Writer and artist Jenna Putnam recently travelled to Nashville, Tennesse, with Seattle-formed band Night Beats to document the recording of their fourth record, Myth Of A Man, and capture the album artwork (brief: “a portrait of modern-day America inspired stylistically by the Provoke-era photography“). Produced by Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach at the city’s legendary Easy Eye Sound Studio, the record guest-featured a line-up of eminent Nashville session musicians who played for trailblazers such as Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash and Elvis, adding Night Beats’ own name to the city’s legendary canon.

Below, Putnam shares a photo series and diary documenting the experience; from Nashville to Nola.

“”I’m gonna go someplace where the drinks are cold and the women are beautiful,” grumbled Fergie as he walked out the door and into an abyss of cold grey Tennessee sky. It was my first time in Nashville and I was sitting on the floor of Easy Eye Sound with Dan Auerbach, a bunch of cats who played with Elvis and Johnny Cash, and my friend Danny Lee [Night Beats’ frontman] who was there for the week cutting an album. I was still coming off the high of doing a cross-country tour, and was on assignment to produce the album art to go along with the new Night Beats record.

Being in a room with seasoned musicians and sound engineers can be intimidating as a photographer, but once you stay for a while they forget you’re even there. Until there’s a moment, for instance, when Fergie or one of these guys laying down a perfect guitar track in one take looks straight into the camera with more gusto than you’ve felt from all the ghosts scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding. Or when, between vocal takes, in an entanglement of sweat and fluttering breath, Danny looks out towards the soundboard with gypsy eyes so vulnerable they could set the room on fire. You become one with the harmonies and the chord progressions, every little sound becomes heightened, and the entire experience feels like some sort of convoluted hallucination proven real only once the record comes out. Or in my case, once the photographs I hoped to God were in focus and not too underexposed came back from the lab. That was about the moment I realised I didn’t want to be a fly on the wall, but someone who was actually making music. I wanted to consume it, digest it, become it. I looked at a chart behind the vocal booth representing the skeleton of a song – verse, verse, chorus, bridge, verse – it didn’t seem so difficult. I was wrong.

“I don’t think we realised in the moment, but each cross-country road trip really opens the mind to an America that has always and will always exist.”

What struck me about Tennessee wasn’t Nashville but the places just outside of it – you can only eat so many burgers at Dinos without it feeling like Williamsburg or Austin or every place you’ve already been with everyone you’ve already seen. We went out to Lieper’s Fork to take portraits in front of dilapidated houses, a deli-slash-restaurant that had probably been there since the 70s, and open fields that stretched outward toward eternity. The following day I photographed a local girl named Aeniah at a 1.5 star motel where a woman had just had a miscarriage and the attendant was scrubbing the floor with ammonia. It’s different photographing complete strangers in an intimate setting. The tension adds a layer of discomfort and detachment you can’t achieve by working with someone you’re familiar with.

We wanted the album art to be a portrait of modern-day America inspired stylistically by the Provoke-era photography that boasted the work of legends like Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. We shot all black and white film and tried to capture the elements of freedom, uncertainty, and excitement that go along with traveling the open road. After Nashville, mine and Danny’s manager Ryan Menge had to return the van to Los Angeles. We visited Memphis and drove south to New Orleans, where we photographed stone angels in cemeteries, ate at Irene’s, and wandered around the French Quarter blind drunk capturing neon signs in black and white. We drove from NOLA to Austin, where I’m pretty sure I broke down and sobbed at some point… [a sense of] feeling too much and having nowhere to put it.

I don’t think we realised in the moment, but each cross-country road trip really opens the mind to an America that has always and will always exist. It’s disgusting, it’s beautiful, it’s poetic… you start to see yourself in everyone and everything. We arrived in El Paso in the middle of the night. The next day I opened the motel shutters and after my eyes adjusted to the blinding morning sun, I realised we were right next to a horse track. I could have stood there for hours, watching the horses run in circles as if suspended in slow motion, but it was time to head home.”

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Follow Night Beats on Instagram – their record ‘Myth of a Man’ is out now.