May 2017

The country queen describes how her new album of hymns and contemporary gospel has come at just the right time. Reba McEntire has been the Queen Of Country Music for so long, it’s sometimes hard to remember just how many boundaries she’s crossed and how many ceilings she’s smashed through. She’s our touchstone, a direct connection from traditional Nashville names of the past through to today’s country-chart acts. And she also taps into the eternal, symbiotic relationship between country and church, especially on her brand new double album, Sing It Now: Songs Of Faith And Hope. Perhaps surprisingly, this is Reba’s first gospel record, and she’s taken immense care to make every track count, gathering old hymns – mainly from the 19th century – for the first disc, and much newer, inspirational material for the second. She’s just come through a challenging couple of years, reluctantly divorcing her husband Narvel Blackstock after 26 years of marriage, which also meant completely remaking the multifaceted business empire that they’d previously been running together. In fact, it’s now been renamed RBI (Reba’s Business Inc). So she’s coming up for air, touring, performing in Vegas with Brooks and Dunn, and flying to the UK and Ireland to headline the C2C festival. Raised on rodeo and religion, Reba McEntire has never been a quitter. She always picks herself up, brushes herself down and throws herself into a new project. So when her private life was being splashed across the tabloids, instead of hiding away, she gave honest interviews. She admitted that she hadn’t wanted the divorce, but firmly believed that life is too short to be miserable. So while she acknowledges the invaluable support of fans, friends and family, she also prayed for guidance, which is what got her through. “I’ve had a pretty trying time this last two and a half years, and God’s the one that I always turn to,” she says. In fact, Reba can’t recall a time when her faith hasn’t guided her. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve known about the Lord,” she says. “And my relationship with God has been very solid. I’ve always known He’s on my side. I’ve known He’s always there when I need Him. And I try to do things in ways that please Him, and I listen and get direction from Him. Of course, I’ve not been the perfect follower all my life. At times my dedication ebbs and flows. It’s probably not a good thing to say, but it’s honest. I turn to Him when I need help. And now that I’m so appreciative I’m going to stay in communication with Him a lot more.” So a gospel album became an ideal pick-me-up for Reba to reconnect her with her faith and her past. We might assume that this was influenced by her sister, country-gospel singer, Susie McEntire, but Reba disputes this. “It was actually my friend Bill Carter, my manager in the 80s, and my producer Tony Brown who encouraged me to do an inspirational album.” She then talked to Susie, whose reaction was: “Oh yeah, you’ll have a blast!” Not that Reba hasn’t belted out spiritual numbers before. “I’ve recorded a lot of songs on the 37 albums that I’ve done – like Suddenly There’s A Valley (on 1980’s Feel The Fire) and Walk on (on 1990’s Sweet Sixteen) – that are very inspirational,” she says. “You could call them gospel songs if you want, because they are uplifting.” And she always knows the kind of response she’ll get, because audiences “get riled up and responsive, just like church!” Starting Over When she tried to select songs for Sing It Now, Reba found it wasn’t easy. “There are so many great songs. But they only wanted 10, so I was going to do a mixture of five old hymns and five new songs. I recorded way too many, so when I gave them 15, I said ‘Okay, I’ve over-recorded. You guys are going to have to pick which ones you want to take out,’ but they said, ‘We can’t decide either, it’s going to be a two-disc CD. So go on back in the studio and record five more!’ It worked out really well.” She has a simple yardstick when picking songs. “If I listen to a song and it doesn’t touch my heart one way or the other, happy, sad or something, I don’t record it,” says Reba. “Because if I record a song, when I sing it on stage, and if it really did touch my heart, hopefully it will touch your heart too when you hear it. And if that doesn’t work, then we’re wasting everybody’s time, mine and yours included!” Reba says she didn’t need to try them out in church, because “I’ve been singing I’ll Fly Away forever, since I was a little kid. And When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, How Great Thou Art, Amazing Grace, those are tried and true. We just made some different arrangements on the songs.” To make the album distinctive, she brought in friend Jay DeMarcus of Rascal Flatts – who’d previously founded contemporary Christian music group East to West – to co-produce in his home studio, along with her bandleader and musical director Doug Sisemore. “They came up with new ways of doing the great old hymns to make them a little different. So instead of me doing How Great Thou Art real big and loud, with orchestra and choir, I made it a love song to God. It’s very special to me.” You don’t have to be religious to appreciate this double album though, as it’s also satisfying musically. Reba, DeMarcus and Sisemore have taken disc one’s old, familiar material, and made it new, while the second disc sees new songs made more accessible. So listeners can either immerse themselves in classic gospel hymns, like Oh Happy Day, or dive into contemporary compositions like Hallelujah, Amen that complement Reba’s faith. Or just ‘shuffle’ between

