Hailey Whitters On Writing, Her Debut Album and Working With Matraca Berg – Interview

If you don’t know the name Hailey Whitters, it’s about time you checked her out. The Iowa-born, Nashville-living songstress is a staff writer at the Frank Liddell-owned Carnival Music, and already has a cut on the upcoming Martina McBride record. She recently released her sassy yet vulnerable country-Americana hybrid debut album ‘Black Sheep’, leading to comparisons to the likes of Brandy Clark, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley. She is a star in the making, and I got the chance to chat to her on the phone last week, to find out more about some of the songs on the record, how she got to Nashville, her musical influences growing up, her reaction to the McBride cut, working with (and fangirling over) Matraca Berg, playing live and much more.

Vickye: I wanted start by talking about growing up in Iowa. What was that like, growing up there? Did you always want to do music?

Hailey: Yeah, I think honestly the Spice Girls were probably what got me started on music, as they probably did every girl, when you were that age. Just wanting to be in a girl band, and then I saw the Dixie Chicks, and I loved the Dixie Chicks. I just had this idea that I always wanted to do music, I just never really knew how I was gonna do it. I didn’t come from a musical family and my hometown – we didn’t really have much of a music scene so it was all just me having to figure it out on my own. I met with a teacher of mine and he pointed out that the Dixie Chicks all wrote their own songs, and then I started thinking okay, well I need to write my own songs. I started writing and getting more serious about it. I took some guitar lessons, and then my mom and I started coming down to Nashville probably when I was about 15 or 16. We’d come down to Nashville and I would take a voice lesson, and that’s where I started getting more of a feel for the music business. Or just music, country music in particular. And then when I went to Belmont I kinda started figuring out more about the music business.

Vickye: Was it always Nashville that you wanted to go to?

Hailey: Yeah, I think so. I’ve honestly never been to New York or LA, but I came to Nashville when I was 15 and just fell in love with the Opry, and Broadway, and… I’ve always been a fan of country, and Nashville seems to be the city for country music. It’s always been Nashville for me.

Vickye: So apart from the Spice Girls and the [Dixie] Chicks, who else were you listening to growing up?

Hailey: (laughs) Oh my God. Shania Twain, I loved Shania Twain… I listened to a lot of 90s country, whatever was on the radio. Actually the Spice Girls was my first album I ever owned, which is awesome looking back. I loved Alanis Morissette too. She was awesome. Then I kinda just listened to whatever was on country radio.

Vickye: So when you moved to Nashville and you signed with Carnival, did you have any intention of going on to make a record, or was it just all about you wanted to write for other people?

Hailey: I think I always knew I wanted to make a record one day, but that wasn’t necessarily the intention with Carnival. I really signed with Carnival just because I liked their creative environment, and I looked up to a lot of the writers they have here, like I love Natalie Hemby, and Bruce Robison – he wrote ‘Travelin’ Soldier’ for the Chicks – and I just always liked their ideas behind creativity. So it was more for the writing.

Vickye: Well you had ‘Low All Afternoon’ cut by Martina McBride earlier this year. Have you heard her version?

Hailey: I haven’t! People have heard it, people who work with her have heard it and they’ve told me about it. And it’s just building it up and I can’t wait to hear it.

Vickye: What was your reaction when you heard the news that she was gonna cut it?

Hailey: I think just like shock. (laughs) Because I did not expect – like when I wrote that song, it was nothing other than just me getting it out. And I didn’t even think my publishers were gonna like it, so the fact that it went on to where Martina McBride cut it, I was like really? I mean I was so proud. It’s my first cut and to have written it completely by myself, it’s just – I’m really proud of it. But I wasn’t expecting it to go that far.

Vickye: I think it’s a brilliant song, I mean it’s one of the best on your record and it’s one of the best I’ve heard this year.

Hailey: Thank you so much!

Vickye: When you started writing and recording the album, how did that come about?

Hailey: Well we’d been doing some demo sessions with a guy in town, Derek Wells, he’s a big guitar sessions player and he plays on just about every record in town. We’d been doing a few demo sessions with him producing, and really liked the direction, and so we’d gone in and we’d done like two sessions and had maybe six songs, and we were just like well why don’t we make an EP? Get this around town a little bit and see what people think of it. Then Carnival was like why don’t you just make a record? You have the songs, I think a record’s more of a piece of work. We went back in with Derek and finished it out, did another session, and voila – we had the record.

Vickye: So when you were putting together the songs, did you have any idea what you were going for specifically sonically, or was it literally just whatever the songs needed?

Hailey: I think it was just following the song, whatever fit the song. We weren’t necessarily trying to  make it be anything, it was more just what does the song need? It was all pretty organic. Let’s just make these songs come to life, and make them sound like they’re supposed to I guess. We weren’t aiming for anything.

