Cheyenne musician explores faith, relationships and invisible boundaries on debut album

Oct. 21—Local singer/songwriter Jason Lenyer Buchanan finally feels comfortable.

After relocating to Cheyenne from Houston in 2021, Buchanan has established himself as one of the core members in the local music scene, playing regularly throughout the capital city at various bars and breweries both solo and with his outfit, The Short Timers. More recently, he's branched out across the state while reaching the finals of the Wyoming Singer-Songwriter Competition in Ten Sleep.

Despite years of live performances and songwriting, he's set to release his first proper album, "Crooked Rivers," an exploration of his faith — especially as a former minister — familial drama and beginning anew in Wyoming.

"The whole album was very much written as I made the move from Houston to Wyoming. It was almost a catharsis," Buchanan said over coffee on Thursday morning. "All of these songs were written in Wyoming, and as a Texas born-and-bred guy, to have a whole album — probably the album that is a seminal album for me — for it to come in Wyoming...that was weird.

"All the songs have a piece of my processing this, where I'm now in Wyoming and this is where (I) belong."

Listeners will notice one thing during their first run-through of the album's 13 tracks — these songs are, at the very least, melancholy. This is the most honest and, frankly, unfiltered that Buchanan has ever been in his writing. He feels confident and comfortable in the output, which is a tough feeling to foster for a self-critical creator.

The key is to find a balance.

Good songwriters write what they know. In Buchanan's case, what he knows is his wife, who is the focus of "Bury Me With A Broom," the pitfalls of now living with his 90-year-old father, like in "I'm Still Your Son," and the hypocrisy of some pseudo-Christian teachings, a theme that appears at several points in the album.

However, such cathartic topics can easily dip into self-indulgence, something Buchanan was conscious to avoid during the process.

The track "I'm Not As Good" is a moment where Buchanan finds the happy medium. Following his divorce from his first wife in Dallas and his eventual relocation to Houston, the song is a blunt recital of Buchanan's mental state as he struggled to remain present in his children's lives.

"That song was written about the pain. My children are all adults now, and they listened to the song and they were like, 'Dad, I know you wrestled with this, but just know you were there for us,'" Buchanan said. "This is the heartache of making that decision, and I'll carry it with me for the rest of my life. I lost out on tuck-ins and spelling bees.

"It's very much a personal story, and there was a season where I didn't want to perform that song. It was a song where you've got to be careful about vomiting your emotions on people."

So while songs like "I'm Still Your Son," "The Long Road Back to Ten Sleep" and "Bury Me With a Broom" all address specific moments in time, many songs on the album explore far-reaching themes.

"Love the Sinner" is his personal favorite, a deconstruction of "love the sinner, hate the sin," a colloquialism that Buchanan was well accustomed to during his time as a minister. From his perspective, there's no separating the sinner and the sin. The rule, as Jesus said, is simply, "love the sinner."

He was inspired to write the song after a Casper abortion clinic was set ablaze in the spring of 2022, just before the repeal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court that June. Lorna Roxanne Green, 22, pleaded guilty to federal arson in July and was sentenced to five years in prison in late September.

"Our faith, particularly Christian faith, is like a potluck gospel," Buchanan said. "We go to the things at the table that we love, and we very much look over that weird casserole. We very much look over that green gelatinous thing, but there's a whole lot of green gelatinous food in the Bible, that we are just straight up, 'I don't want to look at that. I don't want to deal with that.'

"The Bible is not a potluck gospel. You take it all."

There's also the track "The Ballad of Moses and Pharaoh," which was originally titled "When God Killed the Babies." It is an unaltered telling of the story of Passover.

"I don't necessarily agree with everything that's in the Word, but I've got to deal with that," he continued. "One of those (things we have to deal with) is all the killing in the Old Testament."

Perhaps the most personal of all the songs is the title track, "Crooked Rivers."

The song explores the psychic and societal boundaries we erect between one another. He considered the differences between the states of Colorado and Wyoming, the only concrete difference being an imaginary line that separates the two states, and subsequent boundaries between each population's lifestyles.

Specifically, the song sheds light on his daughter, who is transgender, and the struggle she faced being accepted by family and friends, leading Buchanan to write the lines, "How's it come that a mother raised a fist against a son/ You can raise 'em how you want, gotta love 'em how they are."

Despite wearing his heart on his sleeve, he's never felt better about what he's singing. Wyoming plays a big role in that, but it comes as the result of a personal journey, too.

"This state is 'live-and-let-live' land. Of course, better angels don't always win, but at the core, I was very much in love with this place," he said. "I went, 'Is this place safe for me to write these things down?' And of course a move by itself is disruptive in your life. Anytime you have a big change, really.

"But I always say, 'Don't waste a crisis.' I had an upheaval in my life and as a songwriter you never waste that. Take the inspiration."

Will Carpenter is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's Arts and Entertainment/Features Reporter. He can be reached by email at wcarpenter@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3135. Follow him on Twitter @will_carp_.