Son Little

Curiosity about his ancestry has led songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Son Little on a journey throughout the American South that has resulted in his new album, simply titled CITYFOLK. The West coast born, Northeast-bred musician finetunes his craft here and speaks for those enduring tribulations about finding their place in the world.

Little, whose real name is Aaron Livingston, has sonically traveled practically everywhere that his songwriting and instrumentation have taken him, especially since the beginning of the 2020s. He’s toured with the likes of Black Pumas, Kelis and Mumford & Sons, and made festival appearances at Newport Folk and Bonnaroo, melding his dedicated fanbase with mainstream listeners. On the soulful fluidity of that year’s project aloha, the ANTI Records act braves his way through realizations about his personal shortcomings but endeavors to persevere through the madness. 2022’s Like Neptune unspools Little’s time in therapy, no longer silencing his inner fire. With a catalog that has amassed over 250 million streams, Little’s originality has embarked on a new chapter.

Now living outside of Atlanta, Livingston attributes the development of CITYFOLK to going even further south to record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in January 2025. It was there that Little, whose past collaborations include The Roots and RJD2, connected with two-time Grammy-winning musician and Alabama Shakes band member Ben Tanner to flesh out sketches of songs that he’d crafted through epiphanies about his family’s roots. Already having an understanding of his father’s side, Little views his maternal line as a “mystery unfolding,” but it was in Shoals that the stars aligned, both through retracing his history and formulating an organic chemistry with Tanner.

But it wasn’t an intentional journey: Little was guided by water through the misfortune of pipes bursting in the basement of his Atlanta residence. The space flooded several times, and at one point, it occurred just as wildfires were raging in Los Angeles, where Little traveled to record a collaborative project. Life presented an obstacle, but Little went with instinct by flowing through the madness. Shoals would become his escape route, and in channeling Mavis Staples–who Little worked with on 2015 EP Your Good Fortune–Otis Redding, and other pioneers who took up space in the small town in times past, Little cemented an audible manifestation of his journey.