Speaker 1: Adam.
Speaker 2: Carrie Lyne, she's a queen and talking and you swim.
Speaker 3: She's getting really not afraid to feel.
Speaker 4: As episode and so just let it flow.
Speaker 3: No one can do we quiet carry Lyne's time for
Speaker 3: Caroline Kaylee Hammock. Hello, I'm so glad you're here. I'm
Speaker 3: happy to be here, Caroline. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: You're like the dog animal whisper too.
Speaker 3: I love the critters and I saw that you had
Speaker 3: critters on a bunch of your podcasts, so I was like,
Speaker 3: this is gonna be good. Yeah, I want to do
Speaker 3: this interview please.
Speaker 1: When we walked in, I was like, you met the dogs,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, do you want to meet
Speaker 1: her other animal?
Speaker 3: And you're like Kirby, yes, yes, I saw the one
Speaker 3: with Madeline Meurlau. Yes, that one was the one. I
Speaker 3: was like, what does she have? She has a beardy yeah,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, I had to cuddle just a little
Speaker 3: bit before we started the interview.
Speaker 4: And I love that you even like relate to being
Speaker 4: a lizard too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I am a little bit of a lizard. As
Speaker 3: I was saying in the hallway right before we got
Speaker 3: in here, I have a couple modes that I go through.
Speaker 3: I had to explain to my boyfriend because now that
Speaker 3: I have someone in my life that is around all
Speaker 3: the time, when normally I was kind of more isolated, reclusive.
Speaker 3: When I wasn't on the road, I was sleeping, doing laundry,
Speaker 3: working out and crocheng or you know, doing something random
Speaker 3: for me. And you're a plant girl too, I feel
Speaker 3: like plant fanatic.
Speaker 4: You just love all creatures and living things. You're like
Speaker 4: a fairy.
Speaker 1: You like a whimsical fairy in the midst of nature,
Speaker 1: floating around with your beautiful wings, and I just feel
Speaker 1: like you're from an ether world. Do you ever feel that,
Speaker 1: like you're just like a fairy princess?
Speaker 3: Thank you? Yeah, I think I was actually telling someone
Speaker 3: the other day. The biggest compliment is when a child
Speaker 3: is like, are you a prince? Or you know, they
Speaker 3: say something to you in the way that only a
Speaker 3: child can compliment you. Yes, and those are the biggest compliments.
Speaker 3: I'd way rather have children compliment me than anyone our.
Speaker 4: Age, amen, because they're being real.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there is a little part of me that
Speaker 3: loves to kind of dress whimsical. I like whimsy, you know,
Speaker 3: I like the wayby soobby of gardening. I like being
Speaker 3: able to appreciate decay and appreciate compost and that part
Speaker 3: of the cycle of life and death and renewal in
Speaker 3: a way that it is around my garden. I think
Speaker 3: that there's many places where you can go see beautiful,
Speaker 3: manicured gardens, and then there's also gardens for yourself where
Speaker 3: you can just plant things that you want. I really
Speaker 3: love perennial gardening. I love secessional gardening. I like companion planning.
Speaker 3: I love doing Companion planning is actually using the other
Speaker 3: plants that you plant to help one another. So you
Speaker 3: plant things that are compliment menory to one another.
Speaker 4: They're like a little village.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're a little village. And so it's like, say,
Speaker 3: you want to plant tomatoes, So tomatoes love to have
Speaker 3: basil nearby.
Speaker 4: They do, and that how good does that go together?
Speaker 3: Too? Exactly? And it's nice to plant it right outside
Speaker 3: your kitchen door because then it's like, oh, we're making pizza. Huh,
Speaker 3: I'll just grab some tomatoes and basil from my garden.
Speaker 4: Why do they love to be next to each other.
Speaker 3: I really don't know that. I just know that basil,
Speaker 3: for some reason helps with the taste of tomatoes. I've
Speaker 3: learned over the years. Also, I have learned that easy
Speaker 3: easy one is marigolds. Marigolds helped to plant everywhere. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have any type of diverse react reaction to any
Speaker 3: other plant. A big one that I always preach about
Speaker 3: when it comes to tomatoes and simple things like that
Speaker 3: that all of us love to eat. And it's easy
Speaker 3: to kind of get into gardening with. You can plant
Speaker 3: onions also in your fall time, sometimes in your spring
Speaker 3: if you want. But you can plant those around the
Speaker 3: tomatoes and it makes other pest not one to come
Speaker 3: near it because onions are.
