#Caylee Hammack is one of her inspiration singers

[starres-stuff]

"Oh, they got their hands full, tryin' to tame a pistol Spitfire, freckles that could run among the dead Clothesline, tightropes, daredevil, high hopes They raised a little hell when they raised a little redhead"

[andhumanslovedstories]

Recent country songs that have made me literally gay gasp as a gay woman, in order of how much they make me want to write an essay on gender and queerness

HONORARY MENTION BUT JUST BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS TECHNICALLY AMERICANA NOT COUNTRY (but genre is fake) AND THIS SONG ISN’T RECENT (2014 and I’ve been listening to it faithfully since then) BUT I ONLY RECENTLY LEARNED IT’S A COVER AND THAT’S MADE ME RECONTEXTUALIZE IT: “Murder in the City” by Brandi Carlile, a cover of The Avett Brothers where she changed the words “make sure my sister knows I loved her/make sure my mother knows the same” to “make sure my wife knows that I love her/make sure my daughter knows the same” which fucking. fucking gets me. Especially since the first time that I heard this song, I assumed it was from a man’s point of view because of that line, and then I learned that Brandi Carlile is a lesbian and I was caught up in my foolish heteronormitivity, and then I learned it was a cover and thought oh okay I guess the song is originally from a man’s pov and it’s cool she covered, and then I learned she changed those lines to make a song that already feels deeply personal to her to explicitly include her love for a woman and the family they’ve made together. And that’s just. It’s all just a lot. 

3) “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Miranda Lambert featuring Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes and Caylee Hammack, because the first time it came up on my spotify, I saw the title and was like “hey dope I like this song” and then I heard the first line was still “I must have been through about a million girls” and I realized none of the words or pronouns were getting changed and I was getting the song I’ve always wanted and deserved: a high production value, high energy, big girl group tribute to being a lesbian fuckboy who Fooled Around And, oops can you believe it, Fell in Love. 

2) “If She Ever Leaves Me” by The Highwomen, sung by Brandi Carlile who is, as mentioned, lesbian, but since I’m apparently still chugging my comp het juice, I was still trying to figure out if this song--a classic “hey buddy keep walking, she’s my girl and she’s not interested” song with an interesting element of the singer being aware the relationship might not last anyway--was gonna be explicitly queer. And then there’s the line, “That's too much cologne, she likes perfume,” and I was like OH HOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!! 

This is immediately followed by the lines “I’ve loved her in secret/I’ve loved her out loud” which is also deliciously queer in this context, with this singer and that juxtaposition, but the line that really fucking got me is my favorite of the song: “If she ever leaves, it's gonna be for a woman with more time.” This is two women in a complicated relationship. This isn’t just a “keep walking, cowboy” song, it’s a song that uses that framework to suggest a whole ass “Finishing the Hat”** relationship, and that’s so interesting to me. Like a song that isn’t just explicitly about two women in love but one that conveys very quickly a rich history between the two of them. And in a genre where the line “Kiss lots of boys, kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into” was revolutionary representation.

(Fun fact, “Follow Your Arrow” was partially written by Brandy Clarke, another country lesbian! Another fun fact, so is basically every other good country song. Brandy Clark, please write a big lesbian country anthem, I know it will immediately kill me on impact.) 

To quote one youtube comment, “”lesbians how we feeling??” and to answer by quoting some others, “As a closeted baby gay in the 90s, who was into country, this song would have changed my life”, “I just teared up.  So many happy tears, as a gay woman raised on country music,  this is something that's definitely been needed.  Thank you Brandi. Thank you highwomen”, “This song means more than I can say in a youtube comment”, and “Lesbians needed this song :)”

It’s me. I’m lesbians. 

**ANOTHER HONORARY MENTION EXCEPT IT ISN’T RECENT AND IT ISN’T COUNTRY SO I GUESS THIS IS JUST A MENTION, BUT I AM INTERESTED IN THIS SONG--“Finishing the Hat” by Kelli O’Hara. A very good Sondheim joint, that’s about making art, the costs of its obsessive and exclusive nature and the incomparable pleasure of putting something into the world that wasn’t there before. It’s such a traditionally male narrative that I’m thrilled to find a wonderful female cover of it. I’m not even fussed about her changing the gender from the lover who won’t wait for the artist (except that the shift from “woman” to “one man” sounds so clunky) because there’s value turning this song into a lament of the men who won’t love artistic women. But I do also wish she’d also recorded a version that kept the original gender so it would be gay. OKAY BROADWAY TANGENT OVER, BACK TO COUNTRY. 

