Schaefer Llana – Court Street
Schaefer Llana will release her label debut, Full Circle, on November 13, 2026 via Strolling Bones Records.
The 10-song set was produced by Llana and Starlin Browning and recorded at Matt Patton of the Drive-By Truckers’ Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi. The captivating debut is lush and literate, meditative and dreamy, and radiates a languorous Southern heat as it drifts between past and present, connection and isolation, love and loss. Llana delivers her songs with a tender, almost casual ease, and the result is a cinematic slice of alt-Americana. Met with early critical acclaim, Glide Magazine said “Full Circle carries an understated power. The songs don’t strain for drama; they unfold naturally, carried by Llana’s relaxed vocal delivery and arrangements that seem to shimmer in the humid air.” Of her performance at the Americana Music Festival last month, Pandora said she “exuded atmospheric intimacy, hypnotizing the room with a set of spellbinding siren songs. While her performance occasionally channeled the ghostly, nocturnal coo of Hope Sandoval and the peerless vocal control of Paula Frazer, Llana operates in a sonic stratosphere entirely her own. It was an otherworldly, magnetic display that left the crowd deadlocked in silence, hanging onto her every word.”
Today, Paste Magazine premiered the album highlight “Court Street,” alongside a Best of What’s Next feature with Llana. Earlier this month, Paste also published a live session from Americanafest, saying “…I found myself entranced by the music from her debut studio album, Full Circle… She writes siren songs, and her voice could easily compel men in myths to jump overboard and swim toward their death.
Born in Missouri, Llana moved to Mississippi as a child where she spent her formative years first singing in church. After high school, she headed deeper into the cradle of American music to study at Delta State University. It’s there where she fell in with a likeminded crew of artists and writers and landed a job working at the recording studio Dial Back Sound. She says, “Matt Patton gave me real opportunities early on. I worked at the studio for several years as an engineer and would record background vocals for anyone who came to record there.” That’s how she met Jimbo Mathus, best known as a founding member of Squirrel Nut Zippers (and more recently for his work with the Black Keys). Mathus was a fellow Mississippi native who took an immediate shine to her voice, first asking her to sing on records he was producing and then later inviting her to join his band on the road for several years. Full Circle features two songs written by Mathus and he also appears on its lead off track.
After performing with Mathus, Llana packed up her courage in her Toyota Corolla and hit the road for her first real solo tour. The trek inspired a move to Austin, Texas, and went well enough to finance the Full Circle recording sessions back at Dial Back Sound. In pursuit of a sound as raw as her writing, Llana and her band recorded directly to tape, capturing the core of the album live in just three or four days. “Starting this album, I knew I wanted to go back and record there again with the same group of friends after learning and growing so much. That’s where the album title, Full Circle, came from. Some of these songs are first takes and I did minimal overdubbing. I wanted it to sound like us right then and there. All of the lead vocals are live and on the spot, imperfections and all, but as Matt Patton says, ‘a recording is a photograph.’ This album is a collection of captured moments made in Mississippi by the very people I love there.”
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