Speaker 4: Stinky, but they don't like affect the other things.
Speaker 3: And the beautiful thing is also when it comes to planning.
Speaker 4: Ruby loves you by the way. I mean, ruby is
Speaker 4: blown in at your.
Speaker 3: Last so good. It's like when children approve of you
Speaker 3: and like you. Same thing with animals. I could take
Speaker 3: all the mean comments online in the world if I
Speaker 3: just had you with me all the time.
Speaker 4: People don't give you mean comments.
Speaker 3: No, not really. I mean people are nice okay for
Speaker 3: the most part. But also you know, I think that
Speaker 3: the bigger you get, the more negativity you get. I
Speaker 3: remember Laney telling me about some stuff that people would
Speaker 3: write to her, and I was like, why things that
Speaker 3: don't even make sense, Insults that don't make sense. And
Speaker 3: it's always some no offense, but some random older dude
Speaker 3: online that has like a comic as their profile picture
Speaker 3: or whatever. It's not normally people that I would sit
Speaker 3: there and go, well, I need you to like me.
Speaker 3: What is it If a dog commented something mean, it
Speaker 3: would wreck me. I'd have to go to a side.
Speaker 4: Absolutely no, you're so right.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm glad they can't do that.
Speaker 4: But what is it like, it's not the critic account
Speaker 4: it counts, it's the man in the arena.
Speaker 1: There's like a big quote. It's like the person who's
Speaker 1: criticizing who's not in it. I don't really want to
Speaker 1: hear what you have to say if you're not in
Speaker 1: the game, Like then step back.
Speaker 3: I think was it Ernest Hemingway, I'm misquoting. I think
Speaker 3: the person. But there's a quote that says the critics
Speaker 3: are the ones that sit on the hill and wait
Speaker 3: until the war's over, and then they go down and
Speaker 3: they kill the victor. And it's just like, oh, ow, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's one thing I really do love to take is
Speaker 3: constructive criticism and encouragement from people that have went through
Speaker 3: things that I've went through. That's why I really feel
Speaker 3: like it's very important for artists in general to be
Speaker 3: behind one another creative people in general, specifically women m H.
Speaker 3: And Yeah. I like to get together with my female
Speaker 3: compadres in this industry, and I think those are the
Speaker 3: safest places other than true therapy, to talk about all
Speaker 3: these things that may feel like first world problems and
Speaker 3: entitled problems to have. But when you have the load
Speaker 3: that you have on yourself as an artist and as
Speaker 3: a creative, it's it's nice to be able to go
Speaker 3: to others and go I'm tired of getting glammed every
Speaker 3: day and I've had four hours of sleep and I
Speaker 3: am living the dream. But it's much harder than I
Speaker 3: thought this was going to be, and just you know,
Speaker 3: it's I think it's really nice to get those little
Speaker 3: stressors off your chest by talking about it in safe spaces.
Speaker 3: I am a big component of safe spaces. So do
Speaker 3: you feel like you have a safe space in life? Like?
Speaker 3: What do you feel like? How did you This is
Speaker 3: a cool thing I love to ask people how did
Speaker 3: you build your village, like your people that you go
Speaker 3: to for anything in life, but that community.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, that's a great question. I started off. Thank
Speaker 1: you for turning the tables on me. Oh sorry, no,
Speaker 1: I love podcasts because it's really this is coming back
Speaker 1: to you too. I'll do mine briefly, but then we're
Speaker 1: going we really want to hear about your village.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm from Waco, Texas, and I grew up in a
Speaker 1: great family. Like my parents are great, they had great friends.
Speaker 1: So I started off with friends of my parents' friends,
Speaker 1: like the kids who are still my best friends to
Speaker 1: this day. So I feel like I have like deep friendships.
Speaker 1: And then when I came to Nashville, it took me
Speaker 1: a long time to find a village. I was absolutely
Speaker 1: terrified when I came here. I moved here when I
Speaker 1: was nineteen, and I was just like super nervous.
