Julien Baker and Torres both grew up in the South, where country music was always around, but it took them teaming up with each other to start making their own.

It was Torres who first pitched the idea to Baker.

“I wanna sing about this stuff through this lens, but I need, like, I need a buddy to do this with me, because I’m not exactly the kind of person that makes the country record,” Torres says.

In this session, Baker and Torres discuss their new album, Send a Prayer My Way, and Baker talks about the freedom they found working within the country music genre.

“The music is not the thing that you’re having to make radical,” Baker says. “The songs and the storytelling can be radical while you’re just, like, using this blueprint that already exists.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.