Claudia Nygaard is a Nashville-based Americana artist who originally hails from a ranch in California. Beginning in her 20s in Los Angeles when she won awards from The Los Angeles Songwriter’s Showcase, the American Song Festival, Music City Song Festival, and a Wrangler Star Search competition, and more. When she arrived in Nashville, she landed a job writing songs for Greenwood Music on Nashville’s “Music Row”. More recently she has won both the Kerrville Folk Festival Songwriting Competition and Tumbleweed Music Festival songwriting competitions.
Nygaard has just finished recording To Race the Wind, a new album due to be released in early 2027. The recording features Nashville A-list musicians and many of the songs on the album are “stories told in western metaphors.” Ahead of that, she has other songs to share with the world.
Today, we’re very pleased to premier her song and video for “Big Country”, a track that will be released this Friday, October 23rd, 2026. The subject of the song speaks to America’s whole history, but is particularly pressing right now, ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. It deals with the subject of immigration and what the vast majority of Americans have in common.
From Bruce Springsteen, to Tom Morello and U2, to independent artists like Julie Christensen and Domenic Cicala, artists are finding the need to speak out, loudly and clearly about the anti-immigration sentiments being encouraged throughout the USA, and against the inhuman behavior of ICE. Claudia Nygaard shows here that there’s plenty to say and each artist has a unique way of making good points that need to be heard. Nygaard’s compassionate and humane track opens musically with a Celtic accent and names that set the scene of Irish settlers crossing the sea to find a better life in America. It’s a great reminder to a lot of white Americans, many of whom prize their Irish roots, that they were literally in the same “boat” as many immigrants today arriving in the USA.
But the song is only just getting started, because its theme is structural, moving through different points of origin and cultures, giving snapshots of real people from various backgrounds who have arrived here united by hopes and dreams. The song paints a picture of commonality in difference, in newness, in bravery and struggle. We also have a particularly strong focus in the song on the Spanish-speaking community, pointing out the “jobs of smallest pay” that they often feel they have to take, which resonates strongly with the disproportionate focus of ICE raids. Something Nygaard does really well is use first names, familiar and connective things, for the characters in her song, bringing you in close to their personal drama.
Powerful chorus elements focus on key words we’ll recognize from American history and famous speeches, like “dreams” and “freedom”, but they also act as gentle persuasion, taking a specific stand and pointing out a problem, such as “show less fear” and we have “more in common than we might appear.” Helpfully, she even points out the multi-faith aspect of this country, in case anyone is casually letting that slip out of focus. And some do.
The accompanying video is also a helpful element to deliver the song to audiences, taking imagery from across American life and various geographical and ethnic communities, focusing on times of unity, and essentially citing sources. Remember when all the presidents would pose for pictures together in a friendly way, regardless of race or political party? Yes, that really happened not to long ago. It’s a nice touch that the video also spotlights Native American veterans who have served the country in inestimable ways in various conflicts.
The video helps act as a wake up call. It’s not made by AI, it’s real images of real people doing things that bring them together across differences. That used to be a big part of living in the USA, part of our national identity even. The particular message that we have a “big country” may seem obvious, but it’s not how people are acting, so this song’s bigger message, that it can also hold everyone, needs to be delivered in as many ways as possible.
About the writing and subject matter behind “Big Country”:
This song was written at 4 am in a Las Vegas casino hotel room, as Claudia recovered from a severe case of poison ivy that required heavy steroid usage. She was exhausted after driving for several days from Nashville, but she woke up at that early hour with names rolling around in her head, and thought she could go back to sleep if she just wrote down the names. Six hours later the song was finished, or rather the first incarnation of it was finished. She was never satisfied with the chorus which to her thinking lacked the passion and power that the song demanded. That matching chorus finally came to her during the summer of 2026, as reports of the cruelty of ICE kept breaking her heart again and again. Fueled by her anger over the injustice of a country that gave her great grandfather free land just for the farming of it but was torturing the newcomers, the final chorus poured out and the song was reborn.
For “Big Country”, boudhran was played by Rick Lonow, bass was played by Dave Roe, acoustic & electric guitars were performed by Mike McAdam, Bill Verdier played fiddle, Jeff Taylor played pennywhistle and accordion, and Claudia Nygaard performs vocals and backing vocals.
“Big Country” was tracked by Jack Irwin at Silvertone Recording, Nashville TN, with overdubs at Rio Rancho Recording, Nashville, TN. It was Produced by Claudia Nygaard, mixed by Skyler Chuckry at Sound Emporium Studios, and mastered by Maggie Luther at Dark Sky Mastering.