1) “Highwomen” by The Highwomen, ft. Yola and Sheryl Crow. I can’t even express the full body chills the first time I heard this. Like repeated, multiple chills renewed at every verse of the song. This really closely parallels my experience with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” up there, because when I started it I was like “oh dope I know what this cover will be” and then the lyrics started and I was like “OH MY GOD I DIDN’T.” In the case of “Fooled Around” it’s because I was amazed that they kept the original words. In the case of “Highwomen” I fucking transcended because they changed them. 

So I grew up on Johnny Cash, obsessed with a couple of his albums but largely with a CD I had of his greatest hits. (Ask me how many times I listened to the shoeshine boy song. Hundreds. Johnny Cash told me to get rhythm and I got it.) And my FAVORITE was “Highwayman” from the country supergroup he was in, The Highwaymen. The concept of the song is that each of the four men sing a verse about a man from the past and how he died. It’s very good. The line “They buried me in that grey tomb that knows no sound” used to scare the shit out of me. I didn’t expect to have a song that targets so specifically my fear of being buried alive in wet concrete. 

(If you haven’t heard the song, by the way, listen to this version to properly appreciate it as a piece of music. If you have, watch the fucking music video holy shit this is a work of art oh my GOD.) 

So I was predisposed to love this cover before I even heard it. But then I heard it. And they rewrote the song to be about historical women. And it’s like. There’s layers here okay. 

Neither the Highwaymen nor the Highwomen are signing about famous people. This isn’t a Great Man tour of history, it’s about dam builders and sailors and preachers and mothers and Freedom Riders and also Johnny Cash who flies a starship across the universe, as you do. 

In the 1986 version, it’s a song about the continuity of life--the repeated idea is “I am still alive, I’m still here, I come back again and again in different forms.” The highwayman is all the men in the song. He reincarnates. The song is past, present, future. The title is singular, masculine. The same soul, expressed through multiple voices, multiple lives. 

In the 2019 version, the title is plural, feminine. Highwomen. This song is about women. Each verse asserts the same motif as the 1986 version--“I may not have survived but I am still alive”--but there is no implication of reincarnation. Each woman is her own woman. This version has a final verse that the previous versions lacks. The singers harmonize. It’s not a song where one voice replaces  another, the story of this One Man progressing through time. It ends in a chorus of women saying “We are still alive.” 

We are The Highwomen Singing stories still untold We carry the sons you can only hold We are the daughters of the silent generations You sent our hearts to die alone in foreign nations They may return to us as tiny drops of rain But we will still remain

And we'll come back again and again and again And again and again We'll come back again and again and again And again and again 

Another fun fact! The first time I heard them sing “We are the daughters of the silent generations” I died! But luckily I came back again and again and again.  

This is a song about the continuity of history. It asserts that women’s historical lives matter and that they continue to matter, long after they died. This is a song about legacy as well, the legacy of nameless women who worked to protect the ones they loved and make the world better. They don’t die by chance. They are all hunted down by political violence, by racism, by misogyny, for stepping outside their prescribed roles. But, as Yola (who btw fucking CRUSHES THE VOCALS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????? HOLY SHIT MA’AM) sings as a murdered Freedom Rider, she’d take that ride again. And at the end of the song, she joins the chorus but does not disappear into it. Her voice rises up out of crowd. And the crowd calls itself “we”. These women are united but not subsumed into being One Woman. This is about Women. 

And then, outside the song itself, there’s the history of this song about history. It’s originally by Jimmy Webb and was covered by Glenn Campbell. This cover inspired the name of the supergroup that covered it, the group with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and my man Johnny Cash. And it’s like holy shit! What an amazing group to collaborate! Hot damn! 

