma, and a Red Dirt Comeback Story for the Ages, was released in April via Back Lounge Publishing.