Vickye: I wanted to talk specifically about a couple of the other tracks on the record. Particularly the title track – that whole thing of being a “black sheep”, I relate to that so much and I know a lot of other people do as well. Was that inspired by your own life experience?

Hailey: Yeah, kind of! I had the title and I really liked [it], and when I brought it in to my co-writer we just started playing around with it. It came about really fast, we wrote it in about an hour and a half, but I do feel like we were both drawing from that place of being the black sheep, and I know, especially musically I can get kinda frustrated. Because people are like oh, well you’re a little too left, then other people are like oh, well you’re not Americana, you’re too country. So I’ve been in this in-between place of ‘what am I?’ I just finally decided to stop trying to be one or the other, and just be my own thing. I think the song is just about owning that, and not necessarily trying to fit into the one box and just being yourself. Looking at a lot of my favorite artists – they’re not a genre to me, Patty Griffin to me is just Patty Griffin, she’s not Americana, she’s not country, she’s just Patty Griffin and you know exactly what she is.

Vickye: That’s worked for a lot of women lately, people like Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe, Holly Williams, Brandy Clark – they’ve all been doing their own thing somewhere between country and Americana, so I think that’s kind of this new thing now.

Hailey: Yeah, yeah and it’s cool and I like it. I love genres, I’m happy to be accepted by both, but I’m also at the same time just trying to do me I guess.

Vickye: Well that’s a good thing. I like it! So ‘Get Around’ for some reason just makes me cry. (laughs) I have never been in that exact situation that the song describes, but for some reason there’s something about the way the character feels worthless and is doing things to numb the pain that I think everyone can relate to. Were you thinking about how universal the theme might be when you were writing it?

Hailey: I think so. I wrote that song with Stephanie Lambring, who’s a good friend of mine. We were just throwing out things, ‘get around’ and ‘daddy issues’, and we were like oh my God, we know that girl! Cause neither of us, we’re not sleeping around town or anything, but we knew who that character was, everyone knows that girl, so we just started writing to try and tell that story. It definitely has shock value, but at the same time I think everyone empathizes with that girl. We weren’t trying to get people to feel sorry for the character or anything, it was just stating it as it was, as it is.

Vickye: I think there’s quite a strong feminist slant to it as well, like don’t judge me.

Hailey: Yeah! Yeah I think so too. I think there can be so many standards or just stereotypes about women sometimes when it comes to that, you know? And that’s a thing, too, when I played this for people at labels, they were like yeah, but no girl’s gonna sing that. Everyone’s afraid to sing that. And I was like well I just feel like it’s a story that doesn’t get heard often, but needs to be. And it’s funny because I have a lot of people tell me they love that song, and my bass player was like I love this song! And he was saying one night him and his friend were sitting up drinking around a fire or something, and they were listening to it, and just like God, if I were a girl, I would be that girl. They were like you’ve inspired us to reflect on what kind of girl we would be!

Vickye: The song ‘One More Hell’ is also a standout, and I think it’s really powerful because of how it deals with loss, but it’s still quite positive in a weird way. Was that difficult – I mean, I imagine it was quite difficult for you to write.

Hailey: Yeah, it kinda just popped out. I think I wrote it in like an hour and a half. I didn’t really go back and tweak anything, it just kinda fell out. I do think it’s positive, people are always like oh, it’s sad! But I do think it’s positive and I think the bridge is a different way of looking at loss, that a lot of people find hard to do when they’ve experienced it, is being grateful for the memories that you have. Selfishly I like to play it and talk about it, because to me it feels like just talking about my brother, but I don’t think it was necessarily that difficult to write, it just kinda came out.

Vickye: Do you think that raw experience of losing someone close to you in that way, affected your writing and creativity?

Hailey: Yes, I do. I think it’s like now, I can tap into that dark space of actually feeling what it’s like to have lost somebody. I think it just opened me up a little bit more. Everybody always says you need to have your heart broken to be able to write country songs, and I think that was my first real experience of having my heart broken. Just devastated, and it makes you really vulnerable. I think hopefully it’s opened me up a little more for the better, writing wise.

Vickye: What would you say your favorite song is on the record?

Hailey: Probably ‘One More Hell’, or ‘Low All Afternoon’, I really like those ones. Those ones to me just feel really personal. A little bit like you’ve almost just said too much, or something, you know? Which I think is a cool way to make art. I love ‘Black Sheep’ too, just because I kind of like what it stands for, and I love playing it out live.

Vickye: I really like ‘City Girl’, just cause it makes me laugh.

