Austin Stambaugh is a guitarist, poet, and songwriter, originally from Northeastern Ohio, now located in Nashville, Tennessee. Enriched with an authenticity that is magnetically keen, he has supported national touring acts such as Joe Ely and Kinky Friedman. His work has been called, ‘Timeless and nuanced, starkly sad and a little funny…,’ by Lilly Hiatt, who says, ‘enjoy with the lights low.’ Tim Easton wrote, ‘Austin Stambaugh is the best flatpicking songwriter you’ve never heard of and I’ll stand on Steve Earle’s coffee table in my redwing boots and say it.’
“Aint Through Being Lonely Yet” was written as a self-study. There’s this way of observing reality, that ordinary people have a vernacular of their own and their music and style of speech happen naturally. I was walking around one evening with this awareness, and I ran into my friend Hannah Juanita at a bar somewhere. When she asked me how I was doing I responded to her as true as a breath and light heartedly, “oh, I aint through being lonely yet..” and when I said the words a little click in my brain said: “THATS MY SONG. THATS MY HEART AND WHO I AM.” So, I went home and wrote the song. It took a few weeks and I played it out around town to smooth the edges. I remember I was working at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at the time and folding t-shirts in the basement, humming the melody and writing the words on a piece of receipt paper. So that’s how the song happened. With a kind of third eye on the mundane. I got a hold of the idea from Tom T. Hall and his lens on the ordinary. Everyone speaks one thousand songs a day. You just have to have the ears. You will surprise yourself if you do this. I’m so glad I have this song. I’m proud to have built a song around something uniquely my own. It gets more true every time I sing it. It hopefully can help someone else the way it helps me.
