Tag: miranda lambert

With a New Album About His Turbulent Past, Waylon Payne Makes It Through

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Roughly 20 years ago, Waylon Payne’s life had become enough of a mess that he’d been booted off tour by one of his closest friends. These days he’s in a much better spot, though many of the trials and tribulations of his 20s are woven throughout the narrative of his new album, Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher and Me.

The 12-song collection emerged gradually on digital platforms three songs at a time, though now as a whole, it’s also available on vinyl, and it should fit neatly within his own album collection of Bobbie Gentry, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and his late mother, Sammi Smith. His late father, Jody Payne, played guitar in Willie Nelson’s band for four decades.

With classic country music in his blood, Payne has had songs cut by songwriting partners like Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Lee Ann Womack, yet Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher and Me is uniquely his own story. “I’m extremely proud of it. Every song is mine, and every song is a story that I’m choosing to tell,” he says. “It’s been extremely freeing and extremely cool to know that I’ve made it out of a dire situation and that I lived to tell about it. That’s all I’m really trying to do, buddy, I’m trying to offer some hope and maybe a different viewpoint that people have heard before.”

BGS: What do you remember about the vibe in the studio while making this record?

Waylon Payne: It was a pretty interesting vibe. We cut it at Southern Ground, which used to be in its heyday the old Monument studio, which is where my mom cut “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and a bunch of her other hit songs. She did sessions when she was pregnant with me there, and I was a baby there, and I was a toddler there. It was pretty interesting to sit in the same spot that she stood and sing all of these songs and do this album. It was just lovely. It was something special and everybody knew it I think.

Did you keep a picture of her with you when you recorded the album?

I have her face on my left forearm so I can’t play the guitar without seeing her face.

How did you learn to play guitar? When did you pick it up?

Early 20s, maybe? My friend Shelby Lynne showed me a few chords, and once it bites you, once it gets its grips on you, you’re a slave to it — once it puts its power on you and gets around you. And that was it. I picked out some chords of my own and I pretty much taught myself everything else, or I’d ask somebody about a chord. I was around 23 or 24.

Is that when you started writing songs?

Yeah, that was around the same time, too. It all came along around the same time. I started learning some chords in Nashville but it was LA mostly that really brought it all home.

At what point did you realize that you enjoyed being on stage?

Probably about 2. [Laughs] Who wouldn’t enjoy that? Like I said, once it bites you, you’re bitten.

Was it the applause? The approval?

I think it was because when I was on stage, I was always with my mother. So, it was family. And that’s what I did it for, for the family.

Your parents are referenced in several songs, almost like characters in the songs. So, I’m curious when you’re singing “Sins of the Father,” is that about your father?

Oh yeah, exactly. I developed a drug problem and it was pretty much his fault. He showed me those drugs. When I got myself together and got myself sober, I had another buddy of mine named Edward Johnson come along that showed me what fathers and sons were really supposed to be like. It changed my life. That song’s about my father and my buddy Edward and his son Lake. Lake’s the one that counts it off in the beginning. Lake saved my life — he and his daddy did. They made me stand up to be a better man and they helped me get sober. I’m really proud of those boys.

There’s a line in “After the Storm” about your mother closing the door on you. And you sing that you have trust that it will open again. Is that emblematic of the experience of coming out to her?

Well, there were some deeper circumstances going on in the house than just me being gay. There was some sex abuse that had happened. It was just hard for the family to deal with. That was a brief period of our life, and that is totally a reference to that time period. [I’m saying,] I know that you’re my mother and I know that you’re the one that gave me life. You’re also the one that’s got to teach me the roughest lessons and that was a hard one, when she shut that door on me. But I knew that it wasn’t shut forever.

How old were you when that happened?

18 or 19.

Was there a moment when she reopened that door, when you felt like that relationship was back on track?

Yeah, about four, five, or six years later. We had a nice moment over Christmas and Shelby was responsible for bringing that relationship back together, too. She’s been like a sister to me for many, many years. I love her, love her deeply.

What year did you go to LA?

I probably ended up there in ’99 or 2000. I got fired out there. I was playing with Shelby [on tour promoting I Am Shelby Lynne] and maybe I was drinking and doing too many drugs. Being a dick, so she fired me. [Laughs] And I didn’t have any money to get home, so I stayed there and ended up making it — that’s basically all I can tell you about that.