Brad Paisley reveals his love of all things British to Kieran Kennedy. George Hamilton IV was popularly known as the International Ambassador for Country Music. But since Hamilton’s passing in 2014, that title could equally well be given to this year’s C2C headliner, Brad Paisley. The clean-cut, Stetson-clad singer has always appealed to British fans, and particularly those who favour more traditional country sounds, thanks to songs like the unashamedly nostalgic Too Country, with its guest appearances from genre legends Buck Owens, Whisperin’ Bill Anderson and George Jones. The song was literally ‘too country’ to be considered for release as a single in America, but was embraced as an instant classic on this side of the pond. Paisley, meanwhile, is happy to take on the responsibility of maintaining the reputation of country music – and indeed America – around the world. As he said when Keith Urban presented him with the CMA International Artist Achievement Award in 2015, “I think country music works as one of the best ambassador-type things you can do in an artform. When you send other forms of music overseas, it’s obviously something people flip out over and love, but I don’t know if it reflects real life like our format does. Any time you see people in Sweden loving country songs and buying into what we are as artists, they’re seeing the real America. In that sense we have an obligation as a format to try and get this everywhere we can.” Looking forward to this year’s C2C, Paisley says: “I’ve loved every time we’ve ever played over there. I think that when it comes to country music, the fans in the UK are in some ways more intense, because they’re sort of starved of it. We show up and we feel exotic to you, whereas in America, I’m the farthest thing from exotic!” Brad last played C2C in 2014 and feels that the annual bash has made a big difference to perceptions of country among the wider British audience. “I know for a fact that the first time I did C2C there were a lot of people who were there more out of curiosity than a desire to hear country,” the singer says. “And I think that now, a couple of years later, that’s changed and they know what to expect and they can’t wait.” Early Relationship Paisley has been coming to the UK since 1999, the year that he released his first album, Who Needs Pictures. As a new artist, he was part of a package headlined by another of this year’s bill-toppers, Reba McEntire. “I had a great time, but it was a lot of work,” he remembers. “The touring wasn’t as cushy as it is now and we didn’t necessarily have it all mapped out right. There was a lot of jet lag and no time to acclimate, so it was rough. I had band members that I had to wake up to go on stage, because they were asleep in the dressing room! “I remember telling my manager at the time, ‘I’d kinda like to become a star in America first, because that’s hard enough, and then after that, we’ll go back.’ “And that’s exactly what we did. Out of the blue, I really got the bug to go over again. I was heavily into British culture. I was watching The Office on TV, and Jools Holland and Top Gear. I loved everything about it and said, ‘I wanna go back!’ “I was told at the time, ‘There’s not much return on your investment, you’re gonna play small venues, but go because you’ll have a good time.’ So we went, and it went so much better than anyone expected. We started to really focus on the UK and we went every year for a little while. It was truly magical.” It wasn’t just that Paisley had become an established artist, but that country music had become much more accessible in Britain, generally. “When I first went, there wasn’t YouTube or any way to find my music. When I went back, I realised that the world had really shrunk,” he says. One of Paisley’s favourite things about his UK fans is that our tastes haven’t been shaped by country radio. We’re as likely to latch onto an album track as a particular favourite as opposed to a US hit single, simply because those singles never had blanket radio play over here. “I can get away with doing different songs when I go to London than I can do in the United States, where they want to hear No. 1 hits and not have too much new thrown at them,” he says. “I can dig in and do things that would be obscure to some of my American fans, because the European fans have studied them more and they know them. “I remember the first time I played Shepherd’s Bush,” Paisley continues, enthusiastically. “I was testing the waters and I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to dig back and play something really old.’ I played Long Sermon, which was the first track on my first album. If I played that in America, there would be a really small proportion of the crowd that knows the words, and there would be a lot of fans who came along in the last decade that don’t. They might like it, but they wouldn’t know it. “But here I was in Shepherd’s Bush with a couple of thousand people singing every word. I realised at that point that there was probably nothing I could do that would stump them.” It’s particularly rewarding to Paisley when fans ‘get’ the words of his songs, because more than many artists he is very much a word man. His songs such as Celebrity, Alcohol and Online are full of humorous observations and funny lines in the tradition of Nashville lyricists Roger Miller, Tom T Hall and Shel Silverstein. “I don’t know what it is about British culture and the British

