Tag: little big town

With a New Album, ‘No Fear,’ Sister Sadie Once Again Go “All In”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Last month, Sister Sadie took the stage at Nashville’s Station Inn to showcase and celebrate their latest album, No Fear. And although the title itself could be an ode to the group’s unrelenting urge to hop genre fences – from bluegrass to country to pop and back again – it’s also a nod to the resiliency of the band itself.

With No Fear, Sister Sadie showcase three-part, songbird harmonies backed by a keen musical aptitude that’s equally distributed throughout the quintet. The 13-song LP combines the “high, lonesome sound” of bluegrass with a blend of country and pop sensibilities a la The Chicks, Little Big Town, or Pistol Annies.

“There’s a space for bluegrass meets Americana meets country meets pop — that’s what I’m manifesting,” says fiddler and de facto band leader, Deanie Richardson.

To note, the Station Inn appearance was a full-circle sort of thing for the ensemble. First coming together at the storied venue by pure happenstance in December 2012, Richardson, banjoist Gena Britt, and former members guitarist Dale Ann Bradley, bassist Beth Lawrence, and mandolinist Tina Adair were simply a collection of pickers and singers from different circles in Music City.

That initial gig went extremely well, so much so that more shows were booked and things started to unfold into a full-fledged band – albeit one where the members still held day jobs and were raising families. But, the music felt right and so did the performances, so why not tempt fate and see where this ride may go?

Well, what a ride it has been thus far. Appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. Three IBMA awards for Vocal Group of the Year (2019, 2020, 2021) and one for Entertainer of the Year (2020), with Richardson taking home Fiddle Player of the Year in 2020. And a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album for the 2018 release, Sister Sadie II.

But, in recent years, three of those founding members — Bradley, Lawrence, and Adair — left to pursue other projects, which, in turn, posed one lingering question to Richardson and Britt — where to from here?

“When we started 12 years ago, when we hit that first note at the Station Inn, we felt this magical chemistry in the band,” Richardson says. “Somehow, every time we reinvent this [band], I still feel that magical chemistry when we play music.”

Instead of throwing in the towel and saying it was good while it lasted, Richardson and Britt forged ahead, come hell or high water. They regrouped and reemerged into this next, unknown chapter. Soon, Jaelee Roberts and Dani Flowers came into the fold, both bringing songwriting prowess as well as providing guitar and vocal harmonies to ideally complement Britt. Then, in 2023, bassist Maddie Dalton hopped onboard.

“It’s an eclectic group of ladies and of musical tastes,” Richardson says. “Our home, our hearts and our souls are in bluegrass music. That’s what we love, that’s our passion, but there’s a lot of room for growth there.”

The new album, it’s not bluegrass. It’s not country. It’s just good music. In my opinion, it would be a shame to pigeonhole your music.

Deanie Richardson: Well, that would be our dream, Garret, for someone to not try to put some sort of label or pigeonhole it into somewhere. But, unfortunately, it happens. We went in there with great tunes and just let them arrange themselves, let them work themselves out in the studio. And this is what we got. So, I didn’t go in with bluegrass in mind. I didn’t go in with country in mind. I just went in with all my pals, people I love — great players and great songs.

Is that more by design or just how things have evolved?

DR: I think that’s how it’s evolved. That was not the original [Sister] Sadie. That’s this combination of girls right here. When you have personnel changes like we’ve have along the way, the energy changes — everything shifts.

Gena Britt: You have to reinvent yourself.

DR: You’ve got to figure out where you land when Jaelee Roberts comes in and changes everything. And then you’ve got to figure out where you land when Dani Flowers comes in. And Maddie Dalton. We’ve had three new members. That changes the energy. It changes the vibe. It changes the feel. It changes the vocals. It changes everything. This whole band has grown organically over the last 12 years. This is just where it is right now. We’re about to go in and record a new one and, shoot, it may sound like ZZ Top. I don’t know — you never know.

And I have a lot of solidarity with that, the attitude of just go in and see what happens, see what sticks and see what works.

