2017

Ward Thomas prove that there’s still magic in the country music business, writes Steve Faragher. If there’s one thing about country music that delights me, it’s that talent will out, and honesty will prevail. It’s like the American Dream, only real. If you’re super-talented, super-nice (and ambitious enough), then the gods of Nashville will smile on you. Don’t believe me? Too cynical to accept that? Step forward the case for the defence: Ward Thomas. It’s incredible to believe that, in 2012, two completely unknown 18-year-old twin sisters from rural Hampshire were writing an album, while completing their A-levels, that would reach Number 9 in the UK album charts and launch an international career that, just four years later, would see them being a successful headline act at festivals across the country and releasing (for Sony Music no less) one of the most eagerly anticipated country music albums of 2016. What’s even harder to believe is that, having just talked to them, I can honestly tell you that there is no meanness, no brattishness to this pair. What they are, though, is a lot more grown up from the heady days of their debut. “We worked first on Cartwheels about two years ago. That was the first song we wrote. That lead us in the direction of this second album. We decided to call the second album Cartwheels because when we played that song live on our tours in the UK it was a moment in the set when we realised this was the kind of music we wanted to be making, the kind of sound we were heading for. The reaction from the audience was really special as well. There’s a pause in the song during which you could have heard a pin drop. I watched the faces of fans, women mostly, and knew they felt the vulnerability of the lyrics. It was a magical moment.” It’s Lizzy (the blonde one, the press release tells me) talking to me on the phone from their tour car in Ireland. The signal keeps breaking up, but her sincerity is clear. Catherine’s also in the car, but on the other line, though sometimes she clearly leans over and interjects. “The first album, we wrote when we were a lot younger. We’re at a different stage in our lives. We wrote Cartwheels from our experiences and from stories we heard. It’s all about the experiences that people go through in their early 20s.” Apparently, Ward Thomas were always Nashville-bound, and it was all kicked off by their Canadian cousins: “Cousins from Canada came over and lived with us for a while when we were younger, and introduced us to all sorts of country music, but particularly the Dixie Chicks. The Dixie Chicks were the reason we got into writing songs and doing music. They were our biggest influence, and still are. We love everything about them.” So, heavily influenced by The Dixie Chicks, and doing their A-levels, they decided to write a hit album… “Our first album was a very unexpected hit for us, it was so exciting. We started writing it at school. The day after our very last A-level exam, we were flying off to Nashville to record the album. “I didn’t do very well in my last exam,” Lizzy adds. “I was too busy thinking about Nashville. All our friends were doing gap years or thinking about going to university, but not us. We knew exactly what we wanted to do, and we thought we could do all that other stuff later on. It’s great for us on tour, as all our friends are at university and so everywhere we go we’ve got someone to stay with – it’s very useful. We get to see them a lot.” That independently released first album, From Where We Stand, written at school and recorded in Nashville, sold more than 25,000 copies. The sisters went on to play two UK tours, including gigs at London’s O2 arena and Hyde Park along the way. But now they’re older, and with a second album and a seriously major record deal come different sorts of expectations, and a definite change in direction. Do Ward Thomas agree with Eric Church that there are no genres in music any more? “For this album, I think we’re very country-influenced harmony-wise, but there is lots of crossover and that’s great because it’s just a whole lot of music mixing in together. Country as a genre has a big meaning to it and it always has had: back in the day Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn sang very heartfelt, emotional country music, Willie Nelson too, and it goes from there to Miranda Lambert and Eric Church, Kacey Musgraves, Taylor Swift – all very different kinds of music. All the songs have stories and they’re very authentic, and they all have real music; very live instrumentation, very honest. You might say that Adele has some country influences because her music’s very storytelling and honest. That’s what they all have in common.” So, how does their songwriting process work? “We co-wrote a lot for this album with two girls. Jessica Sharman’s from the UK too and Rebekah Powell is from Nashville [she’s the Nashville-bred daughter of revered hit-maker Monty Powell], and we met Rebekah in Nashville and we had a really great connection with them both. Four girls in their early 20s going into a room and pouring their hearts out, sometimes with a bottle of wine for the late-night writing sessions. “Catherine had ‘guilty flowers’, that phrase, in her head and we were talking about how it was a great title for a song, and we got into a writing room with Shelly McErlaine of Alisha’s Attic and Ben Adams from A1 and then we created the stories and the concept for that song with them. Other times, we might start with a melody and create from that, it’s different every time.” The girls have just finished a summer of festivals across