Fresh off the success of her Big Day In A Small Town album and tour, Brandy Clark tells Helen M Jerome how she writes such outrageously addictive songs, how she approaches intensely personal and taboo topics and how close she’s been to broke. Brandy Clark has been writing for years, for all kinds of country artists, from LeAnn Rimes and Kacey Musgraves to Keith Urban and Darius Rucker. But was there a precise moment she looks back on as her big break? “Definitely,” she says. “I remember the real turning point, when I thought this could really happen. I had toiled away for a long time, and not had a lot of success as a writer. Then Reba McEntire recorded two of my songs [Cry and The Day She Got Divorced] for her All The Women I Am album. She’d cut a song of mine for a previous album, but it fell off, because people usually record more songs than make the record. I mean, I recorded 14 songs for Big Day… and it has 11. But Reba cut those two songs and they both made the record.” And that was it. Brandy was on a roll. Today, Brandy’s ambition is growing and she’s working towards getting her passion project, Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical, onto Broadway “soon after 2017”, which is another collaboration with long-time friend, Shane McAnally. But before we get ahead of ourselves, if you haven’t already, you should first check out her 2013 debut album, 12 Stories, which had critics reaching for superlatives, and brought songwriting nominations and awards. Now she’s delivered the fine follow-up, Big Day In A Small Town, which contains so much energy, and is crammed with so many ideas, references and characters, that you need several listens to appreciate how well it hangs together, hooking you in and refusing to let go. Having grown up in a town with a population of just 900, you can see that some of it might be autobiographical, and she says that when the song, Big Day In A Small Town was written, she thought, “Boy, that would be a great title for an album.” But she just tucked it away and didn’t really think about it until she was getting ready to make a record again. “I had some ideas swirling around in my head and that was one, and I kind of tried to build around it. I definitely knew that it would be the title and centrepiece of the album.” That was around two years before her producer, Jay Joyce came onboard. Brandy’s label, Warner Bros., set them up to work together, so they went for coffee and just hit it off, agreeing to jump in and make music together. They complement each other, says Brandy, as “Jay is a real genius and is just about the job. He doesn’t get involved in the politics of the business. He just keeps his head down and works. So he was a great guy for me, because it’s just all about the music.” She was able to bring in the songs she already had, as all the writing had taken place before they met. “A lot of times with the producer, you are writing songs for the record with them,” she explains. “That’s just how Nashville works, you get set up to write with people. But I’ve never worked with a producer where we’re writing for the record. Not that I wouldn’t, but I haven’t done it that way yet.” When they started to work together, Jay Joyce asked her to listen to Neil Young’s Harvest, which wasn’t a record that really meant anything to her. But he assured her that there were some songs on that record that would work really well for her sonically, so that’s when she became familiar with Young’s classic 1972 album, and songs like Heart Of Gold, Alabama, and The Needle And The Damage Done. High-concept Country The idea of her own record being an almost-concept album wasn’t a conscious thought, according to Brandy. She certainly hadn’t imagined doing a whole record about her hometown until Big Day In A Small Town was done. And she still claims she’s not yet made a hard and fast concept record: “They’ve always just been loose; and if I keep making records, I think that’s how I’ll keep thinking about them, as loose concepts. But at some point, I think I’d like to make a real concept record.” Her own favourite concept records, she says, are Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, plus Pancho & Lefty, which is Willie with Merle Haggard. Concept album or not, its title track is a fond love song to the logging town she grew up in: Morton, in Washington State, a place she left years ago, but still has a pull for her. “It’s just going back into where I’m from. To people that I’ve known my whole life and loved.” She stops to consider. “I mean, I couldn’t live there anymore because I’ve been too citified, with having a Starbucks on the corner and that sort of thing, but it’s always nice to go back.” To make all those hometown names and places familiar to the listener, Brandy wanted a map of a small town included in the album artwork. “But I didn’t say I wanted it for the cover,” she insists. “I said maybe the background of the artwork could be a map. So the next day, a guy from Warner Bros. [Stephen Walker] sent over what he’d drawn, with the streets as song titles. Which he really didn’t intend as the cover,” she recalls. “It blew my mind that he came up with it. I was like, that’s the cover right there!” In fact, the whole album feels just as organic musically, although some tracks came from her back catalogue, since she never stops writing. “That’s been really good,” she says, “because there are songs on Big Day… that were written before 12