Speaker 4: Didn't know anyone.
Speaker 1: I was moved from my hometown of Waco, Texas to here,
Speaker 1: and like was overwhelmed. I was also chasing the music
Speaker 1: industry and all of that, and just like super intimidated,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have a lot of self worth back then.
Speaker 1: It's taken me a long time to get my self worth.
Speaker 1: I've had to like really develop, but I've still like
Speaker 1: pursued all my dreams despite the fact I did not
Speaker 1: feel worthy.
Speaker 4: But I knew that they were my dreams and I
Speaker 4: was supposed to do it.
Speaker 1: But I always felt like, oh my gosh, if people
Speaker 1: find out that I'm really a fraud and I'm really
Speaker 1: not worthy, then it's all going to be uncovered.
Speaker 3: Or if they discover that you actually think you're good
Speaker 3: at something. I was always if someone said something nice
Speaker 3: about you, I have to put myself down. Oh I
Speaker 3: have to put myself down.
Speaker 1: But see, here's the thing with you that's different. You
Speaker 1: were born with this voice. So like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like myself. I'll use myself as an example. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of things I'm good at, but like you
Speaker 1: and your voice are in a.
Speaker 4: Whole other stratosphere.
Speaker 1: Like you are just like that kind of singer, Like
Speaker 1: you're like in the Celean dions of the world. Like
Speaker 1: you have like the voice that is like hand motion,
Speaker 1: but it can't be replicated. You know, although I do
Speaker 1: hear a little Dolly Parton in your voice.
Speaker 4: Do you hear that.
Speaker 3: People love Dolly it's just from being raised older.
Speaker 1: But like you have a voice though that like you
Speaker 1: can't you can't learn to sing like you like, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can take lessons and you can learn
Speaker 1: things and like whatever, but like your tone, your texture,
Speaker 1: the way it all comes out like that is like
Speaker 1: a god given gift that you have.
Speaker 4: And so were people hard on you about that growing up?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: Were people do they get jealous of that?
Speaker 3: No? I do remember one girl in high school when
Speaker 3: I won the pageant, the school pageant, she I didn't know,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't own a BlackBerry. But I went
Speaker 3: to school the next day and they said, did you
Speaker 3: see what she wrote? And I guess BlackBerry had kind
Speaker 3: of like it's on Facebook or whatever you could put
Speaker 3: statuses and uh, anyways, you can tell I was a
Speaker 3: flip phone girl. But yeah, so many.
Speaker 4: Of those oak like this.
Speaker 3: But the thing is I remember her saying, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize it was a talent show. I thought
Speaker 3: it was a pageant. And no, there's really I don't
Speaker 3: know as if life was hard on me because of
Speaker 3: my voice, I think I was harder on myself than
Speaker 3: I ever really allowed life to be.
Speaker 4: Okay, I played that.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the turmoil that I have
Speaker 3: went through emotionally that has impacted me just as much
Speaker 3: as true tragedies in my life is because I was
Speaker 3: too hard on myself, really so very much.
Speaker 1: So what are some of the things that you feel
Speaker 1: like you were too hard on yourself that caused you turmoil.
Speaker 3: Well, once people started to acknowledge my voice, you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of went from the odd kid out to
Speaker 3: all of a sudden people liked me, you know, and
Speaker 3: I had something that was interesting. And I just remember
Speaker 3: for so long as a young girl trying to be
Speaker 3: whatever I thought people would like so that I could
Speaker 3: fit in and I could have friends and I could
Speaker 3: feel that connection that I always felt slightly like I
Speaker 3: was out on the outside and I couldn't understand it.
Speaker 3: And the minute that I started singing, I started to
Speaker 3: get accepted. And I know that sounds so bad, but
Speaker 3: then I started putting a pressure on myself that this
Speaker 3: is my personality, If this is what it is that
Speaker 3: gets people to like me and to listen to me
Speaker 3: and to hear me, I have to be the best.
Speaker 3: Then there's no there's no alternative. And then there's also
Speaker 3: that pressure of I can't mess this up. What if
Speaker 3: I mess my voice up? And then the one thing
Speaker 3: that all these people have invested in me and believed
Speaker 3: in me for, I've lost it. I've ruined it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. So you were stressed out about your voice?
