Reid Haughton grew up in a tiny town in North Alabama, playing music in his church until he left to start his life in college. Once at Auburn University, the curly-haired kid filled to the brim with talent continued playing music in the local bars until he left for Nashville.
And now that the singer-songwriter has arrived in Music City, he still can’t quite believe it.
“Somehow, I ended up here in Nashville with a publishing deal at River House,” Haughton says with a sense of astonishment during an interview with The Boot. “I guess I believe it, but I still wake up every day saying to myself that I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”
Indeed, with the release of his current soulful single “Day You Don’t,” Haughton is beginning to realize that country music might be where he finds a forever home for his irresistible brand of truth-telling.
“I think it may have been my title that I brought in,” the 24-year-old explains of “Day You Don’t,” which he wrote alongside Rivers Rutherford, Ben Foster and Joybeth Taylor. “I didn’t really have a groove or anything. But Rivers (Rutherford) is just a wizard and started ripping around on that.”
And while Haughton says he wasn’t thinking of anything specific in his own life as he was writing it, he has since come to bond with the story it tells.
“Sometimes, I figure out that songs are something I experienced way after the fact,” explains Haughton, who moved to Nashville in 2021 and released his single “Got the Girl.”
“I always think that whatever song I’m writing is something that I’m making up. And then I realize weeks later that the song is very close to a story that I lived, you know?”
Haughton says he currently finds himself in a longtime relationship with his high school sweetheart. But yes, he’s seen stories like the ones he sings about in “Day You Don’t” play out before his own eyes.
“It’s a very common theme,” he says quietly.
Sonically, Haughton says that “Day You Don’t” hits all the right notes, creating an entirety of sound that he has been searching for a while.
“Some people never figure out what they want to ultimately sound like,” says Haughton, who currently fills his ears with the sounds of artists such as Kings of Leon, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and a playlist of seventies rock music. “Imagine how many people are amazing, but they just never find that thing that separates them from the rest. For me, it was like a light bulb moment when I recorded this song. It was like every aspect of my life was spent figuring out what the sound was, and with this song, we found it.”
He takes a deep breath.
“There is a world inside my mind that I haven’t brought to life until right now,” concludes Haughton, who will head out on tour this month with Tyler Booth. “All I have to do is just be myself. It’s way easier to do it than to force whatever you aren’t.”
You can keep up with Reid Haughton by following him on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or by visiting his official website.