Ken Pomeroy Follows Fellow Oklahoman Woody Guthrie & Sings for the Immigrant on Tonight’s News
- Josh Kitchen
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
By : Josh Kitchen / August 21, 2026
“You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane / All they will call you will be deportees,” Ken Pomeroy sings in her cover of Woody Guthrie’s righteous indictment of the treatment of migrants and immigrants in America.
Pomeroy, the 23-year-old Oklahoma native, has been cropping up on everybody’s lists of the best new singer-songwriters since the release of her 2025 album Cruel Joke, with her songs “Cicadas” and “Pareidolia” appearing on FX’s Reservation Dogs in 2023. It’s a fitting place to find her music, as the show centers on Indigenous Americans in rural Oklahoma, and Pomeroy herself is Cherokee.
Pomeroy’s cover of “Deportee” comes from her new EP, Tonight’s News, out today via Rounder Records, and it’s one of five covers Pomeroy performs with her band in an intimate recording session that took place in Chicago with Wilco producer Tom Schick. [Additional production was done by Pomeroy's partner Dakota McDaniel.]
“We recorded this EP in one day in Chicago,” Pomeroy said. “Every song on it has its own little story as to why we chose to add it to the kind of interesting collection.” She added: “Each song was performed live with no overdubbing, with all of us sitting in a weird circle. I hope you all enjoy these songs as much as we enjoyed playing them with each other.”
It’s that live element that makes this collection of covers and one original so special. Pomeroy has an incredible ability to make you feel like you’re hearing her sing up close, with the air still and only broken by her voice. There is an authenticity in Pomeroy’s voice—the sound of someone who’s lived much longer than her 23 years, a voice that echoes so much of the history she proudly carries with her.
Pomeroy brings that same depth to covers of “Look At Miss Ohio” by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings; a version of “This Old Guitar” by Pomeroy’s first musical influence, John Denver; Jackson Browne’s classic heartbreak ballad “Late for the Sky” (a particularly beautiful rendition); the aforementioned Guthrie cover; and, finally, Bob Welch’s oft-overlooked “Sentimental Lady,” which he originally recorded while he was a member of the pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac.
The set is anchored by “Deportee” and the lone Pomeroy original, the already-released “Bound to Rain,” from which the EP gets its title, (no doubt playing with the newsy imagery that also exists within "Deportee.") It’s one of Pomeroy’s finest songs to date, with lyrics that will cut you deep:
“Stay vague, my dear / Slap the face of the auctioneer / Selling countryside in a new frontier / Steer clear / It’s bound to rain.”
It’s a version that rivals the original recording, its live “loft” setting revealing an even more delicate honesty in Pomeroy’s voice, which sometimes seems to quiver under the weight of the words.
But the inclusion of “Deportee” is what makes Tonight’s News so much more than just a covers record. Originally written by fellow Oklahoma native Woody Guthrie in 1948, it’s impossible to hear Pomeroy’s version and not think of the countless images of immigrants lined up in shackles this year, awaiting what could be the final plane ride of their lives, being sent back to countries many have never been to before by a fascist Trump administration that has turned their fear, humiliation, and removal into political theater, with due process treated as little more than an inconvenience.
This is not accidental. Pomeroy often makes her political opinions known on social media, and she bravely puts them to tape here—not giving a damn if it pisses you off, not unlike her Okie musical forebear, Mr. Guthrie. In lending her voice to these timeless classics, Pomeroy shows us once again that she is a voice that demands to be heard. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.
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