Speaker 3: Oh very much so so. Also, I have deafness that
Speaker 3: runs in my in my dad's side of the family,
Speaker 3: So I was always scared I would lose my hearing.
Speaker 3: I just was always panicked about it. Once I realized
Speaker 3: that I gift, I realized how sacred of a gift
Speaker 3: it was, and I was terrified to somehow mess it up.
Speaker 3: But I think a lot of my life I have
Speaker 3: been terrified to mess up. And at thirty years old,
Speaker 3: I can finally look back and realize that I I
Speaker 3: made things so much harder than they ever actually had
Speaker 3: to be. It gets to be easy. And I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that when I was younger. I didn't realize that
Speaker 3: I could forgive myself. I didn't realize that I could
Speaker 3: mess up and forgive myself. I didn't realize that all
Speaker 3: the mistakes you make they're great stories. When you get older.
Speaker 3: It's the stuff you laugh about with your friends, you know,
Speaker 3: it's the stuff you write songs about and people connect to,
Speaker 3: and you can reach people that are going through those
Speaker 3: odd moments too. It's as a kid. I remember the
Speaker 3: first biography we ever had written up, and there was
Speaker 3: something in it that I had said in an interview
Speaker 3: and it definitely didn't come across the way I wanted,
Speaker 3: but I had said something about I had always wanted
Speaker 3: a life that someone would write a book about because
Speaker 3: I loved books. I was just obsessed with books from
Speaker 3: a young age, and so I wanted something that was
Speaker 3: exciting and riveting and would make you want to turn
Speaker 3: the page. And I don't think I really realized what
Speaker 3: I was signing up for by trying to manifest that
Speaker 3: and pray to God every night, give me an interesting life, really,
Speaker 3: give me something fun. Give me was that never let
Speaker 3: me get bored? Yes, and he did that, Thank you
Speaker 3: for delivering. But you know it's I hated that because
Speaker 3: it sounded I said something about like, don't give me
Speaker 3: a normal life. The older I get, the more I
Speaker 3: realized that normal lives all are stories that could have
Speaker 3: books written about it. I mean, it's crazy when people ask,
Speaker 3: as a songwriter, where you get your inspiration, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: it comes from people's little stories they tell me a
Speaker 3: meet and greets. It comes from my daddy talking about
Speaker 3: his childhood. It comes from my mama talking about getting
Speaker 3: married at a young age and raising children in a
Speaker 3: little apartment. It's different things that I, uh, I don't realize.
Speaker 3: I guess when I was younger that I wish I had,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things
Speaker 3: that I realized I wanted my life to be so
Speaker 3: so very special and so unique, and I was so
Speaker 3: worried about it turning out is something great that I
Speaker 3: didn't actually enjoy some of the moments.
Speaker 4: Where do you think that worry came from?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. A perfectionist thing of not letting
Speaker 3: refection writes down. And it's nothing to do with my parents.
Speaker 3: My parents were great.
Speaker 4: Were your parents married, Yes?
Speaker 3: My parents steady marriage, great, great family in the same home.
Speaker 3: You know, my whole childhood, which I really appreciate because
Speaker 3: my brain, I have to have a place. I have
Speaker 3: to have a physical place that feels like home, and
Speaker 3: I have to be able to think of that in
Speaker 3: my mind when touring gets hard or I'm gone for
Speaker 3: a long time, and I feel homesick, and I can't
Speaker 3: quite figure out why. I think. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: just was so very hard on myself and I thought
Speaker 3: that that would make me better, and maybe it did.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a push too. I wanted to
Speaker 3: know everything. And then I remember one day having like
Speaker 3: a true, a full blown panic attack, going one day,
Speaker 3: I'll know everything, and that was such an ignorant and
Speaker 3: I've thought, oh, then you get older. I think I
Speaker 3: had just started radio tour. I was four months in.