With a stunning new album and growing fanbase, The Grahams’ future looks golden. From George Jones and Tammy Wynette to Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, country music has produced plenty of couples who make beautiful music together. With The Grahams, there’s a new duo to add to the list – although Alyssa and Doug Graham are, admittedly, far closer to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings than the aforementioned mainstream country superstars. The young couple have been making a serious impact across North America, the UK and Ireland since they debuted in 2013 with the Riverman’s Daughter album, their mix of striking songs, gorgeous harmonies and subtle, imaginative arrangements marking them out. We caught up with the couple when they were in Portland, Oregon, and found that, for them, living on the road together does not diminish the pleasure they find in love and music. “Considering we seem to spend almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week together, we certainly could get on one another’s nerves,” says Alyssa. “But I’m happy to say that we don’t. We’re doing what we love – making music and travelling – and we feel very grateful to be able to do so.” No Ike and Tina Turner moments, then? “No! Definitely not!” Alyssa laughs. “We’ve known one another almost our entire lives. We first met and became friends when I was seven and Doug was nine. We started dating when we were teenagers and have been together ever since. And we formed our first band when we were at high school. So we’re really comfortable with each other, on and off stage. It’s a really nice way to live – making music and travelling with your best friend, who happens to be your partner in life.” School Holiday Alyssa and Doug’s journey towards the heart of American music has taken several interesting turns since they first began singing together at lunch break. The band they formed at school, Blindman’s Holiday, were a psychedelic outfit who went on to enjoy a degree of success on the jam-band festival circuit. “We grew up loving The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Neil Young,” says Aylssa. “They kind of set us an example of what drugs to take!” She and Doug both laugh at the memory and Alyssa adds: “We’d write songs about bugs biting our ankles!” Doug says: “We were so much a jam band! I’d start a guitar solo in one tempo and, by the time I came to finish it, we were in an entirely different time signature!” Alyssa adds: “We toured that band for a long time and went down really well with audiences, but eventually, both Doug and I wanted to go deeper into music.” Doug nods and adds: “It was fun at the time, but both of us felt like we’d said enough musically and wanted to strip things back, simplify things, get away from the big solos and concentrate on the songs.” “We had this run-in with the major music industry in New York City,” explains Alyssa, “and didn’t feel comfortable with what they were offering. So it felt good to walk away. I went to college in Boston and studied music – previously, I was unable to read music and by studying there I not only learnt how to do so, but got seriously schooled in jazz.” Jazz Solo Finishing college, Alyssa and Doug – who had loyally followed her to Boston – returned to New York City, got married and began performing in such noted jazz clubs as The Bitter End and The Cotton Club. Alyssa’s beautiful voice won a recording contract with Sunnyside, a contemporary US jazz label. Her 2005 debut album What Love Is presented her singing original songs alongside covers of jazz standards, bossa-nova numbers and Neil Young tunes. 2008’s Echo album continued this momentum with Graham here being gifted the first opportunity to record Involved Again (a song Jack Reardon had written for Billie Holiday – who died before she could record it – and was so impressed by What Love Is that he gifted the song to Alyssa). Both albums were well reviewed and Graham’s record label obviously hoped to market her towards the huge audience buying Norah Jones CDs. This never quite took and 2011’s Lock, Stock & Soul – while produced by Craig Street (who had produced Norah Jones and Cassandra Wilson) – found Graham shift towards Laurel Canyon-style singer-songwriter pop and is the least convincing of her solo albums. Unsurprisingly, her jazz audience passed on this while the pop crowd stuck with Taylor Swift. Doug and Alyssa took stock and headed south. “Those albums reflect a moment in time for both of us,” says Alyssa. “Doug was with me throughout, always on stage playing guitar. We learnt a lot, but I was never entirely comfortable with being pushed out front. The idea had always been to be inclusive of both of us, but it wasn’t until we wrote the Riverman’s Daughter song that things began to take shape and sound really natural. That got us off to go and live along the Mississippi river for a year and things began to come into place then. The songwriting, our singing, the feel for a traditional American music.” Riverman’s Daughter was released in 2013, its songs and sound inspired by the couple leaving New York City and exploring the Great River Road. Alyssa and Ben write their songs with Bryan McCann – “he and Doug have been buddies since they were eight and played on the same soccer team”, says Alyssa – and here, they conjured up a mythic America from pre-modern times. In a way, The Grahams’ songs on Riverman’s Daughter recall The Band’s ability to write songs that sound like they have existed forever. The sound is also consciously an homage to older American music. “At the time, we were obsessed with The Carter Family, The Louvin Brothers, The Stanley Brothers,” says Alyssa. “We went for a very traditional, retro