2018

The most unexpected release of 2017? A Shane Richie country album. Country Music meets the all-round entertainer to find out how he’s apparently the bridge between Nik Kershaw and Willie Nelson. It’s hard being Shane Richie. We know this because he’s telling us. At Warner Music’s offices in London, the actor/singer/all-round entertainer is railing against critics who are already having a right go at him for recording an album. But we’re here to listen anyway, as it’s a country album. That’s right. A Country Soul by Shane Richie is out on 10 November. Richie’s previous forays into the charts may have included a Wham! Cover [I’m Your Man, for 2003’s Children In Need] and he’s long been gigging with his own band for fun, but this third album is, he says, what he’s always wanted to do. But first, Richie’s determined to justify why he should be singing at all. “I’ve been in bands since I was 16!” he begins with barely any prompting. “So when I see these other TV presenters, personalities, whatever doing albums, I’m like; ‘Oh, for f***’s sake!’ Nick Knowles… Jason Manford… Anton du Beke… Bradley Walsh is an old mate of mine, so that’s alright, but the difference is: I do this for a living. It’s not a hobby. People are cynical? I get it! But I will go on shows and sing. I’m not sure Anton du Beke will! I’ve set-up in fields, I’ve got changed in ****in’ toilets and the back of a van, I’ve played working men’s clubs, all that.” Shane Richie likes to swear. From here on in, you can assume Shane’s swearing regularly… we’ve just edited a lot of it out. But he’s very likeable with it, and is almost bouncing off the sofa with excitement of talking to a “proper” music publication. (“Put me on the cover! Shania… then Shane. You know you want to, it’s perfect!”) Counter to that puppy-dog enthusiasm, it’s understandable that Richie is also somewhat defensive. Many people balk at the notion of actors singing, or singers acting for that matter, but in an age when 2016’s biggest-selling male debut album in the UK was by the aforementioned Bradley Walsh, who the flip knows what’s what anymore? As we write, the No.1 single on the UK iTunes country chart is High Heeled Shoes by Megan McKenna, once of reality TV show /The Only Way Is Essex and recently the focus of her own make-it-in-Nashville documentary There’s Something About Megan. And, to be fair, McKenna can sing. So can Shane Richie. He started in showbusiness (note: he has no problem with the term “all-round entertainer”) as a Pontins Bluecoat, and has done comedy, TV gameshows, West End musicals (notably Grease), and “serious” roles (the fabled/maligned Alfie Moon in EastEnders) along the way. But he says he’s long-wanted to make a country album. And, putting his sizeable money where his sizeable mouth is, he went away and self-funded a whole heap of recording sessions. “I was going round record companies, and they liked the idea of me doing an album,” he says. “But it was all: ‘How about you sing some Bobby Darin?’ I am not singing Bobby Darin. ‘How about a big band album? Songs from musicals?’ Oh, for ****’s sake! No! “I turned up here at Warners and I told them: ‘I love Pat Green’s Wave On Wave: I want to do a version of that. ‘They literally did not know who I was talking about. Do you even know who I’m talking about?” he laughs. If you didn’t know, Wave On Wave was a Billboard country No. 3 in 2003, Green’s only significant hit. We had to check. And Warners were impressed enough to back him. “The greatest thing? Everyone here [Warners] thought Wave On Wave is an original song of mine because no-one has heard of Pat Green in the UK! It might be the same with Heartache On The Dancefloor by Jon Pardi. I love Jon Pardi! I’ve sent him my version.” Smashin’ It This is where things have got proper strange, you might say. Richie’s seemingly more effusive about country music than many of the “proper” artists you’ll come across. He was hanging out at October’s Country Music Week like a pro (“Drake White was amazing!”), can’t wait to see Midland (Drinkin’ Problem, what a song that is!”) and shoots off on tangents of new bands and songs he loves. (Old Dominion, Lady Antebellum, Thomas Rhett, Dan + Shay and Little Big Town also get a big Richie thumbs up.) “I’m from an Irish family, so I love folk music, country music, the first song I ever sung was Black Velvet Band by The Dubliners when I was eight. I was with Drake White the other night and told him, ‘Man, I love your Irish music! You’ve only got country music because of Ireland.’ He laughed about it.” Predictably then, A Country Soul is not a “trad” album. Richie says his parents constantly listened to Jim Reeves, Kenny Rogers and (the only one of these he really liked) Glen Campbell, but there was never any danger of him going “old school”. “Loads of people were chipping in, saying ‘You should do Leavin’ On A Jet Plane or Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’ [he grimaces]. I’ve got nothing against those songs, lovely, but my heart wouldn’t have been in it. It would have been the easiest thing for me to sing some Kenny Rogers… but I’m taking more of a gamble. I could have done a Glen Campbell song – what, just ’cos he’s dead? Nah. Chris Stapleton singing with Justin Timberlake – that’s more where my head’s at. What I love about new country, if you want to call it that, is that it just draws on so much. What makes it country? Accordion, fiddle, steel guitar! I don’t really care about the labels. I was playing Keith Urban’s The Fighter the other day. My kids love/ that