Speaker 3: I was like twenty two, twenty three, something like that,
Speaker 3: I think, And I just remember going to all these
Speaker 3: different places that right before I had signed i'd actually
Speaker 3: said in the interview or in the meeting with Universal
Speaker 3: with Mike Dungan, I said, you know, I've never been
Speaker 3: farther westn Texas. And then all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 3: hitting every single major city in a six to nine
Speaker 3: month span, and I'm seeing all these places I never
Speaker 3: thought i'd ever get to see. I've only ever seen
Speaker 3: a movie's and I started going one day, if I
Speaker 3: keep doing this, nowhere will ever be new. And I
Speaker 3: am a very big person that I love learning things.
Speaker 3: It's my favorite thing to do. I absolutely love learning
Speaker 3: new crafts, learning new skills. That's why I'm restoring my
Speaker 3: house by hand. I love learning different techniques, and I
Speaker 3: love going back to the old fashioned, analog manual way
Speaker 3: of doing things. And so yeah, I just sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: really disjointed in a conversation, but this is so interesting.
Speaker 3: I remember having that naive fear of one day nothing
Speaker 3: will be new anymore. But then I realized, as I
Speaker 3: got older, I've only seen these cities through a plane window,
Speaker 3: a car window, or radio, you know, building window, And
Speaker 3: then I started realizing there's so much that I'll never
Speaker 3: actually get to know. Then that was kind of scary.
Speaker 4: Mine blew up.
Speaker 3: But yes, yes, but yeah, it is wonderful to live
Speaker 3: in a world that there's constantly something that you can
Speaker 3: learn and you can dive into. And yeah, sorry, so
Speaker 3: are you like an access service person?
Speaker 4: Do you like to do stuff?
Speaker 3: Oh? Very funny? Okay, I was actually thinking about asking
Speaker 3: you about your love languages. Okay, weird, Okay, sorry, I
Speaker 3: love this. I'm very much an acts of service person.
Speaker 4: Because you're a doer.
Speaker 1: Even saw like your Halloween costume that you made, you
Speaker 1: were going to like Ashley McBride Halloween party, and you
Speaker 1: like whipped together this full blown life on your house
Speaker 1: on your head with like chairs and the like.
Speaker 4: Because what was the theme.
Speaker 3: Of her theme was Halla Queen and she was like,
Speaker 3: so it has to say queen and the title or
Speaker 3: something royalty, you know, And I said, well, we just
Speaker 3: did the Lindyville Project, so you know, I'll be the
Speaker 3: Queen of the double white trailer because that was Dennis Lindy's,
Speaker 3: one of Dennis Lindy's biggest hits. And so I had
Speaker 3: polyester curtains on a curtain rod across my shoulders like
Speaker 3: the Carol Burnett skit of Gone with the Wind. And
Speaker 3: then I took a wig from the Just Friends music
Speaker 3: video that I haven't been able to wear since, and
Speaker 3: I just toughed it up, got the whole old hair extensions,
Speaker 3: jushed them up until they were just literally rat nests,
Speaker 3: stuck them in there high hide. But then I I
Speaker 3: went to Michael's and I got popsicle sticks and cedar
Speaker 3: stainer and you know.
Speaker 4: But you're like a detailed person. It's like love details.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, see I hate details.
Speaker 1: I love that you love details because like I'm looking
Speaker 1: at your videos and I'm seeing you like put together
Speaker 1: flower arrangements. I'm watching you in the garden. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: you build a Halloween costume. Your songs, like your songs
Speaker 1: that your new album that's coming out, Betta Roses. Every
Speaker 1: song on there is like such an intricate story, like
Speaker 1: it's so it's not just like a plug and play
Speaker 1: song at all, which love love all types of music,
Speaker 1: but yours are like it's a journey, like each song
Speaker 1: like we're in a world, like you are a detail, intricate,
Speaker 1: like you're in the world. Whatever you're doing, you're taking
Speaker 1: us in the world with you. And I really like
Speaker 1: admire that because that's that's You're like a full experience person.
Speaker 3: Very much so. Maya Angelo has a great speech about
Speaker 3: it online, but she says, wherever she is, she's one
Speaker 3: hundred percent there. When she is there on stage, she's
Speaker 3: one hundred percent there. When she goes outside and she
Speaker 3: goes onto the curb and she calls a taxi, she's
Speaker 3: one hundred percent in that taxi. And I think that
Speaker 3: that's why it's so hard for me to document things.