Dani Flowers: Every single person in this band is a big fan of good writing and good songs. Just trying to serve the song and make sure it had what it needed rather than trying to put any one certain song in a box that it might not fit in.

How does that play into personal goals with the band’s expectations? There’s a lot of a crossover factor in the music. I hear just as much country as I do bluegrass in there.

GB: We’re just going for what we feel. We want to be excited about the song as we want everybody that’s listening to be excited. When we’re in the studio, these songs were brought to life in such a great way.

With the new members, what was kind of the intent coming into the group?

Jaelee Roberts: When I was asked to audition, I was kind of flabbergasted, because I looked up to Sister Sadie. These are all my heroes playing together in a band. And I had grown up around them. It was such a surreal feeling to get to audition. I get to not only learn more from them than I was already learning from them, but I get to part of that and grow with them, bring my spin on stuff.

DF: It was definitely a no-brainer for me when it came to joining the band. I’ve known Deanie since I was 16 or 17, Gena since I was 19 or 20. I’ve always admired them both. They’re incredible at what they do. It was really great for me. I was in the music industry for a while. I had a record deal. I wrote for a publishing company. And then, I had a kid and kind of stopped doing it all for a while. So, to join a band full of women that I already love was a great way to get back into playing music.

And with founding members of a band leaving, there’s this creative vacuum that can occur, where maybe there are more opportunities for other people to step up.

DR: Oh, that’s so great, because it’s true. With the personnel changes we’ve had, there’s been more opportunities for different styles, different vocalists, different everything. It’s crazy how that energy shift just redirects everything. You find a new tunnel or rabbit hole to go down or a new vision. It’s super fun to hear those potential songs and figure out whose voice is going to work. If you listen to a song, it actually tells you where it wants to go.

GB: This band is kind of a melting pot. We all bring such different things to the band. And then, when you put it all together and mix it all together, it’s this great recipe for things that are magical. It’s just heartwarming, too. We actually hangout together when we’re not playing on the road — not a lot of bands do that.

With the band shakeup and everything that’s happened to Sister Sadie in recent years — winning the IBMA for Entertainer of the Year, switching record labels to Mountain Home — what made you decide to keep it going? Was there a moment of maybe shutting it down and doing something else?

DR: One hundred percent. You’re on it. With the last personnel change, Gena and I were on the phone like, “We’re 10 years into this thing. Is it time to call it? Maybe it’s just time.” This band happened by just a group of friends getting together and playing the Station Inn. Then, “Hey, that went really well. Let’s playing the Station Inn again.” Then, Gena starts getting calls from promoters. Do a few shows. Then, Pinecastle says, “Hey, let’s do a record.” We do a record. We do another record. We get nominated for a Grammy.

But, we’ve never really gone in 100 percent. It’s just been organic. I’ve got a ton of things going on. I’ve got a seven-year-old. Gena’s got a job and two kids. It’s never like, “Let’s form a band and let’s go do this.” It was always sort of The Seldom Scene thing — we’ll play when it makes sense. And then, I was like, “What if we give this thing everything we’ve got? What if we put in one 110 percent? What if we got a team? What if we got a manager? What if we got a new record label? What if we got a booking agent? Let’s devote one year to this 110 percent and see what happens” — that’s where we are.

I’m 52 years old. I’ve been doing this and on the road since I was 15. This is the best record we’ve ever done. Going all in was the best choice that we could’ve made.

Photo Credit: Eric Ahlgrim

Indigo Girls Expand “Country Radio” With Black, Brown and Queer Musicians

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Hollywood, the 2020 Netflix series from director-screenwriter Ryan Murphy, is a resplendent show dripping in Art Deco that does not wholly reimagine Los Angeles’ golden era, but rather subtly inserts a quintessential question: “What if?”

