[Cover photo credit to Aspen DeRosa]

Award-winning singer/songwriter Erin Lunsford has shared the single and music video for “Watch Out For Deer.” Described as a “homesick Appalachian love song”, it captures “the bittersweet ache of leaving home and the quiet tenderness of Southern goodbyes.”

Steeped in the Bluegrass and Folk traditions of her Southwest Virginia roots, Lunsford blends clawhammer banjo, storytelling, and Pop to create a sound that is uniquely her own.

The track memorializes a familiar Southern farewell of “be safe, watch out for deer” and incorporates it into a song “about family, identity and the pull of home.”

Lunsford shares:

This song was born on a tearful nighttime drive back to Richmond after visiting my family in Fincastle. That phrase—‘watch out for deer’—it’s something we say all the time in the South, but it carries so much love. It’s our way of saying ‘I love you, be careful out there.’

Produced by Jacob Ungerleider (Grebes) and featuring fiddle from Shannon Bielski, the single is the first from Lunsford’s upcoming 2025 album, the follow-up to her 2020 release, The Damsel.

In recent years, Lunsford has taken the stage at festivals like FloydFest, Red Wing Roots, Rooster Walk, and has shared bills with Maggie Rose, Begonia, Bruce Hornsby, Darrell Scott, Carbon Leaf, and The Infamous Stringdusters. With Erin & The Wildfire, she’s performed on NPR’s Mountain Stage.