Speaker 3: I really struggle. I can document it sometimes, but I
Speaker 3: find myself. If I videotape everything that I experience, I
Speaker 3: don't get to really experience it.
Speaker 1: And that's the world we're living in these days, which
Speaker 1: I feel like is causing so much confliction with people,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like you have to post it,
Speaker 1: but then it's like you're not you're missing out on
Speaker 1: actually living, or you're doing things for the post not
Speaker 1: for actually living. You know, how do you balance that
Speaker 1: because you have a very amazing social media page.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't balance it, no kidding. I have
Speaker 3: a great team around me.
Speaker 4: Do you have boundaries with it?
Speaker 3: Yes, to a certain degree. I don't really go through
Speaker 3: my feed. I reach out to friends directly, you know.
Speaker 3: When I want to chat and hang out, I post,
Speaker 3: I read comments. I try to go through dms, and
Speaker 3: then I look at funny animal memes because I've realized
Speaker 3: if if I'm not on the road, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: It can be my best friend. But they're playing a
Speaker 3: cool show. My brain, there's this little ten percent part
Speaker 3: that goes, you're not working. Look all your friends are working,
Speaker 3: You're not doing anything. You're not working, and I have
Speaker 3: just one day off or something, you know, But you're
Speaker 3: like I I'm not working, am I?
Speaker 4: And then what does that do in your head? What's
Speaker 4: the spiral?
Speaker 3: Self worth is only connected to my work?
Speaker 4: Oh right?
Speaker 3: Fortunately, you know, so I have had to. I think
Speaker 3: COVID really put that in perspective. How so it taught
Speaker 3: me that my self worth cannot rely just within my work.
Speaker 3: I you know, the Lady Gaga quote of your music
Speaker 3: won't roll over one day in bed and tell you
Speaker 3: that it doesn't love you anymore. You know, it's something
Speaker 3: along those lines. And I was very bad about putting
Speaker 3: off any type of relationships, anything that would ever distract
Speaker 3: me from music. I have done that for a very
Speaker 3: long time, and cut myself off from situations where I
Speaker 3: can grow within myself by getting to know someone and
Speaker 3: them getting to know me, just so that I could
Speaker 3: put music at the very top spot in my life.
Speaker 4: It's a real thing, though. It's a real thing with artists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you got to to a certain degree.
Speaker 3: There's sometimes there where I do think it's good when
Speaker 3: artists can insulate and isolate, as long as you're not
Speaker 3: in a bad headspace, you know. I think insulating and
Speaker 3: isolating for me is is good. We have this thing
Speaker 3: I'm doing one of those What's in a Bag thing
Speaker 3: for CMT and they were like, pick five things that
Speaker 3: you need on the road, and I was like that
Speaker 3: it goes into a small bag, this big. I have
Speaker 3: five hundred things I need on the road. That's why
Speaker 3: my backpack is like forty five pounds. But I was
Speaker 3: kind of looking through it and trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what is it that I really need more so than anything,
Speaker 3: and it's sound isolating headphones. I have to be able
Speaker 3: to have quiet to create. And I also if I
Speaker 3: want to stop creating, I have to have sound. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I watch a lot of stuff, I won't even
Speaker 3: listen to it, but if I need my brain to
Speaker 3: stop for a minute, I have to have sound. It's like,
Speaker 3: my it's a good problem to have when you're a songwriter,
Speaker 3: not a great problem to have when you're just trying
Speaker 3: to be a human on a day off. But it's
Speaker 3: if something is not going in the background, if a
Speaker 3: song is not playing, if something is not created or
Speaker 3: running through my brain, my brain takes silence as a
Speaker 3: need and an urge to create, and we have to
Speaker 3: create something. And if I'm trying to stay focused on
Speaker 3: just doing something else and not getting, you know, into
Speaker 3: a writing vortex. I have to have something randomly playing
Speaker 3: in the background. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, the little boys in
Speaker 3: my brain want to make sounds. They like sounds. We
Speaker 3: love saying.
Speaker 4: You're a very creative person.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm grateful that I get to be because it's
Speaker 3: a blessing. I mean, we get to think about it.
Speaker 3: What else could me and you be doing right.