What if Hollywood hadn’t been as… ___-ist? (Sexist, racist, misogynist, ageist, etc.) If one happens to be born into a region, a folkway, a culture, an art form that doesn’t include you, or that doesn’t quite love you back, one often doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. And then what? Do we, the rural, country-loving queers, wait around for our Ryan Murphy to reimagine the world to better include us? Not quite.

For Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of Indigo Girls — and, for that matter, almost each and every queer who has ever loved roots music — that “What if?” question is existential, but it also doesn’t matter. What if country music loved LGBTQ+ folks? The lyrics of “Country Radio,” a track off the duo’s sixteenth studio album, Look Long, tell it plainly: “But as far as these songs will take me/ Is as far as I’ll go/ I’m just a gay kid in a small town/ Who loves country radio.”

While curating the following playlist of their favorites from country music airwaves and songs they wish were included there, Saliers and Ray offer a quite simple solution actionable in each present moment: Be who you are, listen to the music that brings you joy, love who you love — and be anti-racist.

Emily Saliers: [I began with the idea:] What are the songs that I listened to that I latched onto, that sort of gave me a feeling of “I can’t get into this song [because of its heteronormativity], but I love this song so much”? One of the first songs that came to mind is “Mama’s Song” by Carrie Underwood. 

I should preface this by saying, I don’t expect that there can’t be heteronormative country songs, or that queer life has to be explicitly represented in songs, it’s not that. It’s the feeling of the way a song moves me emotionally, but then it stops me a little bit short of being able to fully experience it because of the language or the obvious implications of man and woman.

I love Carrie Underwood’s voice and she’s taken more of a harder, pop direction since “Mama’s Song,” but she sings this so beautifully. She’s talking to her mother, “He is good… he treats me like a real man should,” and yet the beauty of her song [is in] her telling her mom that’s she’s going to be okay. 

Amy Ray: For me it’s a little different because I never had the experience of feeling like I wish I could put myself in a song. I think it’s because, gender-wise, I always just related to the male singers. I kinda have that gender dysphoria, you know? [Chuckles] I have these filters that sort of make it my own — probably out of necessity, from growing up loving the Allman Brothers, Pure Prairie League, and Randy Travis so much. [Sings] “Amie, whatcha gonna do?” Pure Prairie League!

It’s very odd — Emily’s perspective on this is something I can understand, and I agree that it’s this weird disconnect with country music. We have to kind of acclimate it to ourselves, in some way, using some kind of trick in our minds. But I’ve always had that internal translator…

ES: Another example is Brett Young’s “In Case You Didn’t Know.” Now this is a song that you can listen to and fit your own queer life into it — as far as I remember it doesn’t have any gender pronouns. Then I watched the video and of course he’s singing to a woman who comes into the audience and he plays to her, alone. It’s a love song to his girlfriend — or wife or partner or whatever — so I could live in that song and think back to relationships and apply it in my own life, but then I watched the video and that door shut a little bit.

AR: I love Angaleena Presley, the Pistol Annies. Presley is such a great writer. “Better Off Red” is one of my favorite songs that she’s written… Honestly, if I hear songs, if I like it, I just put myself in it. I don’t really think about it or worry about it. It’s a survival mechanism from my youth, not that it’s the right thing to do. It’s built inside me.

…I thought you couldn’t be a country singer if you were gay and left-wing and a complete dyke. That made me feel more alienated than the songs themselves, that idea of its inaccessibility. Or, if you went to a show and you were sitting there in that audience, in the early days before it all kind of busted open, you would feel scared. Or judged. Or uncomfortable.

ES: Think about what a splash that song by Little Big Town, “Girl Crush,” had. Just the implication of a lesbian relationship or feelings! That song was a big hit, but it got people talking. [Probably] the majority of the people in this world lean more heteronormative, so they’re representing themselves in these songs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

I wouldn’t want to listen to just albums that are for and by queer people, oh my god. No way! But we have to have them as part. I think about what an influence Ferron was, how much Amy and I love Ferron. When her first album came out, it was like, “Oh my gosh this is one of the best songwriters in the country and she’s queer!” I can’t describe how important it was to have an artist like that.

