Exclusives

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

On his first album in 10 years, ex-Byrds man Chris Hillman marries old Byrds classics with new songs built around his love of bluegrass and classic country harmonies. As he tells Country Music, “This album’s like a history of everything I’ve ever done.” If Chris Hillman had “only” been bassist and co-vocalist for The Byrds, he’d be an icon: that’s what got him in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, after all. But Hillman is, of course, much more than that. The most fervent follower of bluegrass in the legendary 60s group, Hillman was instrumental in turning The Byrds into pioneering country rockers on the album Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. He was largely behind the recruitment of Telecaster wizard Clarence White to The Byrds, and also Gram Parsons. When The Byrds fell to ground, Hillman co-founded The Flying Burrito Brothers with the mercurial Parsons, and went on to star in the Desert Rose Band, who brought sheen to country-pop in the 70s and 80s. Along that road, Hillman has honed his love of trad country, his mastery of mandolin, plus his fine voice and songwriting to the extent that he’s now considered something of an elder-statesman of country traditionalism. Whoulda thunk he once got booed at the Opry? After 10 years without releasing anything at all, Hillman’s now back with the aptly named Bidin’ My Time – a wonderful album that pulls all the strings of his art together. At 72, Hillman’s still sharp as a tack: when Country Music calls him at his California home the day after Glen Campbell’s passing, he’s keen to emphasise: “I’m in good shape, and it’s a beautiful California morning!” But Hillman makes sure he offers genuinely fond memories of Campbell. “I knew him well back in the 60s,” he begins, “he was a phenomenal artist around LA. Man, what a talent. Wichita Lineman is still to me, one of the greatest songs ever written, one of the greatest performances ever from Glen, too. But he had so many. We’re losing all our heroes. That’s the world we’re in now, right?” Thankfully, Hillman is still very much with us, and he’s delighted. “In all honesty, I never thought I’d release another record. And nor did I care!” But his long-time collaborator Herb Pederson (also of the Desert Rose Band) and Byrds fanatic Tom Petty had other ideas. “They got together and kinda said, ‘We’ve got you a record deal, so do you want to make a record?’” Hillman explains. “I said, ‘Well, yeah… but you haven’t heard any of my songs.’ Tom just said, ‘I’ll tell you if I don’t like ‘em. But Chris, I’m honestly not worried about that.’” Petty was right not to fret. Bidin’ My Time mixes some of those Hillman originals – “just layin’ around, really” – with reworked Byrds songs and a shot of covers (the Everly Brothers’ Walk Right Back and Petty’s own Wildflowers) in an enchanting country-fied set. “I’ve had a wonderful time making this,” he says, and why wouldn’t he? Back to bluegrass Hillman’s love of bluegrass and country shines brightly on Bidin’ My Time, even if – as you’d expect from an ex-Byrd and Burrito Brother – it’s refracted by its own “Cosmic American Music” lens. But, at heart, Hillman’s a traditionalist. “Growing up in the 1950s was probably the greatest time in the States,” he remembers. “I lived in a lovely small town, we had a horse, it was idyllic. You couldn’t duplicate that now. I was a third-generation Californian, my great-grandfather came out from Massachusetts in the 1880s by train, wagon and horse. “Why did I fall in love with bluegrass? Well, rock’n’roll went to sleep around 1959! It was all Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and all that. Elvis was in the Army by then. So I, and all my peers in The Byrds, got into folk music. But I was also into bluegrass… definitely the odd man out. There was one or two in my school out of 500 who liked bluegrass. The first man to take me under his wing was my High School custodian, the janitor. He was from Arkansas, and sang at the weekends. He had the first Buck Owens album on Capitol, this would be 1961. It just struck a chord. Just listen to those old Flatt and Scruggs records.” Byrds fans will delight in Bidin’ My Time for a number of reasons. A major one is its Byrds reunion of sorts, with both David Crosby and Roger McGuinn guesting. Hillman says of the new take here of the Pete Seeger-written Byrds classic Bells Of Rhymney: “I just wanted to get Herb Pederson and David Crosby to sing together. “It’s still my favourite song that we ever recorded in The Byrds.” Then, there is also an update on one of The Byrds’ first country songs, Old John Robertson [originally on 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers]. Hillman has updated the song he co-wrote with Roger McGuinn as New Old John Robertson, after discovering more about its subject. The song itself is another insight to Hillman’s childhood. “John Robertson was a silent film director and actor in 1920s Hollywood, and the last movie he ever did was a talking movie in the 30s with Shirley Temple. But I just knew him as this retired man in the small town I grew up in. He’d always stop and talk to you. He was a wonderful looking man – big moustache, a Stetson hat, a beautiful tweed jacket and riding jodhpurs. He would just escort his old wife around town, y’know? When I was six or so, he rode his horse into the Post Office – a wonderful guy, and so kind. You’d always find a dollar on the ground. ‘Excuse me sir, I think you dropped a dollar?’ He knew. He’d dropped it for us kids.” In keeping with its nostalgic theme, Hillman also revisits his beloved Everly Brothers. “Bye Bye Love was the first single I think I ever

