In June of 2025, after experiencing a personal event that necessitated a change, Dan LaTerra (she/they) took to her blue Toyota Corolla and began the three-day journey to New Mexico from North Carolina. Her retreat aimed to serve multiple purposes. Firstly, it was a much needed reset from the throes of post-graduation life in Winston-Salem, a life containing tribulations seemingly magnified by her predicament. However, she had also intended to revitalize her creative process, attempting to work on a second musical project following the January release of her first album, "7306," under the alias saturn is changing that same year.
On the way to her sister’s home in Albuquerque, she found herself captivated by the sight of the Great Plains. “There's this long stretch of just like vastness when you're driving from west Texas into New Mexico. When you're from North Carolina, it's like otherworldly,” she described. However, even more enthralling than the grandeur of the New Mexican desert was the sight of cows grazing before wind turbines amongst the expanse. A seemingly mundane scene to observe, LaTerra dug deeper. “I was thinking about religion, and I was looking at these cows, and it's one of those scenes in my head that I still think about. This is stark and almost grotesque. There's this big totem reaching to the sky, and these cows are probably like ‘What the hell is that?’” she recounted.
“We graze under the gaze of the Turning Ones
Tall and unwavering, we bow down before them and give thanks
Above all, we look to you, oh Great One, our Flower
Your arms spun endlessly, a bloom of motion against the sky
We believed you would turn forever,”
- "The Cows" by saturn is changing and Bundt Cakes
This sight was enough to spur LaTerra into action. While in New Mexico, she continued to work on a record seeking to confront the concept of religion, particularly Christianity, as a social authority. The project, which we now know as "SOME HAVE LEFT THE PASTURE," was written in collaboration with Bundt Cakes, the artist name utilized by Daniel Nesbit (he/him), a fellow musician and longtime friend of LaTerra’s. The album’s opening track, "The Cows," is a spoken-word song directly inspired by the sight LaTerra beheld on her roadtrip, written from the perspective of the herd as they worship the turbine looming above them.
"SHLTP" seeks to examine the realities and pitfalls of Christianity as an ethical guide, relating criticisms and observations from the lens of Nesbit and LaTerra’s personal experiences shrouded in dreamy Mellotron tunes and somber guitar riffs. Some tracks, like "Job," are slower and solemn, reckoning with biblical stories and religious conventions, calling attention to the tragedy and struggle that underscores such faith. Others, like "My Friend’s a Savior," are faster and more upbeat, elucidating religious convention in a way that seems almost mischievous, as if taunting years of tradition. Altogether, the album captures the zeitgeist of religion in modern day America in a way that is raw, real and unfiltered.
I sat down with Nesbit and LaTerra to discuss their new record at Lot 63, a coffee shop and wine bar located in Old Salem that serves a variety of Moravian-style treats and drinks. Formally known as the Moravian Book and Gift Shop, the coffeehouse, which aims to breathe new life into Moravian traditions existing in North Carolina for centuries, served as the perfect backdrop to scrutinize the themes of divinity that define this new project. As our conversation progressed on that cold January evening, the two artists shared how "SHLTP" came to fruition, recounting the catalysts that inspired them to write such an album in the first place.
Nesbit, who is also a North Carolina-based musician, reckoned with the idea of creating a religion-based record just months before pitching it to LaTerra. During his junior year of college in 2021, he submitted the song "Golden Eyes" as a homework assignment for a class taught by Associate Professor Melissa Shields Jenkins, focusing on Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. The song itself is based on Wilde’s one-act play recounting the biblical tale of Salome, stepdaughter of King Herod, who demands the head of John The Baptist on a platter after being granted one wish by her stepfather.
“What have I done
To deserve this?
These gilded eyelids
Cursed gifts
Spoke my whole life, but
Who will notice?”
- "Golden Eyes" by saturn is changing and Bundt Cakes
“John the Baptist is kind of like ‘I've been prophesying in the streets for so long and nobody's paid that much attention to me. And now this young, beautiful woman is holding me in her arms and kissing my head’,” Nesbit explained. “It's really gothic. It's really gross. It just made a mark on me, so I wrote this song about that.”
The initial project pitched by Nesbit was an extended play record aiming to break down modern religious ideals, for which he proposed multiple songs he had already written, including "First Boy Nun" and "Impotent." “I just have so many songs that I want to do something with, but I hoard songs for way too long. If the project that I want to put them on rejects them, I don't know what to do with them,” Nesbit added. In fact, the 24-year-old has been writing songs for years under a variety of different monikers, including bands girlmoms and CD CINEMA.