When I moved to Nashville in the ‘90s, it seems like aspiring artists had a lot of places to play, and several stages were available to them for showcases and other performances. Were you able to take part in those kind of things during that time?

Man, when I came here in ’93 or ’94, Broadway [the city’s strip of downtown honky-tonks] was a godsend for me. Broadway and Printers Alley saved my life, because they introduced me to the greatest pickers I ever knew in my life. It gave me a place to sing six or seven nights a week. I would go to work at six o’clock at night, and by going to work, I mean we would show up down there and we’d start on one side of Broadway and we would sing on one side, go through Printers Alley, and then down the other side. That was how we got our chops in. We would go and find places to sing. We didn’t make any money, but that’s what I did. I learned how to do that stuff right in my hometown of Nashville, on Broadway.

How did you make ends meet if you weren’t making money in the bars?

Well, I was a prostitute back in the day for a while. I also drove hookers around. I was a construction worker, I was a short order cook, I’ve done a lot of things, pal.

There’s a different vibe in Nashville now than there was in the ‘90s — and of course, the ‘90s were different than the ‘70s, too. What do you like about the Nashville music community now?

What do I like about it?

Yeah, what makes it special, and why do you like to be part of it?

Well, I don’t know that I’m necessarily a huge part of it. I’ve got a group that I write with at Carnival — Lee Ann, Miranda, and Ashley, and those folks. I don’t know if I necessarily hang out with a lot of folks. If I’m part of the Nashville community now, then I’ll take that. That’s pretty freaking cool. That’s something I’ve never really heard with my name before, being part of the Nashville community.

I guess I think of you that way because I see your name as a co-writer on Ashley Monroe’s records. What is it about that writing relationship that makes it click?

Ashley, Miranda, and I started writing together four or five years ago on a regular basis, then Ashley and Aaron Raitiere and I write together a lot. We tend to write pretty good music together. If I write music with somebody and it clicks, and we get good songs, then that’s pretty much a good partnership and I’ll stick with that for a while.

You put this record out three songs at a time, but when I listened to it in its entirety, it struck me that there’s a theme of moving forward, and sometimes outright optimism, that comes through. Do you hear that too?

I mean, I always want to give people hope. That’s one of the biggest things about this record: Even though it’s about tragic situations, I still made it out.

Photo credit: Pooneh Ghana

Ashley Monroe, ‘Hands on You’

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There’s a prevailing thought in our culture that, once women become mothers, they lose their right to become sexual beings. The irony of how babies are created aside, we’re not particularly comfortable with the dichotomy of parenthood and personal passion living side by side. It’s easier for us to digest a mother as a mother and a woman as a woman, and they can’t often cross paths. Country music, however, is not only uncomfortable with this crossover, the genre is simply uncomfortable with women expressing their sexuality — period. Single, married, parent, or not, the second female desire is expressed on the radio it’s, well, it never really makes it there in the first place. Miranda Lambert tried it with “Vice,” but Nashville never warmed to her sensuality.

Lambert’s friend and collaborator, Ashley Monroe, is equally unafraid to show her sexual side on her new song “Hands on You.” From her forthcoming LP, Sparrow, produced by Dave Cobb, it was written when Monroe was pregnant and struck with a stomach bug, feeling left out from the festivities and mischief her friends were enjoying. It’s a song about regret set to some soulful, Chris Isaac moodiness, but not the typical kind of regret of a lover lost. Instead, it’s about wishing for some extended ecstasy. “I wish I’d have pushed you against the wall, locked the door in the bathroom stall,” she sings, her twang getting deliciously woozy through every sultry syllable. Maybe that’s not how a woman — and a mother — is supposed to behave on Music Row, but it’s the truth. That may not be Sunday-morning polite, but it’s human.

Miranda Lambert, ‘Well-Rested’

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How much of an artist's personal life are you allowed to let seep into your listening experience? Whether we like it or not, so much of our musical culture has bled into celebrity — and we've often come to focus more on the ways of someone's heart than their way with words. Since Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks was branded his "divorce" album, there's always some degree of wanting to meet the interior and exterior worlds of those we admire, but it's often at the expense of the listening experience. Confessional, narrative, completely imagined … songs shouldn't have to exist as one or the other, and should hit you in the gut, not spur gossip.

