Here’s the video premiere for Rainwater and Whiskey, the latest song from Canadian singer-songwriter Logan Staats. The follow-up to previous single releases Empty Hands and Medicine Wheel is a dramatic, atmospheric song that showcases Staats’s outstanding voice, which is full of soulful grit and weary character. Rainwater and Whiskey emerges through carefully layered and textured instrumentation, swelling with pedal steel and Miles Evans-Branagh’s keys. John JP Pagnotta’s saxophone, Paul Mitchel’s trumpet, and Peter Hysen’s trombone add to the mood, while glorious backing from Noelle Coughlin, Renee Coughlin, Hilary Watson, and Allison Russell keeps the focus on Staats’ vocal performance and heartfelt lyrical intent. Staats’ arrangement allows the song to ebb and flow and breathe, drawing us in further.
Through his emotive words, Staats explores competing elements and highlights duality and struggle, both internal and communal, when we try to reconcile these contrasts. He explains: “It’s a reflective song that looks back at hard but defining times in my life. It’s a visceral and honest piece that lives in those difficult grey areas, articulating things we often leave unsaid.”
These ideas are reflected and represented through the symbols of water and whiskey. Staats continues: “Water is a vital element for me, representing life, protection, and the spiritual significance of water in Indigenous teachings. I was thinking about how rainwater brings life, we protect it, and it’s a big part of our fight as Indigenous people. So much of teachings revolve around water. It’s medicine. This sentiment is starkly contrasted with whiskey, which represents the opposite: bad medicine, addiction, and the trauma alcohol brought, and continues to bring, to Indigenous communities through colonization. I’ve seen many people in my family and on the Rez struggle with alcohol abuse. It is a common and heartbreaking thread. This song is my way of coping with that reality, using music to process the pain not just from my own experiences, but from watching friends and family grapple with various vices.” Writing about duality and opposites is a recurring theme in Staats’ songs and is a form of self-healing and release. Confronting these issues in song helps him to reflect on and manage his own struggles.
Staats says of the video for the single: “Rainwater and Whiskey is one of my personal favourite songs on the forthcoming record. We filmed this video while I was on tour with Julian Taylor, and I wanted to bring viewers backstage and behind the scenes, giving my fans an inside look at being a road dog, tour life and what my professional life can sometimes look like. It was an absolute honour and such a privilege to work with Sara Basso on another project. She and her team really went above and beyond to bring our shared vision to life. Nia: wen” While the visual accompaniment to the song was recorded on tour, it is anything but a performance video; this is artfully shot and edited to reveal connections and characters, rituals and the way we inhabit spaces. Absorbing to watch, the video brings us closer to Logan Staats and his collaborators.
Recipient of a JUNO Award nomination, multiple Native American Music Awards, and the SOCAN Indigenous Songwriter of the Year award, Logan Staats is an acclaimed americana songwriter. It’s been a busy few months for Staats, who has just completed a co-headline Canadian tour with Julian Taylor and performed with Terra Lightfoot as part of the Road to the JUNOs in Hamilton. He has just spent a month as the artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in the Toga da wôhnagabi: Music Creation Residency, before appearances at Departure Festival in Toronto and Paddlefest in New Brunswick.
Out now on Ishkōdé Records, Rainwater and Whiskey will appear on Staats’ forthcoming new album, Peacemaker, due to be released on 2nd October 2026 – one to look out for. Absorbing stuff.