He even mentioned that the first band he was ever part of as a 14-year-old was called Pasture Bedtime, drawing an interesting parallel to the themes of cows and paddocks that underscore his newest project. Furthermore, past Bundt Cakes records are a testament not only to his self-disclosed habitual hoarding of songs, but also his tendency to submit his creative products for a grade in college-level English classes. In August of last year, he released an EP comprising 5 songs all inspired by different villains from the plays of William Shakespeare, titled "Tardy ENG 323 Homework".
Nesbit’s efforts to create music in collaboration with other artists seemingly culminated during his college years at Wake Forest University, when he became a founding member of Winston-Salem indie rock band SCOBY. Shortly after the band’s formation, LaTerra, who was also a WFU student, was recruited to it. This began the years-long collaborative relationship between the two young musicians, who have been able to workshop their musical partnership as time has passed.
It is evident that Nesbit and LaTerra have developed a profound sense of respect for one another as creatives over the course of their time working together. Nesbit was insistent that LaTerra’s skills in composing music as well as mixing and mastering the final record are what make "SHLTP" worth listening to, while LaTerra maintains that the album’s real strengths lie within Nesbit’s innate songwriting skills. “Honest to God, I'm kind of inspired by the way that Daniel just throws shit to the wall. And it works,” LaTerra said, laughing. “I mean, Daniel's a great songwriter.” The two were able to hone a working relationship during the years they both spent as part of SCOBY, first learning to work together in a full band before engaging in a more exclusive style of collaboration. “The first song we ever did together was "devilbeat" by SCOBY, and that is one of my favorite songs that I've ever contributed to. So I was blown away,” Nesbit shared. “The first time I heard the demo that Dan recorded with lyrics and everything, I noticed that she just came in at the wrong spot. But it sounded perfect. From that point, I've had unwavering faith in Dan’s ability to make my favorite music.”
Despite what she contributed to it, Dan actually isn’t a huge fan of "devilbeat." However, one of her own songs that stands out to her is "Job" from this newest album, inspired by the biblical tale of Job, a man who loses everything he has for his faith. “I looked up the story of Job and I was just going through it again and thinking about how tragic it was. It made me cry. So I was like, I gotta sit about this, and I just sat at the keys,” LaTerra began sharing her creative process. “It was one of those songs that just pops out. It started with the piano line and then I just started singing over it and writing down some scribble lyrics.”
“I could give you more
Or I could waste away
I'll keep my toils to myself
One day I'll leave this hell
And wait for paradise to come my way,”
- "Job" by saturn is changing and Bundt Cakes
Nesbit, on the other hand, expressed his partiality to songs he believes exemplify the album. “"Confessions" is, I think, the crux of the album. It is the thesis, but it's also the most ambitious one because it's really walking you through the stages of grief of having a question of your faith. It starts off and the guitar is like ‘there's something off.’ There's something slightly wonky in the chord progression,” he began. “And then as it builds and builds, there's just a complete disillusionment and helplessness in the face of a power structure. That's really what I get out of it. And I think it's a beautiful composition to get those emotions out.”
“The last part where the narrator's like, ‘I can bend, I can bend.’ It's like longing for this to be it,” LaTerra added. “I'm longing to hold on to this. I want to fully shape myself into what you want me to be. And it's like, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can do it. It's desperately reassuring yourself.”
“Decree, who you want me to be
I can bend, condemn the lot
The only truth left is purpose and will in mortal thought
All that you wanted,”
- "Confessions" by saturn is changing and Bundt Cakes
Despite their disagreements on favorite songs from the record, the two have been able to relate to each other’s personal experiences with religion. Nesbit and LaTerra are both all too familiar with the particularly southern brand of piety as creatives who grew up in the south. In fact, both artists got their start by playing music in church bands at young ages. “I think it's a common thing for American youth, especially in the south. You're raised religious and then you go to school and you watch as all your friends, the news, media and everything around you on the internet gradually chips away at that religious foundation,” Nesbit explained. “Every Sunday I went to church growing up, and I went to a Christian school in Augusta, Georgia. And I went to Wednesday night supper every week.”
Daniel Nesbit and Dan LaTerra toured at different venues across North Carolina to promote their new record
He continued to describe how his own personal reckoning with his religious beliefs was spurred during the year he spent studying abroad in Denmark as a freshman in college. While there, he regularly went to church in search of two things: a sense of community and belonging in a place that was unfamiliar to him, and free lunch. However, after taking classes pertaining to intercultural communication and Muslims in the west, he considered the exclusivity of Christianity, and the bigotry that often comes attached. “It was really frustrating to me to see Christianity more and more weaponized to cause hate,” he said. “I think you can't really talk about Christianity in America without talking about Christian nationalism and the hatred that comes with that.”