Lucie Silvas writes from the heart, and that can be a pretty dark place, as she tells Teri Saccone. Fans of singer-songwriter Lucie Silvas can be assured that pretty much everything you need to know about her can be found in her wonderfully-crafted lyrics and music. Yet there is, of course, more to her than songs so we won’t deprive you of an interview. Before we get to that, however, we should mention that Silvas is in fact inextricably linked personality-wise to her music, and there is no pretence surrounding her. She’s as open, sweet, yet razor-sharp, as her lyrics suggest. Furthermore, Silvas is exceedingly bright and personable. For the release of her long-awaited third album Letters to Ghosts, Lucie returned to the UK (where she was born, she was raised for a time in New Zealand) to discuss her career, the ever-evolving music industry and the sweet life she has built in Nashville. Letters to Ghosts follows two prior studio forays for the Tennessee-based artist: Breathe In (2004) and The Same Side (2006). Her music may not be traditional country but she does embrace gospel, soul and rock within her palette. Technicolour Presence The prime motivator behind Silvas’ latest album (released Stateside earlier this year) was a past relationship which ended before her marriage to country guitarist John Osborne (he of Brothers Osborne). Letters to Ghosts’ lyrics reveal the dark and sometimes ugly side of break-ups. The pain is palpable within the tracks, whether the vibe is ballsy or sad, as Silvas is never beige: she’s always a technicolour presence. Says Lucie: “I wrote the album in the wake of the ending of a big relationship, and it was in the healing process of it that I realised the many things I had done wrong and the flaws I had. Until you’re ready to let go and start over, you’re in a holding pattern that won’t let you move forward. This album is the essence of that: of trying to move on, facing who you are, and changing too. Roots is a prime example on the album, glistening with that pure emotion Lucie purveys. According to her, Roots was “Especially cathartic because that plagued me for so long; so the whole letting go of the past part was liberating. Writing can be such a learning curve for my emotions. I was talking myself out of a storm. I still have trouble singing that one sometimes, as it feels more poignant to me than most.” Roy Orbison Another provocative cut off LTG is Silvas’ audaciously unique take on the Roy Orbison classic You Got It.“My parents used to play Roy Orbison a lot when I was a kid and I have always thought this to be the most perfect song. The recording is one of my favourite sounding records ever made. So I couldn’t just cover it in the same way or even attempt to live up to such a powerful original. I made it my own by bringing it to its simplest form: not much instrumentation, just piano and an electric guitar, and the vocals. The lyrics reflect the feeling of finding the kind of love that makes you feel so levelled and understood. I found that when I met John, and this recording is for him.” Inspired Performance Furthermore, her inspired vocal performance on Smoke proves that Lucie’s is a voice to be reckoned with. LTG is a good introduction for those unfamiliar with Silvas, as it contains a solid array of tunes with some very strong songwriting. Silvas grew up partly in New Zealand, where her father is from. Her mother is Scottish and was a budding singer but came from a strict Christian family who discouraged anything except classical singing. “And my dad is Jewish,” she tells us, “so I had a mixed upbringing both culturally and musically.” Lucie left London, relocating to Nashville, almost a decade ago. It wasn’t planned. Basically, an old English friend lured her there. “My dear childhood friend John Green, who I’ve known since we were 14, suggested it to me in 2007. We had a band as kids. He asked me to come and check it out and he said I’d meet great people – and the first time I was there I met people I’m still friends with today. So I went out for a few days but ended up staying five weeks and never saw England in the same way again.” Intoxicated “Weirdly enough,” she continues, “the music I’ve always done never made more sense to me until going there, and I fell in love with the place, and I saw people making music in a way that was more inspiring to me, and I was intoxicated by it. Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves invited me on their tours, so that helped me out. Living in London I felt like I had to have music or my personal life but not both, as I was travelling and it didn’t work out well. In Nashville, I saw artists who had a normal life and were pursuing their dreams. I want to have a life outside of music too. Being there in Nashville I have both.” Rootsy Americana LTG is mired in rootsy Americana with influences including soul and gospel. One track, Shame, embodies more of a Nashville vibe in its instrumentation and style. But instead of simply appropriating a country flavour, the sound has seeped into Lucie’s lexicon quite organically, not only from her life in Music City but also from growing up with the sounds of Haggard and Cash in her childhood home. We ask her if she thinks that she’s not as commercially-accepted as she might be because she’s not country enough for Nashville? “It’s been a long road,” she replies. “I just signed the deal with Decca in the UK and doing it on your own independently, as I’ve done, is hard, although a lot of people also do it this way.

