Ashley Monroe was once so distraught she found herself knocking on Vince Gill’s door and pouring her heart out earlier this year. Gill came to the door in his sweatpants, heard her out and then proceeded to call out to his wife. “Amy,” he said, “looks like we’ve got a wounded bird here.”
Monroe was laughing telling the story recalling how she and Gill had started writing years before he produced her album Like a Rose and this year’s record The Blade. Together they have written ten songs.
“Vince really understands my voice,” she said to Buddy Miller and Frankie Pine on a recent episode of The Buddy & Jim Show on Sirius XM Outlaw Country. Pine, who works with Miller on the music for the television show Nashville, was substituting for Jim Lauderdale who is recording in Memphis. “When I was a little older and signed with Warner Nashville, I knew exactly what I wanted my record to sound like. I just saw Vince’s name in my head.”
For The Blade, Ashley is once again paired with Gill and co-producer Justin Niebank for her first album in two years. Monroe and Gill penned two songs on the new album, just as they did for Like a Rose. As Miller and Pine played Gill’s “If I Die Drinking,” Monroe remembers how she brought the title to Gill for what became the first song they wrote together. “I couldn’t find anyone or didn’t want anyone to write something that sad in country,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘If anyone will get this it will be Vince.’”
As conversation switched to Monroe’s new album The Blade, Monroe talked about “Bombshell,” a song she co-wrote with Gordie Sampson and Steve McEwan. Monroe remembers going to Sampson’s house for a writing session. McEwan had the title. The conversation began around the life’s bombshells in life and the things that aren’t easy but you have to say. “Whether it’s ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ ‘I’m gay’ or ‘I’m pregnant,’ the list goes on and on,” Monroe said of the bombshells we sometimes have to drop. “It’s the thing that will ruin a person’s life but you have to deliver the news.”
That led Pine to ask her about the process when she goes to a writing session. She made the point that the music on country radio isn’t about storytelling yet that is how Monroe writes. “If I know someone is looking for a hit, I can wrap my mind around that but I can’t write things I don’t feel. It’s kind of a fine line.” Monroe went on to say she always has ideas, explaining she writes down things on her phone and computer. “Stories are my favorite kind but you never know what’s going to happen. That’s the beauty of it.”
Consider how Miranda Lambert’s hit single “Heart Like Mine” came about. Monroe, who grew up in Knoxville in East Tennessee, took Lambert to Dollywood for the first time. During their trip in the mountains, they wrote the song. Later on when she was traveling with Jessi Alexander on Lambert’s tour, Monroe found herself on the bus one night after a show had just finished. Monroe, who admits she is super-organized and a neat packer, thought to herself, “I’m good at leaving.” Before she knew it, the words started pouring out and she had the first verse written. “I thought, ‘They better get up here if they want a piece of the song,” she said laughing. “Sure enough they came prancing on the bus and we finished that song.”
One of her earliest collaborations occurred with Trent Dabbs who she sought out back in the days of MySpace. She messaged him only to find out he lived around the corner. They ended up doing an EP together calledAshley Monroe and Trent Dabbs. Ashley’s first album was recorded in the mid-2000’s but didn’t end up coming out until the end of the decade.
These days it seems like other writers come to her now.
“Here’s a song I wrote with Striking Matches,” she said as she introduced “Dixie,” one of the two songs she co-wrote with Justin Davis and Sarah Zimmerman on The Blade. Monroe, who was once part of the Striking Matches band, credits the duo with helping her finish one of her most personal songs “From Time To Time.”
As Monroe explained it, she got married in October 2013 and was missing her late father who died when she was fifteen. She imagined him walking her down the aisle and missed him immensely. She remembers thinking to herself, ‘Daddy just give me a sign, a dream… tell me you love me. Tell me I’m doing the right thing.’” One night she fell asleep on the couch and awoke sitting straight up and heard a bunch of words and bar chords. “I wrote the first verse and chorus down because I’d already heard it,” she added. “I was still trying to figure out the rest of the song. The next day I had a show with Striking Matches and Justin and Sarah helped me finish it. It’s the most personal song on the record and felt like a gift.”
For the title track of Like a Rose, Monroe co-wrote it with legendary Texas singer Guy Clark and John Randall. Clark has been in once on the Buddy & Jim Show and brought with him an advance copy of Monroe’s album. Miller, who had met Monroe the first time she played on the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman, said he was floored when he heard it. Monroe said she was initially intimidated by Clark and saved up all of her best ideas to share with him. She said he just said “ummm” almost every time she suggested something. But soon a song developed in Clark’s idiosyncratic way. She said he writes on graph paper one line at a time and places them in various parts of the paper. She said it might not seem to make sense but somehow all comes together.
Monroe also found herself being sought out by none other than Jack White. The Nashville resident and leader of the Raconteurs was driving in town listening to WSM 650 when he pulled his car over to listen to her sing the song called “Hank’s Children.” White later emailed her and invited her to come over and play on a version of “Old Enough” they were recording with Ricky Skaggs. She got to the session early in the morning and met Skaggs said he had to get to a bible study by 4:00. The sessions were going well and it seemed like they had enough takes. Around 3:30, White said he wanted to try it one more time. Skaggs looked at his watch and said, “Well, I better git’” and took off.
Monroe moved to Nashville after her father passed away. She recounted how she felt like she needed to be singing and convinced her mother to move to Nashville by helping her realize they had nothing to lose. Monroe began frequenting bars on Nashville where she could sing. Like Miller, when she moved to Nashville she didn’t know a soul. However it turns out she is related to the great singer Carl Smith who was the first cousin of Monroe’s grandfather who she affectionately calls her Papaw. When his wife Goldie Hill passed away, Monroe would get together with the country legend over meals at Cracker Barrel. Monroe knew of Smith as a child but never got to know him until later.
When Smith was married to June Carter, the couple gave birth to a daughter, Carlene Carter. Monroe recounts how she loved Carlene and used to listen to her when she grew up on her way to clogging lessons. It was Miller’s friend and songwriter Matraca Berg who put Monroe in touch with Carter and they began texting back and forth. She and Berg co-wrote “I Buried Your Love” on The Blade.
The only song on the new album Monroe didn’t write is the title track. She said she thought the album was done – but wasn’t sure until she heard this. She said it ties together a lot of the songs, all of which have an edge to them. “I’ve never heard heartbreak put that way.”
For Monroe, the last decade-plus has been a time of self-revelation. “I just came to sing,” she said of moving to Nashville. “I never knew you could make a living writing.” It was only when she realized she liked singing the songs she’d written that it dawned on her that she could might be able to make it her livelihood.
As Pine and Miller came out of “If The Devil Don’t Want Me,” Pine was beside herself. “It’s all so Fifties. It just made me want to dance and grab my sweetheart. I pictured you with a hoopie-type skirt, your hair up…”
“It’s country,” Miller jumped in. “It’s a real country record.”
“Who would have thought?” Monroe responded as if sharing a revelation for the times in which we live. “I just had to do it.”
Originally posted here.