Even Lil Nas X, who had the number one hit forever-ever-ever with Billy Ray Cyrus. It’s awesome to know that he’s queer! And a guy like Young Thug, a rapper out of Atlanta, who’s not gender normative by any stretch, to me. It’s interesting. It’s good to have a mish mosh! It’s not that the majority of songwriters out there can’t be represented in their own songwriting, we just have to have ours, as well.

AR: [We] should add Amythyst Kiah. Amythyst is amazing.

[Racism] is the pivotal struggle of the Americana scene and the roots scene. How do you honor Black and Brown folks who want to be in this scene — and maybe some of them don’t even want to be in this scene because even Americana is rooted in questionable legacy. How much do people of color want to be immersed in that scene when it still feels so racist? Even the best parts of it. It’s a huge question to unwrap and it has to do with such a long history of where country music came from.

We stole the banjo and put it in our hillbilly music in the mountains and called it our own. We forgot all the stuff we learned from “our slaves,” you know? It’s crazy to me, if you think about the racist roots of where a lot of this comes from. Merging this racist legacy with this incredible populist music — music for the people, like Woody Guthrie, like the Carter Family. You get those two things bumping up against each other constantly, how do you entangle that and make this a space where it doesn’t matter what color you are? Where it doesn’t matter what your religious persuasion, or your political party, or your gender, or your sexual preference, or anything.

I think the way we deal with it is by all of us thinking all the time and being mindful of [that racist history]. And including [Black artists] in our playlists and touring with them. Some people are like, “What does it mean if you’re forcing this integration? Is it just going through the motions?” No! No, no, no.

ES: I’ll [echo] the things that Amy said, practically: Tour with Black musicians or Brown musicians or musicians who have not been able to feel that they’re welcome and make everybody welcome. Like Amythyst or Chastity Brown. Those are artists of color who have been discriminated against, who feel other-than in the world of their genres.

I think, first, we all — we white people, we people “of no color,” we “colorless” people — should dig deep, identify our own racism and how far it goes, how much we use it. Break it down, talk about it, identify it in each other. Really start from the core of things and hopefully act outwardly as a result of what we’ve dug through, inwardly. Try to heal and fix, you know? We’ve got to ask artists of color what their experience is like and why it’s like that. I’ve got to assume that there must be some Black artists, who if they hear a song from a white, country, roots singer about the freedom of driving down a dark, country road, they’re not going to feel the same way about the history of Black people down dark country roads. A lot of it is context and, as Amy says, there’s so much to be unraveled. But we are at a tipping point.

AR: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, I feel like there’s a lot of crossover, to me from that and the beginnings of early rock ‘n’ roll. That’s kind of what Elvis Presley was doing and borrowing from. I think about that sometimes, that territory. I like old recordings, like field recordings almost, of all the Alan Lomax type stuff he would collect. Field songs, prison songs. I think a lot of country writers have taken from that stuff, you know? 

I remember an interview with Kathleen Hanna that really resonated with me. She said, when they ask you who your favorite artists are, most of us name all these male artists. That’s who we can think of, because that’s who’s archived the best. Straight men, bands, and writers. If you sit down and really think about who you love and make a list of the women and the queer folks — this is what she was talking about, she wasn’t talking about color at the time or race or the social construct of race — and you take that list to your interviews and rattle off those names, you’ll be more honest, because you’ll be talking about who you really listen to and not just trying to remember [anyone] off the top of your head. 

People are so out of the habit — and so in the habit — of white supremacy that we don’t even know how to do the right things, just in our instincts. We have to learn, write it down, so we remember to do it.

Photo credit: Jeremy Cowart

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lori McKenna Finds Comfort and Reflection in ‘The Tree’

Posted on by Editor

Some writers seek out the truth, excavating situations to uncover a universality that shines some light of understanding on the world. For others, the relationship works another way. Hungry to be heard, the truth seeks them out, and time and again makes itself known.

For Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lori McKenna, the latter seems to be the case. Her lyricism, sketched from life’s myriad everyday scenes—hearth fires, heartbreak, and the like—strikes upon central truths to an almost uncanny extent. Listening back through her catalog, which now numbers eleven albums with her new release The Tree, it’s as if she wields some otherworldly wisdom and has been kind enough to share it with listeners.

McKenna’s the first to admit it’s all a “happy mistake.” As she explains, “I think my brain starts small and it takes me a minute to see if there’s a bigger message in there.”

Small has been McKenna’s modus operandi since her 2000 debut album Paper Wings and Halos. She regularly portrays characters’ private interiors, snapshotting quiet moments typically shared with oneself, a partner, a parent, or even the small town one wishes to escape. On The Tree, McKenna found herself identifying in larger ways with what she was writing, even if she hadn’t set out to hold a mirror up to her life. “The more you write, the more comfortable you get in your craft, the more of you reflects back in it, even if it’s a character that isn’t you,” she says.

Time’s circularity informed several songs on The Tree. At a moment when her aging father needed more help and her children needed less, she was struck by the roles she was being asked to play. “Your mom role is getting less intense, and your child role—as far as helping parents—gets a little thicker,” she says. “I think a lot of people get to exactly to this place.”

McKenna took all the fears and pain that go along with aging, and penned a beautiful ode to the daring act of living. On “People Get Old,” with a slight twang to her vocals, she sings: “Time is a thief/ Pain is a gift/ The past is the past, it is what it is / Every line on your face tells a story somebody knows/ It’s just how it goes/ You live long enough, the people you love get old.” The catch is the last line: “You live long enough.” Life can and does hurt like hell, but if you’re lucky you’ll make it long enough to acquire all those scars.

Though she’s been writing and playing for herself since she first picked up a guitar as a teenager in Massachusetts, McKenna’s obvious talent for distilling greater wisdoms down into a hook caught Nashville’s attention early on in her career. Faith Hill recorded three of her songs—”Fireflies,” “Stealing Kisses,” and “If You Ask”—on her 2005 album Fireflies, and set into motion a relationship with Music City that continues to this day. McKenna has gone on to pen songs for some of the biggest names in contemporary country music. “I had never tried to write a song for someone else,” she explains about when she first visited Nashville.

In 2016 she teamed with producer Dave Cobb to release The Bird & the Rifle, a critically-acclaimed project that led to two award nominations from the Americana Music Association — for Artist of the Year and Song of the Year (“Wreck You,” written with Felix McTeigue), as well as three Grammy nominations. She reunited with Cobb for The Tree sessions as well.

McKenna now splits her time between Boston and Nashville, visiting once or twice a month to work on songs. She speaks fondly of her adopted city. “I fell in love with the community. Nashville is such a songwriter town. They really honor their songwriters,” she says. “I have to pinch myself sometimes when I think about the group of people that I get to write with because it’s not just that they’re all great writers. I’ve really found a group that I feel so comfortable with. [An idea] might not be right and it might even be kinda stupid, but they won’t judge me. They’ll say, ‘Well, let’s see. How can we make that work?’ The people that you feel bravest around are the best people to be creative with.”

Among their many collaborations together, McKenna, Hillary Lindsey, and Liz Rose wrote “Girl Crush,” which Little Big Town recorded for their 2014 album Pain Killer. The song focuses on a woman who finds herself developing a complex desire for her ex via his new love interest. It’s jealousy painted in layers: “I want to taste her lips/ Yeah, ‘cause they taste like you.” Despite complaints to pull the song from country radio due to a growing controversy about whom the central figure wanted, it went on to earn McKenna her first Grammy—for Best Country Song. She repeated the following year for “Humble and Kind,” recorded by Tim McGraw.