Whether she likes it or not, we know a lot about Miranda Lambert. (News flash: She probably doesn't.) Part of a country music megacouple with Blake Shelton, and then country music divorcee, her romantic moves — including a current relationship with fellow musician Anderson East — has been met with the amount of scrutiny applied to Hillary Clinton's email server (well, at least close). And The Weight of These Wings is undoubtedly a breakup album: A two-disk effort devoted to both "The Head" and "The Nerve," as side one and two are titled, it follows her into the deep, cavernous cracks of heartbreak and then shifts to see how, as the late Leonard Cohen put it, those cracks let the light shine through.

It's hard not to apply all we know about Lambert to a track like "Well-Rested," especially because it's written with East, alongside roots wunderkind Aaron Raitiere. But here's the thing: don't. There's no need to attach a personal narrative to this delicate waltz that lets Lambert's voice be both fierce and fragile. Brushing the words with her lips rather than soaring fast through them, it's arguably the best she's ever sounded and brings bluegrass back to the art of the country ballad. "My mind is present, but my heart is absent," she sings to a slow shuffle and sniffling slides of guitar. Anyone who has ever opened themselves to love — and then had to heal that gape — knows how that feels. And that's worth a thousand times more than the ink stain of any tabloid.

Music City Animal Advocates Brings Nashville Artists to the Fight for Animal Rights

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Navigating the world of animal shelters and pet adoption can be confusing. Whether you're hoping to adopt a furry friend from a shelter that treats its animals with compassion or you wish to dedicate your time to working for animal advocacy, finding the proper avenues is not always an easy task. In Nashville, one group hopes to be a resource for the city's animal lovers: Music City Animal Advocates. 

MCAA is a non-profit group "whose goal is to create an animal-saving culture in greater Nashville and surrounding counties." Their mission is "to create an animal-saving culture by supporting local welfare efforts in Greater Nashville through community engagement, education, and legislation."

"Our animal control used to be, I guess I’ll just say it, not great," MCAA co-founder Leslie Rouffe explains. "I don’t want to throw them under the bus, but at the same time, they had a 78 percent euthanization rate. It was very high. I’m just going to be blunt, but it was bad four years ago. They were very antiquated in how they were running the shelter and not being progressive like Austin and Seattle and San Francisco. So there were a bunch of us in the animal welfare community that felt that it was a great time to talk about change. That was about the same time our city was becoming the ‘it city.'"

The group initially began as an effort to change Nashville's Metro Animal Care and Control, or MACC, through community organizing. "We were a grassroots effort," Rouffe says. "We did a lot of research on best practices of other animal controls that had a no-kill or very low-kill shelter. Then we launched a petition."

Operating in a city filled with animal-loving musicians, Rouffe and her fellow advocates quickly realized that, in addition to harnessing their collective love for animals, they could harness the power of Music City. "A lot of artists who loved their animals were willing to help us out," she explains. "They posted about our petition … J.D. Souther, Nancy Griffith, Todd Snyder, Kelly Clarkson, Miranda Lambert, to name a few. That really helped us garner a lot of attention, and we ended up getting 10,000 signatures."

Rouffe herself is no stranger to the music business, as she spends her days working in Americana radio promotions at Songlines Ltd. She's been able to leverage several connections from her "day job" to further MCAA's cause. "Working in the music industry, I know a lot of press people," she says. "We ended up on the front page of the Sunday Tennessean and we kept getting a lot of press."

Music industry help and connections aside, Rouffe and her counterparts were still tasked with a lot of hard work and did not back down from their cause until major changes began taking shape. "We had town hall meetings to engage our community that were full every time we had them," she says. "We went to the Metro Animal Care Control advisory council meetings as silent observers. We did a lot of different things. So, long story short, they ended up making changes. Big changes. We now have a new Animal Control director and just a total 180. We are now at about a 20 percent euthanization rate, at this point. "

After those changes took effect, Rouffe and her team tailored their efforts toward rebuilding Nashville's trust in MACC, whose reputation had taken an obvious beating in the midst of its organizational overhaul. That's when the group took on its current name, Music City Animal Advocates, and when, as Rouffe puts it, they started "building a bridge."

