Charles Wesley Godwin released his album Christian Name on Friday, 24 July, via Big Loud Records — a record forged between tour dates across New York, Tennessee and California over the span of a year, and dedicated to a son who never came home.

Godwin and his wife's third child, a boy named Samuel, was stillborn in August 2024. The album carries the dedication "to Samuel Corley," according to Godwin's Instagram announcement on 29 May (Instagram). Big Loud had published the official album announcement on its website ten days earlier, on 19 May (Big Loud Records).

The West Virginian songwriter, whose previous albums are Seneca (2019) and Family Ties (2023), began shaping the record's emotional centre years before Samuel's death. Godwin started writing the track "Hey There, Son" in 2019, around the time he and his wife welcomed their first son, Gabriel. He finished the song with co-writer Lori McKenna in July 2024 — one month before Samuel's stillbirth. Wyatt Flores, 25, who began opening shows for Godwin in 2023, contributes a guest vocal on the track.

Another song, "Try Again," was co-written with Travis Meadows in late 2024, after the loss. The co-writer list across the album also includes Liz Rose and Stephen Wilson Jr. — both established Nashville songwriters. Al Torrence produced Christian Name, and discovered the sermon clip that opens the record: a recording of coal miner and preacher Dave Stacy, found on YouTube, discussing the Biblical book of Job.

The album also includes a cover of "Gospel of the South," originally released by Tony Lane on his 2017 self-titled album. Luke Combs, one of country music's most commercially successful acts, provides a guest vocal on the track "Better," as confirmed by MusicRow on the album's release day (MusicRow via Facebook).

Godwin recorded his previous album, Family Ties, at Echo Mountain Studios in North Carolina. For Christian Name, he and Torrence took a different path, cutting songs between tour stops in multiple states rather than in a single studio.

For a general audience unfamiliar with Godwin's work, the context is straightforward: he is a 30-something country and folk-leaning artist from Morgantown, West Virginia, signed to Big Loud — a Nashville label better known for mainstream country acts like Morgan Wallen. His songs sit closer to acoustic storytelling than to radio country, and his audience has grown steadily through touring rather than through streaming virality.

What surfaces across these details is an album built from the raw material of a life — a father's letter begun in joy, completed in grief, and carried into studios across the country between shows that could not stop.