Then, it’s 2019 and here’s The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires. The name is obviously riffing on The Highwaymen. Shires set out to form the group in direct response to the lack of female country artists on the radio and at festivals. And they name themselves after a country supergroup, and they put out this song, a song connected to massive names in country music, and they center all of this on women and womanhood and the right of women to be counted in history and to make history and to talk about the ways we have mistreated and marginalized women, in a group that started because one woman was like hey! we’re mistreating and marginalizing women! 

I just think this is neat! I think there’s a lot here we could unpack! But this post is 100 times longer than I was planning and work starts in a bit so uh I’m gonna go get dressed and listen to The Highwomen on repeat for the next hour, “Heaven is a Honky Tonk” is another fucking bop that improves on the original, it would be dope if they’d collab with Rhiannon Giddens, okay byyyyyyyye 

[gigsoupmusic]

Ashley McBryde chats to GIGsoup about her tour and latest single 'One Night Standards’

Ashley McBryde is Grammy nominated singer-songwriter based in Nashville. Her album ‘Girl Going Nowhere’ won her an army of fans on both sides of the Atlantic. We were delighted to chat to Ashley when she recently had a show in London. Welcome, it’s great to talk to you today. How has the tour been so far? It has been wonderful. We’ve started in Switzerland and I’ve never been. I got to be in Gstaad. It was beautiful, the people were so nice.  Germany then Amsterdam, now we’re back in London. It’s great, I’ve been here a few times, so it gets to feel like home when you get to London. Tonight' gig is going to be nuts, last time I was here I was opening for Luke Combs, it was a sold out show. Now I’m headlining here and it’s a sold out show. So the feeling when I get on stage is going to be pretty intense. https://youtu.be/-BXqoGMJUVQ Please can you tell us the story behind your new single ‘One Night Standards’ Sure. We were actually trying to write a song about an airport hotel. You know, you don’t stay long. We started writing this song, but, we couldn’t get it quite where we wanted it to go. So we put it down, because we didn’t want to ruin it.  We’ll take what we’ve got, we’ll step away from it. My buddy Nicolette and I were going to write with Shane McAnally. We presented the song to him, saying here’s what we have and here what we think the problems are. He disagreed and said ‘I don’t think these are problems. Let’s rework it all together’. I happened to say ‘ Most hotels only have one nightstand in them, one nightstander’ Shane then said ‘Did you say one night standards’ ‘I said no, one nightstander’ He then said ‘that’s a better direction to go’ Then all we had to do was get honest about one night stands. If we were going to Nashville, what five things should we do? You should have a hamburger at Browns Diner. There are no frills, it’s just a really good hamburger. Go to a bar called ‘Losers’ and listen to the house band. They are really good.  There are botanical gardens, we don’t have a lot of those. It’s called Cheekwood.Everyone should go to the Grand Ole Opry or visit The Ryman if you haven’t done that. I would also tell you to go to Mike’s Ice cream. You need to head downtown, where all the tourist stuff is, skirt by everything and get an ice-cream What do you still love about song writing?  You’ve been in Nashville for over ten years, what still inspires you. I went from writing five or six days a week, to writing one day a month when I started doing the artist stuff. So, I missed it, really bad, you go a little crazy if you can’t write and you’re a writer. What I really like about it now is that when you get back into the swing of it and still write with the people I have always written with.  I am constantly amazed by the people arriving into town. This is my twelfth year in Nashville. There are people just coming in who have only been there one or two years that I’m meeting and getting to write with and collaborate with, I am constantly amazed how talented people are. How lucky to be one of those centres, one of those towns were these talented people get to be. So, who should we be looking out for? The voice that once you hear her you’re never going to forget her is Caylee Hammack. You are going to love her. Ingrid Andress, she’s just been over here. I don’t know if Tyler Childers has caught on here yet, but he is country. If he’s not, I’ll eat your hat. You’ll really enjoy him. Quick fire questions. So if you had to choose, would you pick... Ready or steady - Steady Book or film - Film Blue moon or blue roses - Roses Jack Daniels or George Dickel - Ohhhh, George Dickel Sean Penn or Shaun Mendes - Sean Penn Read the full article