Cadillac Young is a multifaceted musician. No doubt you’re well aware of Shitfire, the thrashy punk rock band in which Young plays guitar and is a contributing songwriter. They have certainly cemented their legacy in Louisville music’s history with their high energy live shows and ever-evolving sound that suggests their best material is still yet to come. It’s definitely not a stretch to say people will still be talking about Shitfire decades from now. But few are aware of his background in country music, myself included up until last December when Young asked me to review a two-track country EP he’d just released with The Shively Shitfires called Jug Band Christmas. I was convinced they’d recorded a couple joke songs right up until the moment I started listening to it. It only took a minute to realize that not only was this serious, it was also really good and extremely talented! As it turns out, this isn’t new ground for Young at all, but we’ll let him tell that story.
On the heels of the release of his new country-tinged folk rock solo EP, Bare My Bones, LEO cornered Young in a small, dark room and forced him to tell his life story at knife point, (we actually just emailed him questions). Here’s the confession we got outta him!
LEO: In a nutshell, tell us about your life.
Cadillac Young: I was born and raised on Dixie Highway. Got my first guitar, (bass guitar technically), in the 6th or 7th grade and started playing shows when I was 12. I’ve played in a ton of bands throughout the years and continue to today. I run a recording studio behind my house and when I’m not strumming a guitar, I’m swinging a hammer.
I have a fabrication and renovation company with two of my friends. It’s called Hammerhead. We build custom furniture and other cool home finishings. My partner Dave focuses on metal working and I have a wood shop attached to the studio.
I have a strong passion for learning and doing as much as I can. The DIY ethos was first introduced to me by my granddad. He grew up dirt poor and for necessity’s sake, learned how to fix/build just about anything. So when I was old enough to start exploring music genres, punk stood out to me because it is often influenced by DIY as well.
Punk rock is accessible because it’s more about creating safe and welcoming spaces for folks that otherwise might not feel that way in their day-to-day lives; to create and participate in a shared beneficial experience and everything from putting on shows in basements to screen printing shirts and making art is done by the community instead of relying on corporations.
How did you come about the name Cadillac Young?
A good friend of mine once told me that his father wanted to name him Cadillac but his mama vetoed it. So I told him that if I ever started a country project, I’d call myself Cadillac. A half-decade later or so, I called him up and let him know I was finally ready to slide on boots and explore my roots. And then “Young” is a nod to my favorite songwriter ever, Neil Young.
I thought the new solo EP and the recent Shively Shitfires singles were your first foray into country music, but a quick Bandcamp search revealed a single from 2018 and an EP going all the way back to 2012. What got you into writing country songs, and how far back does it go?
Well, I grew up listening to nothing but country. That’s all my grandad listened to and I was always by his side. It wasn’t until 5th or 6th grade when I discovered punk and alternative and started framing my own tastes. Then I overcorrected and swore off country for most of my teenage years. The culture surrounding then-current country music was cringey and I was too busy playing loud and sloppy.
Then I got into Johnny Cash and outlaw country and it had all the aspects of punk, just in a different presentation. Soon after, I discovered Neil Young and he played loud and heavy one moment and soft and sparse the next. So I went out and bought an acoustic guitar and decided to start writing my own folk and country songs. It was eye-opening because I had never written songs completely independently before. Like, songs that maybe wouldn’t have any other accompaniment. That was a game changer. So I began writing country songs and playing them around bonfires or opening for my friend’s punk rock bands.
Unfortunately, I shelved trying to push the project because I got busy with touring bands and other musical endeavors. I never stopped writing these songs though and when we started Shitfire back in 2021, the members of that band pushed me to put focus back on this project and they started playing as my backing band! But they’re so much more than that. They help bring the songs to a whole new level; adding backing vocals and lead melodies and such. So I’m kinda glad I’m only now, for real pushing it because it’s finally sounding like how I always envisioned when I was younger.
Regarding the song “Enough About Me”, you’d mentioned in a Facebook post that “It was easy to write but it’s hard to sing,” and that it “might be one of the most important songs (to me) that I’ve ever written.” What can you tell us about that song?
My mama struggled with severe depression and substance abuse my whole life. She loved me, no doubt about that, but I don’t think she ever truly loved herself and her addiction lead to a slow deterioration in her quality of life and her ability to maintain relationships.
