How Maren Morris Got here to Be A part of The Highwomen, Nation Music’s Latest Supergroup
Maren Morris wasn’t precisely in want of a brand new venture when The Highwomen got here a’calling.
Not solely was she doing simply superb on her personal, turning into a crossover star in her personal proper after the discharge of her debut album Hero in 2016 due to her smash hit collaboration with Zedd, “The Center,” that dominated the airwaves in 2018, however she’d simply kicked off promo for her second studio album, GIRL, and was busy prepping a world tour set to kick off when the album dropped in March and preserve her on the highway by August. In a phrase, she was busy.
“I feel lots of people on my group most likely thought I used to be insane to hitch a band proper in the course of my very own album cycle and tour,” Morris advised Rolling Stone in July.
Fact be advised, not one of the different girls in The Highwomen, which additionally consists of Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires and Natalie Hemby, wanted a profession increase that forming a rustic supergroup might carry. Carlile had simply cleaned up on the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, the place she was essentially the most nominated feminine, profitable three of her six nominations, together with Greatest Americana Album. Shires, as part of her husband Jason Isbell‘s band The 400 Unit, had received that individual award a 12 months prior. And Hemby had simply launched a solo profession of her personal, after years of being an in-demand songwriter for Nashville’s elite. (She additionally co-wrote two tracks with Girl Gaga on the A Star Is Born soundtrack, together with the movie’s tear-jerker finale, “I will By no means Love Once more.”)
However because it turned out, the attract of forming the group, a 2019 response to the 1980s outlaw nation supergroup The Highwaymen, which included Johnny Money, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, at a time when feminine illustration in nation music, or maybe extra precisely, on nation music radio, is at an all-time low, was too good for any of them to move up.
It was Shires who bought the concept to kind the all-female group again in 2016. To move the time whereas on tour, she started a casual experiment and wrote down each track she heard on nation radio to see if most had been by males. Spoiler alert: They had been. And when she referred to as in to request songs by girls, she discovered herself being directed to the station’s Fb web page the place songs by feminine artist had been pitted in opposition to each other in polls. The clear message? Just one might win.
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“There’s all the time been this pitting of ladies in opposition to girls, perhaps as a result of there aren’t a whole lot of spots,” Hemby, who was first requested to pen songs for The Highwomen earlier than turning into their fourth official member, advised Rolling Stone. “Or they attempt to make it really feel like there’s a competitors, or girls do not need to hear one another. However any time I am going to a girl’s present — Miranda [Lambert‘s,] or Little Large City — I see girls there in full pressure. And we would like these women to develop up and have a lot of girls to look as much as.”
So Shires bought to enthusiastic about the nation artists earlier than her who’d been capable of subvert the Nashville machine, recalling The Highwaymen. “Eager to do issues their very own method is what we’re type of making an attempt to mime,” she advised The New York Occasions earlier this month. “And simply to have any person to share within the glories with, you recognize? It may be form of a lonely factor on the market by your self.”
She recruited Carlile first, approaching her backstage at Nashville’s legendary Exit/In and asking her to hitch upon assembly her for the primary time. “She simply walked as much as me with a drink and she or he stated I need to begin a band with you and I need to name it the Highwomen,” Carlile recalled to The Seattle Occasions. “I assumed she stated the Highwaymen. I used to be like, ‘I do not know, like a Highwaymen tribute band?’ She goes ‘No, no. The Highwomen.’ I used to be like ‘Oh, that is so cool!’ Then she despatched me this political textual content and launched me to Emily’s Checklist and I began to understand what she was about and knew that I wished to do that together with her.”
For Carlile, the choice to say sure, regardless of the elevated profile to her solo profession courtesy of the Grammy Awards, was about one thing larger than herself. “It was simply when it occurred,” she stated of the timing. “I might both say no and prioritize myself or say sure and prioritize my daughters [laughs]. So, I selected to say sure.” (Carlile and her spouse Catherine Shepherd have two daughters, Evangeline and Elijah. Shires and Hemby are each moms to little women, Mercy and Sammie Jo, respectively, as effectively.)