When it comes to the success of “Girl Crush,” McKenna says she, Lindsey, and Rose weren’t anticipating a hit. “We didn’t think anybody would cut the song—we just chased the song,” she explains. “That song was about reminding ourselves how we want to write the best song we can and reaching that goal on our level.” That same sentiment pops up on The Tree’s final track, “Sing It Like Patsy Would.” McKenna, Lindsey, and Rose wrote the gut-honest song, which details the strife and success of the creative path, but ultimately ends with the important point: Let the love for the work drive you. If you’re looking for fame, you’re in it for the wrong reasons.

The work clearly drives McKenna and other songwriters in Nashville, but the question looms about why men continue to dominate the country charts. “I think overall if you had to figure out why is there are fewer women on country radio—and I’ve never asked anybody this so I might be wrong—I think it may have something to do with the fact that women are less likely to write a party song,” she muses. “They do, but when you look at the women who have become the biggest part of country music, most of their songs—the biggest songs—are statement songs. They say things that men can’t really get away with. Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, they’re saying things.”

Whether or not country radio ever wakes up to the imbalance in its formatting remains to be seen. Even McKenna admits the conversation has been going on for some time. “Ever since [I arrived in Nashville in 2005], I’ve heard people say, ‘The woman thing is coming around. You just watch. I can feel it.’ It’s funny because it always does feel like it’s going to turn.”

In the meantime, she and her cohorts will continue writing the songs that make people sit up and take notice, that help shift the conversation. She says with a chuckle, “I love landing in Nashville and going, ‘Somebody’s writing a great song right now.’ It’s just a given.”

Photo credit: Becky Fluke
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

SHIFT LIST: Chef Carla Hall Likes a Little Rhythm in Her Blues

Posted on by Editor

Carla Hall had been on television a lot before she filmed the debut episode of The Chew, the food-focused daytime talk show she co-hosts on ABC alongside Mario Batali, Michael Symon, Clinton Kelly, and Daphne Oz. After all, she had been a finalist on Top Chef in 2008 and the fan favorite a few years later Top Chef: All-Stars, thanks to her indefatigable positivity, vibrant cooking, and cheery catchphrase — “Hootie hoo!” But reality TV hadn’t really prepared her for being filmed on stage in front of a live audience in the fall of 2011.

“I was so nervous on the first day,” she says.

Luckily for her, the DJ who was keeping the crowd entertained played something that struck a chord. (She doesn’t remember what, admitting, “I’m the worst when it comes to remembering people or their songs.”)

Whatever it was, it inspired her to run out into the crowd and begin dancing. A network executive, who was watching the scene unfold, ordered the crew to have a high-energy, Carla-specific playlist created. Now, it blares out of the speakers before almost every taping of the show. “It’s a way for me to connect with the audience, get out of my head, and loosen myself up,” says Hall, who put together this playlist to create a similar atmosphere.

Her gig at The Chew has given the Nashville-born chef a chance to hang out and cook with some of her favorite musicians, including Kimberly Schlapman of smooth-singing country quartet Little Big Town, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight. “Food and music go hand in hand,” says Hall. “A lot of these guys spend a lot of time on the road, so they focus a lot on getting good food versus just having crap food from craft services.”

On this particular day, she’s prepping to tape a segment with Seal, where they’ll be cooking a blackened shrimp salad. “I’m so excited,” she says. “I can’t wait to meet him. There’s some music that reminds you of a certain time in your life. He reminds me of being in London when I was just beginning to get into food.”

Her mind is equally occupied with the upcoming debut of Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen, which is set to open in Brooklyn, New York, in late April. Inspired by the cooking of her birthplace — she now divides her time between her home in D.C. and New York City, where The Chew is taped — the restaurant will specialize in Nashville hot chicken. “Because it’s a Nashville thing, there has to be country music,” she says. “It will range from bluegrass to country rock and country pop, as well as blues and R&B — some old; some new.”

It’s a far cry from what Hall listens to in the kitchen when she’s cooking. “I want something that’s really low-key, because I want to hear the food make sounds,” she says. “If I have something in the pan, I want to hear it sizzle. But if all the food is done and I’m plating up, that’s another story. Then the music becomes much more upbeat, as I shift into party mode.”