Speaker 1: Now, just sitting here chatting about what you've come up
Speaker 1: with in your head.
Speaker 4: It's just that you've turned into reality.
Speaker 1: I mean that's why I love doing this, because like
Speaker 1: I love getting to peek in, but I've been able
Speaker 1: to make this into like a job to peek into
Speaker 1: people's brains. You know, that's so creative, Like how cool
Speaker 1: just to have a conversation just to hear what you've
Speaker 1: dreamed up and how it's materialized in this world, isn't it?
Speaker 4: And what you've learned from it.
Speaker 3: It's just such a blessing. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: I knew that at a young age that this is
Speaker 3: not something you mess around with. And I was really
Speaker 3: hard on myself for that of this is something special.
Speaker 3: Not everyone gets to do what makes them the happiest
Speaker 3: every single day and make a living doing that. And yeah,
Speaker 3: it's the coolest thing with like making this new record,
Speaker 3: bet of Roses, being able to tell these different stories
Speaker 3: that from eighteen to thirty, trying to find myself in
Speaker 3: this world. I went through a lonely time as well
Speaker 3: when I moved to Nashville, and I like to remind
Speaker 3: people that community and village is gathered and gained through.
Speaker 4: Years, years, years ago.
Speaker 3: Village, you'reing it out.
Speaker 4: I feel that's how it's taken me years.
Speaker 1: Like I used to have a lot bigger of a village,
Speaker 1: and like the older I get, the more people fall off.
Speaker 1: Because to really be in your village, you have to
Speaker 1: weather some serious.
Speaker 4: Storms, you know. So you weathered those storms on this album.
Speaker 3: Yes, And a lot of it is about trying to
Speaker 3: find myself and find people, really trying to find my person.
Speaker 3: There was always an an undercurrent of a goal within
Speaker 3: myself that I just wanted my person.
Speaker 4: Are you a hopeless romantic?
Speaker 3: Oh God? Yes, That's why I write love songs and
Speaker 3: breakup songs so much. I fall hard, you know, and
Speaker 3: I have fallen hard for a lot of the wrong people,
Speaker 3: but they were the right people for the right amount
Speaker 3: of time. That's good and it's a blessing because I
Speaker 3: think that I had to go through all that to
Speaker 3: be able to write stuff that would connect and help
Speaker 3: other people. I used to tell people that if I
Speaker 3: could know that one of my songs helped someone through
Speaker 3: one of the darkest periods of their lives, then I
Speaker 3: need to be able to take that home and go
Speaker 3: to bed knowing God did my best. It's not about
Speaker 3: the awards, because every year there's new awards. Every year
Speaker 3: there is a group of people that block vote on
Speaker 3: somebody to win some award, and it's always an honor
Speaker 3: to get your name called. It's an honor to get
Speaker 3: to go to the awards, you know. And the biggest
Speaker 3: thing for me that I've had to hold on to
Speaker 3: is when a girl comes up to you and they
Speaker 3: tell you something about their personal life that they left
Speaker 3: a bad relationship because of this song and it helped
Speaker 3: them start a new somewhere or whatever it is. Those
Speaker 3: are the moments that, truly I can't tell you what
Speaker 3: they do. In my dark moments, they helped me get
Speaker 3: through to know that. That's why any pain that I've
Speaker 3: ever experienced was actually had a purpose, and I think
Speaker 3: for me, I desperately cling to I need to find
Speaker 3: some type of purpose, if not a reason, I need
Speaker 3: to find purpose within the bad parts of my life.
Speaker 3: And as a songwriter that is that's a wonderful thing
Speaker 3: that we get to be able to use as kind
Speaker 3: of our conduit of hardship.
Speaker 1: When did you realize that the pain wasn't just pain,
Speaker 1: that there was a purpose to it, because that's like
Speaker 1: an awakening moment.
Speaker 4: I feel like that takes a long time to get to.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I U. When I was sixteen, I had
Speaker 3: had a scare where the doctor said it was stage
Speaker 3: two cancer and we're going to have to get this
Speaker 3: tumor out. I had lost feeling in my life for
Speaker 3: my hips down and it would come and go, and
Speaker 3: when the nerve failure stuff started happening, they realized that
Speaker 3: they needed to get it out as soon as possible.