Jake Smith – better known as The White Buffalo – was raised on country, but his own unique music also blends in punk, folk and rock. Country Music meets the acclaimed singer-songwriter to talk brooding balladry and outlaw country. You can take a boy out of country music, but you can’t take the country music out of the boy. Before he’d even learned to play guitar, as a school kid in the late-80s, Jake Smith was a veteran country consumer. “My parents were country music freaks,” he recalls. “Growing up in southern California, it wasn’t a huge hub for country music but we’d go on camping trips and go to shows. Randy Travis, Waylon Jennings, George Jones… I saw pretty near everyone who was touring in country music in the late-80s. “I hit my teens and got into punk almost exclusively – everything on the radio I thought was bullshit. And the country music that was around at the time just seemed a little too polished and corny for me. I wanted something a little more real.” The raging energy and visceral punch of hardcore punk and grunge stepped into the breach, and young Jake underwent a Damascene conversion. Thirty years later he’s continuing to carve out a highly acclaimed singer-songwriting career now known as The White Buffalo. His new album, Darkest Darks, Lightest Lights hints at the influence of everyone from Springsteen to Thin Lizzy to Tom Waits and Pearl Jam, yet while he steadfastly resists any kind of generic labelling, even he can’t deny the broad streak of country DNA weaving through his music. The resonant rumble of Johnny Cash in his booming baritone; the fascination with outlaws, outcasts and the self-made myth of America; and above all, the way he takes the storytelling, lyric-focused tradition of the country songbook, and runs with it. Yet it was a passion for songwriters such as John Prine and Townes Van Zandt that led him to pick up an acoustic guitar at the relatively late age of 19. “I was just blindly optimistic. I told myself. ‘If the songs are there, it’ll work.” He gigged infrequently around the start of the Noughties, but kept making home-made cassettes, “to send out to people for Christmas, birthdays and stuff”, which began circulating among California’s surfing community. Meanwhile, friends suggested the White Buffalo stage name for the thick-set six-footer and a decade and a half of slow ascendancy began. “People duplicated them tape-to-tape,” he says. “Then someone called me out of the blue and asked to use a song in a surf film, and that reached Bob Hurley (from surfing apparel label Hurley) who helped finance my very first album.” How The West Was Won The resulting long-player, Hogtied Like A Rodeo, blended country-blues with rough-hewn folk textures and punk rawness, but it wasn’t until the best part of a decade later, and his Once Upon A Time In The West album, when The White Buffalo really found his natural musical habitat. He also found his voice, a booming, charismatic delivery that remains the defining characteristic of his sound. “I think my strength is I’m able to be tender,” he says, “but also growl and be scary if I need to be.” The record also showcased Smith’s ability to convincingly inhabit the lives of characters he created in song, and explore gritty and sometimes controversial subject matter, to the point where many listeners assumed there was a quite different backstory that got The White Buffalo to where he was at that point. Wish It Was True is a searing confessional from the point of view of a man laid low by a mixture of guilt, fury and regret, the result of betraying and betrayal, which culminates in the assertion: “Country, I was a soldier for you, I did what you asked me to, it was wrong and you knew… The home of the brave and the free, the red, white and blue? I wish it was true.” Such is the conviction of his vocal, that this writer for one wondered if Smith had spent time in the military. It seems I wasn’t alone. “Yeah, I get a lot of veterans and military coming up to me thanking me, because I wrote a whole album with that theme (Shadows, Greys And Evil Ways) and when I tell them I wasn’t they still thank me for channelling those feelings that some of them seem to feel. “It’s always interested me, the idea of men going off to war on someone else’s agenda, feeling kinda disillusioned and getting their lives turned upside down – that’s always been fascinating to me.” Once again we’re reminded of a very country-ish trope – the outlaw troubadour that identifies with those whom life has wronged and who have wronged others in return. It’s this recurring theme that made The White Buffalo a natural fit for the TV show his songs are most closely associated with. By 2010, Sons Of Anarchy was becoming a big hit for HBO, and the show’s producers recognised that The White Buffalo’s music perfectly evoked the conflicts, struggles, hedonism, hubris and heartbreak that make the show so compelling. “I hadn’t even seen the show when they first used my music. But it’s a great marriage. A lot of my songs are about conflicted emotions felt by people doing terrible things, but who have this human element – he’s a murderer but you root for him, that kind of thing.” Smith contributed numerous songs to the last five of the seven series, highlights including the brooding, forbidding ballads The Whistler and Matador, and the outlaw country confessional Oh Darling, What Have I Done. He would eventually collaborate with the show’s creator Kurt Sutter and music supervisor Bob Thiele Jr to perform the final episode’s epic swansong, Come Join The Murder. “I write songs about characters in character,” Smith admits, “but sometimes it’s based on real personal experiences, even if it’s kind of a skewed version of that