Despite all of MCAA's success over the last few years, Rouffe and her team still see work to be done, and offer ways that fellow animal lovers — Nashville residents and otherwise — can get involved, beyond donating supplies and money (which, of course, are obviously still much-needed resources). "MACC needs volunteers. You can write a biography for an animal. You can walk a dog. You can socialize a cat. There's a ton of stuff you can do to help out animal control. Also, fostering is huge. We need more fosters. We need people to foster kittens. They also have a thing called 'Bow-Wow Breakout' at MACC where you can take a dog for a day and be de-stressed for a day. Fostering, though, is huge, and that's one of our biggest goals, to create a bigger foster pool here in Nashville."

Lede photo via MCAA Facebook

Georgia on His Mind: A Conversation with Brent Cobb

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Georgia-born Brent Cobb doesn’t run from his roots. The singer/songwriter, a cousin to well-known Americana producer Dave Cobb, includes bits from his hometown and his upbringing throughout his latest full-length, Shine on Rainy Day. But this isn’t an album about a homebody or a good ol’ boy pining for old times. Rather, the record balances the comforts of homes and hometowns with the forward-moving momentum of life on the road. Songs like “Country Bound,” a number Brent borrowed from his father Patrick Cobb, is a homesick number, while “Traveling Poor Boy” shows off Cobb’s troubadour side. Shine on Rainy Day is a record for listeners with those same sensibilities, appealing to homesickness and travel and loss with an enduring message that urges its audience to see past current hardships.

Let’s start off with something basic: Can you tell me about growing up with music — your first experiences starting to write songs and also seeing songs written?

Yeah, I can still remember the first song I ever wrote … I don't know if you want to hear about that …

I do!

It was about rocks.

[Laughs]

It was walking around through the iron ore pits at my grandmother's house with my little sister. We were collecting iron ore rocks and it was a song about collecting rocks. It was "Millions and Billions and Jillions of Rocks," that was the name of my first song. [Laughs] I was 8 or 9. We just had picking parties — family picking parties and everybody played, and everybody wrote, and everybody sang.

Just to let you know what level it went to … In ’92, my dad had the opportunity — Doug Stone flew him to Nashville and took him around to a lot of publishers and with agents and record labels — and my dad was going to sign with Giant Records. He wound up not doing it because I was 7 and my sister was 3, and they kept talking about how much he would be gone on the road. So he decided to stay local, stay regional, and just play on weekends. I just always grew up around music. It was accepted as a trade and a career in my family.

“Country Bound” was the first song that I ever witnessed being written. I was 5, and we were in Cleveland, Ohio, for Christmas with my mama's folk. I was seeing snow for the first time out the window and then I would turn around and my dad and my uncle were writing "Country Bound." I remember them like it was yesterday writing "Country Bound." Every year on Thanksgiving, when my aunts and uncles would come into Georgia from Cleveland, we'd always play "Country Bound." I wanted to include it on this album because it's always been my favorite song. This album sort of has a theme of getting back home a little bit to it.

I really noticed that theme of getting back home. I know Dave Cobb produced this record, and you guys are related and you’d worked together before. How did this specific record come about?

After he moved to Nashville, we'd get together here and there and we always were just like, "Someday we'll do a record here." I toured for about four years — did 120 dates a year — and I stopped when I found out that I was fixin’ to have my first baby. I had a little baby girl, and so I took an indefinite amount of time off the road, and didn't know if I'd ever go back to making records as an artist or if I'd continue to just write songs.

In the middle of this break, Dave called me and he was making Southern Family. He said "Man, I'm putting together a concept album called Southern Family and I only thought it'd be appropriate for me to have my own Southern family be a part of the record, if you would write a song for it." And I was like, "Hell, yeah, I'll do that! That'd be great!" And so I wrote a song for Southern Family called "Down Home." I also helped … I was fortunate enough to write Miranda Lambert's song with her in "Sweet By and By."