However, Nesbit maintains that the sense of belonging that can be provided by one's community is unparalleled. "Growing up, I probably had like a hundred people that I could depend on to take care of me or look out for me," he shared. "There's several people [I went to church with] that every time I go back home, I always give them a hug." Additionally, he shared his recognition of how one's church community encourages mutual understanding between its members, and how this was his first exposure to this type of support. "The church is a beautiful thing in terms of making people conscious of the responsibility they have to take care of other people."
Most striking is Nesbit's self-awareness of his own reckoning with the politicization of the church and other religious spaces that were a haven for him in his upbringing. "When you're part of that community, you're just automatically surrounded by people that are really caring and really generous with their time. But, at a certain point, there's the ritual that you have to perform to be an accepted member of the community. Go to church, say all the things," he continued. "I don't know how many times I've listened to a sermon or a prayer and thought, this is not what I believe or this is not what I think we should be praying about, you know? I just think, politically, the concert is a safer space."
LaTerra, an Italian-American born to two Catholic parents, had similar experiences with religion underscoring her childhood despite her parents’ decision not to give her a Catholic upbringing. She recounted her experiences at a zero-tolerance Christian school where students would sometimes get paddled for bad behavior. She went to Chapel every Wednesday with her classmates, some of whom were not allowed to watch things like Harry Potter due to its inclusion of “witchcraft”. “By seventh grade I completely rejected it,” she shared. “You start to make friends of different backgrounds, and you start to see the world through how they see the world. That's how my deconstruction started and by high school I was just completely out of it.”
Daniel Nesbit and Dan LaTerra perform songs from their new record at The Milestone Club in Charlotte, NC
Furthermore, the hatefulness she’d seen exhibited by religious personalities in her orbit further incited her retreat from religion. “I was in a youth group trying to ask genuine questions,” she recalled. “Eventually, the topic of homophobia came up as a Christian ideal. It just didn’t make sense to me. My youth leader would say something along the lines of ‘Well, we can't always make sense of it.’ You're asking me to believe in something that's hateful, and I can’t.”
The release of "SHLTP" was accompanied by a weekend tour, which Nesbit and LaTerra embarked on alongside Tyler Spencer of Melodramatic, who played bass for them, and Douglas Giles, who played drums. Over the course of the weekend, they played songs from their new project at The Den in Winston-Salem, NC, The Milestone Club in Charlotte, NC, and Neptune’s Parlour in Raleigh, NC. The many memorable moments from their weekender included the fact that their first show took place on the same day as LaTerra’s birthday and included an intermission in which she was presented with a cake, as well as the numerous times they convinced their audience to ‘moo’ at them instead of cheering.
These crowds represented the community residing within North Carolina’s music scene, a scene that has served as a haven for Nesbit and LaTerra. Finding themselves a part of this new community that they related to so much forced them to reckon with the religious communities where they first sought belonging. “Religion is about community on a certain level. These communities have failed some people, and a lot of people have left the church,” Nesbit said. “Concerts can be a place for people to find that community, find like-minded people to share ideas and talk with. It’s not just about the music.”
Amongst the crowd were many young creatives who found themselves relating to the music, having themselves struggled with the prevalence of religion in their lives. “The point is that we want these people to ask questions and think for themselves,” Nesbit said of their impressionable audience. “When you're coming of age, as they say, you're beginning to think about your place in the world, what you want to bring to it, what kind of person you want to be and what impact you want to leave,” LaTerra began. “One of the big things you have to reckon with is religion. You are not immune to propaganda. If you're being told one thing, think about it, sit with it and then respond to it.”
Realizing it had grown dark outside, we began to pack up our things, clear away our coffee cups and prepared to leave the coffee shop as our conversation neared its conclusion. As we grabbed our belongings, I quickly asked the two musicians what was next for them. Nesbit revealed that he had finished recording a new 12-song record that LaTerra would be mixing and mastering for him. LaTerra, on the other hand, teased a sequel album to 7306, to be released exactly two years after its predecessor in reference to the lyric “I’m two years away,” from the song "sanctuary (II)." As I listened to them talk about their upcoming projects in anticipation, I was reminded of a lyric from "Confessions," the clear crux of "SHLTP," where Dan sings of what motivates every individual to progress further and continue to achieve: “The only thing left is purpose and will in mortal cause / All that you wanted.”