Hailey: I love ‘City Girl’. When I  first heard ‘City Girl’ I knew hands down that it had to go on the record. Just because I feel like it’s also a fresh way of saying ‘I’m country’. Without being all in your face.

Vickye: So many people are like ‘no I’m proud, I’m country, I love living in the country’, but you’re like ‘actually no, the city sounds really nice right now.’

Hailey: I know! Because that’s exactly how I felt when I was growing up. When I was in Iowa my house was in the middle of a cornfield, and I always dreamt about being a city girl and just shopping all the time. Just this glamorous life in the city. And kind of what spurred me to get out of my hometown and move to Nashville was this lure of the city life. It’s funny because now that I’m living in the city I love getting out to the country! But I think that’s what attracted to me to the song so much, because I feel like in country music especially, people are little bit – they’re all just saying how country they are, and how great the country is, and I feel like if you’re really from the country there’s times when you can’t wait to get the hell out of it. And no-one says that!

Vickye: So were there any songs that you recorded, that didn’t make the cut on the record and we might hear at a later date?

Hailey: Yeah, actually I have a few that I’m already thinking for second record. They were ones that probably would have made this record, it’s just we already had the slot filled for them. I have a few that I’ll usually play in the live show that I’m hoping will make the next record.

Vickye: You mentioned live – you kind of had an album release show-ish at the Bluebird Café in October. You got to play with the likes of Matraca Berg. How special and amazing was that for you?

Hailey: So amazing. Matraca has just been this great big sister mentor figure for me. We’ve been writing a lot and it’s just really cool. First of all it’s just surreal to be in the same round or in the same room as her, it’s huge because I just admire so much of her music and her talent, and she really is a true craftswoman of songs. She’s just been great to me, like I learned so much writing with her, just how to add so much character and life in the songs. It was awesome to be with her, and I’m lucky to have a song with her on the record. We’ve been writing a few other things too that hopefully will see the light of day.

Vickye: Well I can’t wait to hear them! Were you nervous when you went up to play with her?

Hailey: Not so much when I went to play with her, because we had been writing together. I was really nervous the first time I wrote with her. Because you know, it’s Matraca Berg. I went in and I had a verse-chorus of a song, ‘Long Come To Jesus’, and I played it for her and she was just silent for like 20 seconds – 20 long seconds. I’m just like oh my God, this is awful, she hates it. And then she just twisted the line and just made it so much better, and we ended up working on it and finishing it. It came to be ‘Long Come To Jesus’. I would think that was probably more nerve-wracking than playing with her, because by the time we’d played together we’d kinda been hanging out a bit. She likes to take me to get margaritas and she bought me a tiara one time.

Vickye (laughs) That’s amazing.

Hailey: It was like a Wednesday Funday.

Vickye: I need one of those! So what’s your favorite venue to play?

Hailey: I’ve really been loving Joe’s Bar in Chicago. Ed, the owner, is super warm and just makes you feel like you’re at home. The whole place has this really good energy, it’s just this country bar in the middle of Chicago. And it’s in the Midwest, which to me, anywhere in the Midwest just always feels like home. St Louis, we’ve been playing in Columbus, Ohio a lot at the Bluestone. And I really like those places, they’re close to home for me, and they’re just great venues. I love playing the Basement in Nashville too, it’s probably one of my favorite spots. I feel like it’s where I always play, but I love Grimey the owner, and it kind of just has a cool vibe to it too, you feel like you’re in the basement of a building which you literally are I guess. Hence the name.

Vickye: I see you have some upcoming dates booked for your home state. Do you have proper tour plans for next year, or is it just odd dates here and there?

Hailey: It’s just odd dates right now. I’m playing a few festivals. We’ll probably get more of a legit schedule going early next year. But right now it’s just jumping around to odd dates. I am gonna that run in my home [state] which will be cool.

Vickye: What’s next for you? Would you ever want to be signed to a major label and be an artist that way, or do you enjoy being with Carnival and doing things your own way?

Hailey: I would, I would love to – just having a little bit more resources with a major label, and being able to broaden my audience. I would like to be on a major label for sure. Ideally one that I would be able to be… I feel like if you look at Kacey or Miranda or Brandy or any of them, they have always stayed true to their creative – whatever they wanna say, they’ve stayed true to that, and have been able to do that on a major scale. I would love to do that.

Vickye: Do you have anything cool coming up in 2016?

Hailey: Probably not right now, probably just touring and the festival thing right now. I don’t really know what’s coming yet for 2016! (laughs)

Vickye: Well we’re nearly there! So I definitely think that you should come over to the UK and do some promo stuff.

Hailey: I would love to come to the UK! Maybe that’ll happen in 2016.

Buy Hailey Whitters’ debut album ‘Black Sheep’ on .

Originally posted .here