Cassandra Lewis knows how to tell a story. She could go into detail about a childhood in constant motion, moving in a montage from Germany through Florida, Texas, and, eventually, Idaho among her family of “high mountain desert folk.” She shares memories of escaping loneliness and insecurity in front of the television set or tasting her first bit of fanfare as “a little yodeling cowgirl” at the town’s lone Walmart or retirement homes. There were moments of houselessness, working in countless restaurants, sleeping in a shared tent at a refugee camp, and selling joints “out of the back of a Subaru” that she lived out of with her rescue dog and cat after a wildfire burned down her farm in Mendocino. She found community in the Bay Area and if not for the integration of psilocybin and psychedelic medicine, she may have succumbed to the pitfalls of life instead of moving forward and using her pain to heal and forgive. She says she holds a deep gratitude for these dualities. “You can’t appreciate the light without living and breathing the dark.” She inhaled inspiration from cut-and-dry classic country and rock ‘n’ roll, smoked-out soulful psychedelia, and exhaled a shadowy signature sound—easily likened to a fever dream between Marty Robbins and Joni Mitchell. This is a new kind of cosmic Americana. She slung her songs for anyone who would listen only for a proverbial “last shot” to pay off by landing a deal with Low Country Sound/Elektra Records circa the Pandemic. Now, she’s taking this foundation and paving her own yellow brick road on her 2024 full-length album, Lost in a Dream.