20 grammys and countless hits later, Vince Gill is still at the top of his game, writes Paul Sexton. On our way to Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium, we mention to a record-company person that we’re going to meet Vince Gill. “Ah yes,” they reply, with a warm smile. “The Mayor of Nashville.” It may be an honorary title, but Music City has no greater ambassador than a 20-time Grammy winner genuinely loved and respected by everyone involved in the business, and many more besides. He’s one of those for whom no surname is required: it’s just Vince, country music’s close family friend, Nashville’s favourite adopted son for decades. Not bad for a bluegrass picker and Beatles fan from Norman, Oklahoma. When we meet backstage at the famed venue, known to all as the Mother Church of Country Music, Gill is sitting alone in a small room strumming and studying potential tunes for an appearance at an all-star radio showcase. We tell him about his affectionate appellation. “I haven’t been paid yet,” he laughs warmly. “But I love it here, I love to help out, I love to chip in and do my part, and I think I always have, ever since I’ve been here. I made my first trek here 42 years ago, and made one of my very first records here. So I’ve always been drawn to the city. I love the community of it, the spirit of it, the kindness of it. This place is surrounded with a lot of really kind people, and it makes you willing to want to help out.” There was, he confides, at least one moment of doubt, very early on. “I moved here from Southern California, which is 75 and sunny every day. I showed up here and it was 17 below zero. It was freezing. ‘What have I done?’ “I didn’t move here until ’83,” Gill continues, “but I made a boatload of trips here to work on records, and work with other people and tour, so I had about eight good years of a lot of time in Nashville and always felt like I would wind up here. That opportunity was finally the right time to come, and I’m not going anywhere else, that’s for sure.” All this time later, it was only right that, as the CMA Awards prepared to mark its 50th event last November, the all-star single Country Forever that marked the occasion featured Gill among its all-time greats, alongside Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Charley Pride, Ronnie Milsap, Randy Travis et al. As he prepares to turn 60 in April, Gill is a statesmanlike representative of the music and the city he adores. But his role is far more than that of a country figurehead. He’s as deep in the trenches of recording, performance and collaboration as he always was, and his diary for last year was as packed as ever, with two album releases inside just seven months. His elegant, 14th album in his own name, Down To My Last Bad Habit, was followed in September by a delightful new endeavour with his part-time compadres The Time Jumpers, entitled Kid Sister. Time traveller 2017 looks every bit as eventful. After finishing last year with his Christmas At The Ryman shows with his wife of nearly 17 years, Amy Grant, he’s swiftly back out on the road, and in March will reunite with his pal Lyle Lovett, for the third year running, on a nine-city US schedule. The humour, you can bet, will be bone dry. On 12 February, Vince has a date at the 59th annual Grammy Awards, courtesy of not one but two nominations for that Time Jumpers set. As both an ever-active songwriter and a fervent traditionalist, both will have given him great satisfaction: Kid Sister is nominated for Best Americana Album, and its title track, his own composition, is up for the Best American Roots Song gong. Down To My Last Bad Habit, I tell him, would be worth the price of admission for the title alone. He laughs. “The title track is a song I wrote with Big Al Anderson, who was part of a pretty legendary band here in the States called NRBQ, a lot of people’s favourite rock ’n’ roll band in history. “I got the title from a conversation at breakfast. I was talking to a friend and said ‘What are you up to?’ and he said ‘Well, I’m doing alright, I’m down to about my last bad habit,’ and I said ‘Man! May I please have that? I want to write a song with that in it.’” This was, by design, an album often displaying the crossover, soft-rock side to which Vince’s magnificent, mellifluous voice and dexterous guitar playing are so well suited. Indeed, four years before he made his debut in his own name with the Turn Me Loose record of 1984, Gill’s honeyed tones infiltrated the American pop Top 10, when he sang Let Me Love You Tonight, with his early band the Pure Prairie League. “It’s fun for me,” he says of the solo album. “I don’t think it’s a very traditional country record for me, in that I did a record two years ago with Paul Franklin, the great steel player, called Bakersfield, where we played half Buck Owens songs and half Merle Haggard songs. Then when I play with The Time Jumpers, that really gives me the opportunity to invest in a lot of traditional country music – real twangy, the stuff I really love. “So this record, I had a little more freedom to chase myself as a guitar player, and not try to have it be so steeped in that [tradition]. But there’s one on there that’s a real traditional country song I wrote for George Jones after he passed — another one of our great icons that should be on the Mount Rushmore of hillbilly singers.” The song in question is the typically graceful album closer, Sad One Comin’