I feel like as a child, I naively trusted her promises to get clean and it was hard to understand why she would say one thing and then not stick to it. With each fall off the wagon and each promise broken, our foundation of trust was compromised. But I never gave up hope that maybe this attempt would be THE one.
I watched her wrestle with her steady physical and mental decline. Her ability to keep a job got harder, but she always seemed to hold onto the idea that THIS time sobriety was gonna stick. So I wanted to capture that withering notion of hope in this song. The degradation of conviction. It was heartbreaking to watch, and for years I held a lot of animosity towards her – and I didn’t like that about myself.
I have been dedicated to sobriety my whole life so I really can’t know the inner turmoil she faced mentally or physiologically; but I know how it affected me and wanted to channel that shared, albeit vastly different, pain into this song.
Until her dying days she never stopped trying to get better, even if it always escaped her grasp. So this was me aiming to find empathy for her and shed the misplaced resentment.
The other three songs on the new EP, what were the inspirations behind those?
All three of those share a similar theme; a feeling I’ve contended with most of my life. The only difference is at what point in my life I wrote them, so my self-worth and accountability evolved as I matured.
“You Deserve Better”, the most light-hearted of the three, was written in my 20s after I had ended multiple relationships with wonderful people because I felt like I was “less than” them. I’m just a simple Dixie Highway’n and I felt like I didn’t have the money or aspirations that would make me a fitting partner.
“Blemished Apprentice” grew from the same sentiment, but I wrote it at a time when the pressure to conform and settle down was more pressing, and I really felt like a failure for being in my 30s and still not being able to sustain a healthy relationship.
“Shapeshifter” hit the hardest for me. I was going through a rough time, in an unhealthy relationship, and I was thumbing through old lyrics and half-finished songs and came upon the first verse and chorus for this one. I had written it a year or two earlier and when I found it I felt like I was in the exact same situation, just with a new person. It was overwhelming to feel like it was a never-ending cycle.
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Many of your solo songs tend to have themes of self-sabotage and, for lack of a better term, you beating yourself up over decisions you’ve made in the past. Yet they also seem to be experiences you’ve learned a great deal and grown from. Is it fair to say you’re a much different person now than the version of you that you sing about?
I’m breaking kayfabe here but a lot of my songs prior to this EP are sensationalized romanticizations of people in my life’s experiences. Between my wild redneck family and the friends I keep, there is no shortage of tall tales, erratic emotions, and hard-learned life lessons to pull from and write about.
If it’s about a broken heart or the rare love song, it’s probably straight from my true perspective, but most of the ones where I’m talking about drug-fueled benders and being an absolute menace to society are pulled from tales handed down from my kin.
I’m no angel, but I was always just a book-loving nerd. I think steering clear of drugs and alcohol helped keep my nose fairly clean. My love of professional wrestling and action figures didn’t hurt either.
Each of your solo songs, including the ones you did years ago, are deep and introspective. Do you ever worry that maybe you’ve put too much of yourself out there?
Nope! I love vulnerability! I love sharing my emotions with people and making unguarded connections. I’m not ashamed to cry like a baby. That’s what drew me to and keeps me invested in art and the local music scene. Feeling a deeper connection through sharing art, as the performer or audience, is very valuable to me.
As far as your songwriting, the difference between your other bands and your solo material is almost night and day. You’d never know it was the same person. Is there a different process you go through for writing songs for each of your bands and solo material?
In my younger years I was obsessed with separating the voices/characters for each project I wrote for. I‘ve created three different 90s-style alternative projects (Bug Muff, Cynical Saint, and Divine Lovers) and I try to use a different vocal styling for each. When I write lyrics for them I’d try to have a different narrative perspective as well.
The same was always true for Cadillac Young, too. As I’ve gotten older, for my main projects, I’ve mostly let them all meld together. Not necessarily stylistically, just letting them be the most authentically me. I’ve even started writing certain songs that I can play either soft and folky or turn around and play in a post-punk way and it still “make sense” to me.
Besides Shitfire, tell us about the other bands you’re in and what we can expect from them coming up.
Pleasures of the Flesh is a band that I also play guitar in. I tend to write more lead lines for Pleasures; whereas in Shitfire, I’m almost exclusively rhythm guitar. I share vocal and lyric writing duties with the bass player and my great friend Kyle. This is the band that I first realized my musical personalities were coalescing. We’re currently working on a full length and will begin recording as soon as my new studio is built.
