Avery Hellman has been a rancher, an alt-country musician, and, always, a dreamer. But they recently found themself once more while looking for Lucinda Williams. In 2023, Hellman was hard at work on an album, podcast, and documentary delving into the psyche of the country singer-songwriter when they discovered how much poetry played into Williams’ general talents. “That was a really big shift for me,” Hellman says. “I was like, ‘Well, why don’t I learn how to write poetry?’” Add another job to that resume.

 

Coincidentally, Hellman had been invited to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, where they presented a few early poems — and opened the barn door. Creativity stampeded out, and, with the help of co-writer/producer Sam Cohen, Avery penned their new record as alt-country project ISMAY, Half Truth, out June 12th 2026 on Fossil Records. “My intention with the record, especially given the fact that a lot of the songs started as poems, wasn’t to be perfect,” they say. “I wanted the words to be in the forefront — not smooth, but raw.”

 

Hellman grew up in the Bay Area on Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Hazel Dickens, hanging out backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival since age eight. As a young person, they initially wanted to get into environmental studies — inspired by their work on the family ranch — but when their grandfather died, they decided to preserve his legacy. They started playing with his band, then honed their own sound, dropping their debut album as ISMAY, Songs of Sonoma Mountain, in 2020 (one of KQED’s 10 best Albums in the Bay Area), then Desert Pavement with Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse in 2024. Through it all, they grew into their own as an artist, performing at music fests and opening for the likes of Steve Earle, John Doe, and Chuck Prophet, and scoring a role on  TV+ Show My Kind of Country, produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon. And, after immersing themselves in the study of poetry, they wrote Half Truth, an 11-song suite of wry yet lonesome tracks about rodeo horses, salvation, and finding yourself — again and again.

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In 2026 Avery helped to launch Fossil Records with Margo Cilker, an indie label whose aim is to capture the expression drawn from seasons of work on ranches and in rural outposts.

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Currently, Avery is based in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. ISMAY also curates a music festival called Woollystar.