It was Carlile who instantly got down to recruit Morris for what the ladies name “the motion.” “Maren had simply invited me to sing ‘(You Make Me Really feel Like) a Pure Girl’ together with her on the CMT [Artists of the Year] awards present,” she defined. “It was my first actual invitation to the nation world and it felt actual profound to me that she would selected somebody that was form of a misfit, and definitely a unique form of lady to sing that track with…I knew that there have been, if not political, at the least social undertones to that that I used to be impressed by and moved by, and I do know there’s much more to Maren Morris than everyone thinks initially.”
Morris was backstage at The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon, selling her new album’s titular lead single, when she heard from Carlile. “When Brandi referred to as to ask me if I wished to be a Highwoman, and that these had been going to be the folks concerned, I could not say no,” she advised Rolling Stone. “I’ve additionally been touting the identical message with Lady; it is excessive time for extra feminine views within the nation style.”
When Hemby submitted the observe “Crowded Desk,” which she co-wrote with Lori McKenna in 30 minutes, for submission for the album as recording bought underway in March, it was clear to the three present Highwomen that they’d discovered their fourth. “When Natalie despatched us, for my part, our greatest track, she did not simply write the narrative for The Highwomen musically; she really cultivated the sound of what we’re,” Carlile advised CMA World in August.
The concept of teaming up with three individuals who had been virtually strangers was a bit formidable to Hemby, although that modified shortly. “Actually, we did not even know one another: It is like we bought married and we needed to get to know one another and our dynamic and what our roles are,” she advised Billboard in August. “We fell into our personal particular roles, however we needed to get to know one another and our personalities, and what our inventive strengths are… We actually all 4 are completely different, however we actually all 4 work very well collectively and praise one another, and we now have a dynamic that is very particular and distinctive. It is not like we had been all hanging out on a regular basis and determined to hitch a band. We put our heads collectively.”
On their debut self-titled album, which made its approach to streaming providers and retailers on Friday, Sept. 6, there is not a observe the place one of many 4 does not have a writing credit score, alongside different nation music luminaries like Lambert, Isbell, Ray LaMontagne, Maggie Chapman, Rodney Clawson, and Jimmy Webb. All of them take turns stepping up as lead vocalists. It is a refreshingly ego-free venture.
“I used to be pleased with the songwriting coming from wherever, so long as it was actually highly effective and stated what we wanted to say,” Carlile, who takes lead on early standout “If She Ever Leaves Me,” the album’s basic nation ballad that simply so occurs to function a girl singing about one other lady, the primary of its type, advised Billboard. “I feel if we had been married to our songs and our personal contributions, it could’ve been a really completely different venture. However as a result of it is a motion and never a band, it lacks the ego that so many bands have.”
“We knew from the get-go with this band that all of us have our personal solo endeavors,” Morris added. “They’ve households. We have stated [that] none of us actually wanted this group, which is, I feel, why it is so particular: none of us want the cash or the celebrity, all of us have our personal issues occurring, so this was actually 4 folks that actually believed within the songs that we had been handing over for it, and the message behind it.”
For her writing contributions to the album, Morris introduced tracks “Unfastened Change” and “Previous Soul,” songs that longtime followers simply may acknowledge from her early days spent producing buzz round Nashville. “Despite the fact that these songs won’t have match on my solo document, they might flourish and actually thrive within the sonic house that these girls…created,” she advised Rolling Stone. “Now I really feel like I’ve caught this Americana bug after doing this album with them.”
Whereas she admits she’s most proud to be part of Hemby’s “Crowded Desk,” it is the truth that the album runs the gamut of feminine views not often heard within the style that has her so excited. “I really like that we now have songs on this album about shattering feminine stereotypes to a homosexual nation love track, and songs about dropping family members,” Morris advised the journal. “It is all actual and it is all nation.”
The Highwomen is out there on streaming providers and at retailers now.