With Ryan Adams calling her “a phenomenal songwriter”, Courtney Marie Andrews has quietly become one of the most talked-about talents of 2017. We meet the ex-punk who’s risen to acclaimed country troubadour. Raised in Phoenix, 27-year-old singer-songwriter troubadour Courtney Marie Andrews is currently one of the fastest rising stars of the diverse Americana scene, though she won’t be pinned down to a precise genre or even location. “I’m sort of moving around. I don’t live anywhere in particular. And because the next few years are going to be so busy, I’ve taken a liking to just renting Airbnbs. Then I don’t have to worry about paying rent when I’m not there. And all my possessions are in a storage unit.” Andrews is similarly pragmatic about her influences across the musical spectrum. She didn’t know much about fellow Arizonans like Glen Campbell and Linda Ronstadt when she was young, but says they’re now huge influences. “Growing up in Phoenix, if you were alternative then you were a punk. I loved Bikini Kill, and wanted to be a feminist punk rocker like Kathleen Hanna. I loved female-fronted bands like The Distillers, and I thought Brody Dalle was incredible. I was also into the classics, like The Clash and Ramones. But Bikini Kill was the pinnacle as far as what I wanted to do.” So what was the name of her feminist punk rock band? Andrews laughs: “Massacre In A Mini Skirt!” Spooling back a few years, Andrews grew up around creative people, with her uncle doing canvas work (as in her song Paintings From Michael), and her mother always getting into new arts and crafts, making jewellery, but also painting dolls, and miniature scenes on spoons. “I always remember as a kid we’d work on stuff together and she’d make this very fine jewellery, and what I made looked like garbage. I don’t quite have the gift! Music resonated with me more.” Rebel Girl Andrews describes herself as an unexpected child who had lots of alone time, and was raised primarily by her mother. “And what I was drawn most to was musicals. When she put those on I fell in love with singing. It’s so weird, because I had cousins that lived with us, and none of them became musicians, but I wanted to perform since I was a baby, three years old.” It’s no surprise to hear that her favourite singalong musical was Annie. “I wanted to be her, and Tomorrow was the first song I sang in front of an audience. I think it was because I was an only child, I always had this feeling of loneliness. I identified with Annie, and Matilda too, because she was strange, and I always felt like I was a little weird.” She got into songwriting because of her work ethic, plus a lightbulb moment. During one feminist punk band rehearsal, all three girls decided they must write their own material, “and the only person who came back with some songs was me!” She suddenly realised that she adored all the separate elements of being a songwriter. “I loved writing poetry and short stories, and wanted to be an author when I was a kid. Then I also loved travelling, and singing. And when I found out that all three of those became songwriting, I was very pleased that I’d found my path.” Honest Life So if it hadn’t been for Massacre In A Mini Skirt, Andrews wouldn’t have discovered her craft. “And the more I started songwriting – by the time I was 15 – the internet was coming around and I could post my stuff on these strange new dial-up forums, and people would comment on them. There was this forum called Acid Planet and someone said, I really love your folky sound.” Andrews laughs conspiratorially. “It sounds really silly, but at the time I thought, isn’t folk for old people? Isn’t it just old traditional music? Then they listed some people that I should try listening to and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was more poetic than punk. “Of course, there’s some people that bridge that, and can be poetic, like Patti Smith, but besides that you can find more poetry in folk and country. So once I discovered that, aged 15, I knew what I wanted to do.” Meanwhile she deliberately honed her guitar skills. “If I was performing solo I didn’t want it to be me just strumming a G chord for the whole set.” So she developed her guitar-picking to enhance her live performances, which came from hearing underground indie bands like Iron and Wine and Sun Kil Moon. “I thought it was so cool that you could make a solo guitar sound like two guitars. So I sat at home and tried to replicate that as best as I could.” She pressed on as a solo artist and didn’t play in bands for about four years, “then I fell into backup singing, really randomly, three times.” First it was for Jimmy Eat World, one of the few bands who’d made it out of Phoenix, and then for Damien Jurado, after she’d opened a tour for him. Now she has her own band: “They’re the reason I moved to Seattle. They’re very close to my heart. They’ve been my road band whenever I need one, for five years now.” A handful of albums down the line, Andrews has made her breakthrough record, the self-produced Honest Life. “They are very personal songs, because I needed to write them for myself. It’s definitely not a record that I was considering others in! That sounds very selfish, but it was an imprint of myself because I was going through a very painful breakup while I was on tour. And songs are what I turn to.” Even the artwork is an uncompromising close-up. “What’s so funny about the cover photo is that I didn’t have any budget, so I just had my friend take pictures of me