I play drums in Loam. We just finished tracking our first full length album. That project was started by my friends Devin and Dan, and I pretty much begged them to let me and our other friend Dean join. This will be the first ever official release where I’ll be on drums!
I have an orchestral band called The Wax Intellectual and we usually get together every 6 or so years to write a 40 minute piece of music, play it live three or so times and then fall back into the shadows. There have been rumblings of pulling that project back off the shelf.
Lastly I created this new band Bug Muff almost exclusively to write 90s-inspired love songs for my partner, Shannon.
I do have quite a few other bands/side projects that aren’t broken up, I just don’t have the time to explore them right now.
At this point, Shitfire is already legendary in the Louisville music scene. What is your history with that band and how did you all come to be?
Thank you! I appreciate your kind words and I sure hope to continue elevating the Louisville music scene and being elevated by it!
Around 2019/2020, all the projects I was a part of were taking themselves seriously; practicing often and taking weeks if not months to write a song. That’s dope but I needed an outlet where I showed a drummer a riff or two, we played through it twice and then we recorded it and that first take was the final product. I wasn’t concerned with this being a project anyone heard, I just wanted to make fun, easy music. That’s where Luke came in.
We recorded the bones of Fuck To This [Shitfire’s debut EP] with no direction or plans for its future. Luke suggested his friend Cliff throw guitar leads on top of the songs and I said, “Sure! Why not?” Then, our friend Hannah was hanging out during all of this and Luke suggested she put words over the songs. Again, I said, “What the heck? Let’s hear it!” And that was how the first EP was written.
We showed a few folks and were quickly asked to play an art show and a couple other fun gigs like a Wombo show at Z-Bar! Just like that, it became a real band.
I know Shitfire has a huge gig coming up late May at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas. How did you all get on that bill?
Two years ago, we received an email from someone booking a fest out in San Francisco (It’s a legit fest but I won’t name any names because my band doesn’t appreciate my pettiness.).
Anyways, we agreed to play 2024’s lineup and made plans to fly out to California and booked a tour up the coast to this festival. A week before we flew out there, the festival dropped us because we booked a show two days before the fest too close in proximity to SF; even though we never signed a radius clause and we were nobodies on that side of the country.
We scrambled to find a replacement show and ended up landing an amazing gig with Frankie & The Witch Fingers. Someone at the show who had booked Punk Rock Bowling in the past said, “Y’all are on people’s radar.” I had no clue what that meant but thought it was really cool to hear and then the next day we got an email from the current booker of PRB and they asked us if we wanted to play it in 2025!
They’ve since asked us to play a hotel roof pool party during the fest as well! So that’s pretty rad.
Are there any other big plans in the works for Shitfire that you can talk about?
I’m currently constructing a new building behind my house; half of it will be my new woodshop and the other half will be my new studio!
So for the first time since my early 20s, we’re set up in the basement of my house right now writing a full length and I think we’ll be done writing it around the same time the studio is finished, so then we’ll get in there and get started tracking!
Otherwise, we just wanna play as many shows with all of our friends as we can and hopefully open up for some killer bands coming through town on tour!
What future plans do you have for your solo material, as well as the Shively Shitfires?
I have a back catalogue of hundreds of tunes just waiting to be brought out while still writing new ones often. So I’m going to tour on this EP regionally for a couple months and then get started recording a full length! Plus, I have some more songs that I’d like to release for the winter holidays like I did last year!
First, my focus will be on this EP release show – May 15th at Cave Valley Kava (I’m playing the record solo and then playing a set with The Shively Shitfires behind me). Townsel Turner and Sam Woodring are joining me for the party!
This will kick off a four day regional tour playing in Huntington, WV, Berea and Lexington, KY! I love being on the road, so whether it’s solo or with a band, my goal is to be gone more than I’m home.
‘Bare My Bones’ will be available on all streaming platforms and on CD beginning May 15th. The EP release show takes place that night at Cave Valley Kava, 2115 Crums Lane. All ages, music at 8:30 pm, $10.
For more info on Cadillac Young, visit: cadillacyoung502.bandcamp.com and instagram.com/caddyyoung502, Shitfire: instagram.com/shitfireofficial, Pleasures of the Flesh: instagram.com/pleasuresflesh, Loam: instagram.com/loam_theband
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This article appears in Apr 25 – May 8, 2025.