Crossover country king Eric Church talks to Country Music’s own Teri Saccone. Just because he’s been heralded as the crossover king of country with his rock ’n’ roll swagger, don’t make the mistake of presuming that Eric Church sees himself as being confined to any musical categories whatsoever… “The interesting thing about country is that it’s such a big umbrella,” Eric says. “It’s so broad that it can include a lot of things. Personally, the heart of country for me is Americana music.” Church has been deemed “outlaw country” for his slightly subversive lyrics and sometimes rebellious nature. Furthermore, he and ultra-tight band The Outsiders are cohesive and explosive both on stage and in the studio, the latter evidenced on five incredibly commercial yet critically-praised albums. Country Music magazine sat down with the North Carolina native and found that although practically worshipped in the USA, he remains focused, grounded and engaged. Assuredly, this singer-songwriter has tapped into the galvanising nature of music: “Funny how a melody sounds like a memory” is the chorus from his monster hit Springsteen, essentially a fan letter to The Boss. Church grew up in the picturesque and sleepy enclave of Granite Falls, North Carolina, where he was both high school valedictorian and basketball star. Definitely a weird hybrid when you also consider there was music in the mix. When not shooting hoops or studying, Church was practising guitar, as he’s a self-taught player who preferred songwriting to socialising as a teenager. In November last year, Church released Mr Misunderstood with zero promotion nor even an announcement, which was audacious for not only its bold and quiet birth but also the fact that he managed to keep the music off the radar from even his record label until he actually released it. Mr Misunderstood came about largely due to Church experiencing an almost otherworldly visit from his songwriting muse. “The songwriting spigot was turned on full blast and the songs spilt out for a reason. I’ll never know why, and no one expected an album at the time. Rather than putting it on a shelf to fire up the promotion machine, we just dropped it out there. We kept it a secret until the day it came out. In order to do that without fanfare and publicity we had to buy our own record processing factory in Germany.” That small factory will remain under the ownership of Church, at least for now, so he reports: “The good news is, with vinyl, there’s lots of demand. And there’s not a lot of places that do that.” Quiet Moment The intensely productive period that gave rise to Mr Misunderstood was definitely a welcome occurrence but it was an absolute fluke, an aberration according to Eric. “I’ve had nothing since that happened last summer,” he adds with a laugh. “There are no more songs right now dying to come out like there were suddenly inside me last year. Whatever it was that happened to me during that time is gone. Nothin’ ever since,” he explains as a cheeky smile spreads across his face. Mr Misunderstood was also different from other albums because Church didn’t attempt to get into a songwriting frame of mind in order to get focused on his music and lyrics, as he’d done previously. It was just as though proverbial lightning struck and he caught it in a bottle. “Normally with songwriting I’ll take my time, try to separate myself from home and family distractions. But this album was totally unplanned and it was different, as the songs came to me so fast that I wrote one song, which immediately led to another and then another and so on. It was almost embarrassing that they came to me like they did and I felt I was losing my mind at one point getting all of these songs coming through me – and they felt like the best songs of my career, too.” Growing up in the South, Church was immersed in the bluegrass tradition, and he is versed on the guitar, banjo and mandolin staples of that scene. “I grew up playing a host of instruments but guitar is my first choice and it’s what I use as my writing tool.” Although there remains a south/north cultural divide in the US, Church is no Southern apologist. “I am proud of being from the South and I can’t shy away from that, and I think it’d be a crime to hide from that,” he admits. “I’d prefer people to not like me or my music rather than me pretending to be something or someone I’m not. It’s who I am. I’m a Southerner. Period.” What Church has always been on some level is a rebel of sorts, a reputation he has earned over the last few years. He and his band were fired from an early tour when opening for Rascal Flatts for essentially blowing them off the stage. “I’ve always been competitive and I am musically competitive too,” he admits. “I don’t always play by the rules and maybe we played too long and a little too loud for them.” Another aspect of Church and The Outsiders’ live shows is that they tend to encompass not only the hits but also the odd rare track from early on in his career. Mixing things up is interesting not only to his hardcore fans, but to Eric too. “I know most fans come to see us to hear the big hits. For me, it doesn’t always have to be about that big song,” he says. “The fans also love it when they hear maybe Lightning or Can’t Take it With You. And that’s who the show has become more about. It’s the people who have been there for the long haul as much as the newcomers. There’s always going to be people coming on and falling off fan-wise depending on what you’re doing commercially – that’s the nature of the business. But our fanbase is built on those