When we were in the studio recording both of these songs, it just felt so good to be back in there with Dave. It just felt like home, and we knew that we had to make a record, but we didn't know that it was going to turn into all of this and I was going to do a deal with him or anything.

He produces like the way that I think I write. I write real spontaneously, and I write off of the muse of a moment. He's the same way as a producer. When he says something doesn't feel right, he doesn't mean technically it doesn't feel right; he means in his heart it doesn't feel right. And that's the way that I am when I write songs. It just magically happens.

Tell me a little bit more about writing songs. You’ve got the one song on the record, “Solving Problems,” that digs into the songwriting portion of your career. I think there is an interesting dynamic between this idea of being an artist versus being a songwriter when really, songwriting is an art.

I know! I never knew there was a difference! I thought they were all one and the same. But apparently, that's the first question that every publisher asks on Music Row. When I first went down there and I was checking on getting a publishing deal, they asked, "Are you more of a writer or are you more of an artist?" I just didn't know it was that different, really. And I guess it's because I like to do both — performing and writing — so much. Some people don't like the idea of going to Music Row and and co-writing in a publishing house, but I love it.

What is it that you like about it?

Well, I'll just tell you what my day is, so you can get an idea of what it's like: I get up at 6:30 with my baby and I drink coffee, and my wife gets home from work. I go in to write about 9 or so in the morning. I write till 3 o'clock in the afternoon with someone, whether it’s a co-writer or my publisher schedules a writer with me. While we write, we treat it like a regular job. It’s so cool to me because of the history of Music Row. If you read Willie Nelson's memoir — It's a Long Story is the name of it — he talks about writing "Hello Walls." That was the first song that he ever co-wrote on Music Row, and he just thought that it was such a strange feeling walking in there and not knowing a person and having to write these personal songs.

It is like that, but once you get used to it, it just becomes so much fun. It's just a bunch of collaboration … It's the best job in the world. I'm just glad to have it.

What made you decide to talk about it in “Solving Problems?”

I didn't have nothing else to write that day. [Laughs] That's the God's honest truth. I couldn't make anything else come, so … It's like, "Well, man, let's just write about exactly what we're doing right here." It's cool to be on Music Row writing songs about being on Music Row writing a song.

Speaking of co-writes, I would love to talk about "Shine on Rainy Day." That song appeared on Andrew Combs' record, and it says so much about the strength of the song that you guys can both make it your own. The title is different and I'd love to hear about why you decided to make that the title track of the album and what that song means specifically to you.

For me, that song meant a lot of things, really. It was coming from a lot of different places, so it's kind of hard to say. When you're going through a tough time, it takes a tough time to get to the end of that. When a thunderstorm comes up and the lightning strikes and it cleans the air, the next day the air is crisper, and the sky is bluer, and the trees are greener, and the grass is greener. After a storm passes, things are just better. They're new again. So that's what that meant for me, and it was from the last 10 years trying to pursue this career. Just like anything, it's got its ups and downs and it gets tough sometimes. So it's really about that for me.

I love that Andrew did it, as well. In the past, there'd be five or six different versions of the same song. I don't know how many different versions of "Sunday Morning Comin' Down" there are, but there are a ton of them that were all made back then. I love when a bunch of different artists do a song and I wish that would come back. I don't know why it doesn't exist as much anymore.

I named the album Shine on Rainy Day because I had given a pre-copy of the album to a close friend of mine, when he and his wife had just gone through a very personal family tragedy. That song was the one that really stuck out to him. It just really inspired me to name the album after it.

You write a lot about Georgia. I recognize landmarks and highways in the lyrics. How much of this was influenced by where you’re from and the idea of home?

I grew up in real rural Georgia, the southwest side of Georgia. It’s the surroundings, the wildlife, the pine trees, the red clay. It's the people down there. Growing up, you couldn't buy beer on Sundays. People are a little more cut off from the rest of the world. Their traditions and their ways — and mine, too — they're a little more old school. Everything's got a routine to it. It's just like reading a book that's been around forever. I don't know how to explain it. It's just something I've always noticed, too, and I've always studied. I guess it was a mixture of those surroundings and that environment, but then also with my family, too, being musical. I just love Georgia.

Photo credit: Don VanCleave