Jobi Riccio Didn't Outgrow Punk — She Just Picked Up a Different Guitar
There’s a specific kind of songwriter who makes you lean forward. Not because they’re loud — though Jobi Riccio can absolutely get loud — but because every word sounds like it cost them something. That’s the punk in her, even when the instrumentation says country.
From Colorado Trails to Nashville Grit
Riccio grew up in Colorado powered by the usual suspects — John Prine, Joni Mitchell, The Chicks on local radio, Nickel Creek filling in the gaps. Her 2023 debut Whiplash was a folk-country record about coming of age, coming out, and searching for a place that felt like home. It earned her the John Prine Songwriter Fellowship, which is about as close to a punk merit badge as Americana hands out.
But Whiplash was the warmup. Her sophomore album Face the Feeling, dropping May 15, is the one where she stops running.
“Buzzkill” — The Song That Hits Like a Basement Show
The single “Buzzkill” is where Riccio’s punk DNA shows up in full distortion. Driven by overdriven guitar and a vocal delivery that splits the difference between Courtney Barnett’s deadpan and Waxahatchee’s full-throated twang, it’s a song about graduating into a pandemic, watching your twenties slip sideways, and refusing to apologize for not living “the movie version” of adulthood.
“I needed to process and accept that sometimes life sucks, but that it’s not because of anything I did or didn’t do,” Riccio told press about the track. That’s not a country songwriter talking. That’s someone who learned honesty from hardcore and applied it to a different set of chords.
Co-produced by Riccio herself alongside Isaiah Beard and Jesse Timm, “Buzzkill” pairs dry wit with emotional clarity. It’s the kind of track that would work just as well in a sweaty DIY venue as it does on a Nashville stage.
The Quiet Rebel on “Pilar, NM”
Then there’s “Pilar, NM,” the album’s lead single, where pedal steel and panoramic strings pull you into something that sounds like a classic outlaw ballad. But listen to the lyrics — “Make myself turn and face the feeling / And sit inside of it” — and you hear the same refusal to flinch. Where punk screams through discomfort, Riccio sits in it. Different volume, same defiance.
The album Face the Feeling was written between Colorado and Nashville and deals in the emotions her debut tried to outrun: grief, rage, self-doubt, desire. It’s not an easy record to categorize, which is exactly the point.
DIY or Die (Even on TikTok)
Riccio’s punk bona fides extend beyond the music. She’s been vocal on TikTok about AI-generated music flooding streaming platforms, calling out how it “steals the part of my job where I already can’t make money” while mining from real artists’ creativity. In an era where folk and protest music are making a TikTok-fueled comeback, Riccio isn’t just writing sad songs about feelings — she’s picking fights with the systems that exploit independent artists.
That’s the throughline. Whether she’s channeling Prine’s storytelling or plugging in a distortion pedal, the ethos is the same one that filled basement shows and zine distros for decades: make the thing yourself, say what’s true, and don’t let anyone water it down.
Why This Matters
Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield walked this same path — from Birmingham punk houses to a Grammy-nominated Americana record. Now she’s co-headlining with MJ Lenderman at the Beacon Theatre. Riccio is earlier in that arc, but the trajectory is unmistakable. She’s got the songwriting chops, the DIY credibility, and the willingness to make uncomfortable art.
Face the Feeling drops May 15. If you’re the kind of person who believes punk is an attitude before it’s a genre, this one’s for you.
What do you think — is the punk-to-Americana pipeline the most interesting thing happening in roots music right now? Drop a comment or hit me up.
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