Speaker 3: And I remember going into that surgery angry at God.
Speaker 3: I was so mad, and my dad said, you cannot
Speaker 3: go under being mad at God, and I prayed and
Speaker 3: I finally said, you know what, I don't know why
Speaker 3: you would do this to me, but I'm here and
Speaker 3: I'm too tired and I'm too weak to actually fight
Speaker 3: you anymore. And I was like, so, whatever you're supposed
Speaker 3: to do, and whatever this is supposed to be, then
Speaker 3: I'll go through it, but make it make sense. And
Speaker 3: so when I woke up and the funniest thing is
Speaker 3: one of the doctors their name was Lazarus.
Speaker 4: No way, it screwed me up.
Speaker 3: I woke up and I was like, oh no.
Speaker 4: Because what was Lazarus in the Bible.
Speaker 3: Was he he died and Jesus came and you know
Speaker 3: it was the whole story of Jesus doesn't come too late. Okay,
Speaker 3: he was sick, he passed away, and I believe it
Speaker 3: was I don't know how many days after, but anyway,
Speaker 3: so you're like, hopefully this is my Preacher does not
Speaker 3: watch this, but you're like, hopefully this is not a side,
Speaker 3: but it is.
Speaker 4: A nice Well.
Speaker 3: I got up and I remember my doctor, doctor Munson
Speaker 3: at Emory Medical in Atlanta. God bless that man. I
Speaker 3: remember him hugging me and telling me we're gonna fix this,
Speaker 3: We're gonna make you better, and that's what I needed.
Speaker 3: And I woke up and I remember being in such
Speaker 3: intense pain and I could feel my feet and I
Speaker 3: knew this was good pain. This meant my legs worked.
Speaker 3: This meant that I was going to be back to
Speaker 3: normal again. And anyways, uh, after that it came back.
Speaker 3: They had three pathologists look at it and they said,
Speaker 3: there's no cancer in this. We were so sorry that
Speaker 3: we went through this scare. You know, there was no
Speaker 3: cancer in the toil cancer and so it was a
Speaker 3: wake up call, though I truly feel it was a
Speaker 3: wake up call into empathy. It taught me a lot
Speaker 3: of empathy. When your dad has to come pick you
Speaker 3: up to get you to the bathroom to just pee,
Speaker 3: and you realize how much you took a body that
Speaker 3: worked for granted, because it's always worked for you. That
Speaker 3: really opened up my eyes to empathy. But also I
Speaker 3: started writing songs and throughout that I kind of took
Speaker 3: it as God's voice, going anything could happen any day,
Speaker 3: So if you're going to do something, you need to
Speaker 3: do it now. Because when I was younger, I always thought,
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to be a doctor, and
Speaker 3: I'll do music on the side. I'll just do it
Speaker 3: on the side. And then I realized, you know what,
Speaker 3: there's one thing that people hear me, and they actually
Speaker 3: listen when I do it, and it's singing. And also
Speaker 3: it's something that makes me happy and it makes other
Speaker 3: people happy for me to do that, And so I
Speaker 3: started leaning into it and then going through a house
Speaker 3: fire in twenty seventeen or what was that. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was on a writer's retreat when my house burned down.
Speaker 3: It was an electrical fire. They said it started you
Speaker 3: in nash Board. No, I living in Nashville.
Speaker 4: Yes, your house was in Nashville, Yes, in Bellevue area.
Speaker 3: So they said that it started behind my headboard. And
Speaker 3: the fire chief. I mean, I just I was so
Speaker 3: upset and I was like, maybe if I've been there,
Speaker 3: Maybe if I've been there, I could have stopped it.
Speaker 3: And he's like, there's been times where people are in
Speaker 3: buildings like this when this happens and we find bodies.
Speaker 3: And they said, we are grateful that you were not
Speaker 3: here and my dog was safe and.
Speaker 4: Your dog was safe. How'd your dog get up?
Speaker 3: My dog was not there. My best friend Thomas Vincham
Speaker 3: was keeping her and he had texted me the day
Speaker 3: before and said, hey, I may drop her off, you know,
Speaker 3: at the house today, And so I called him first,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I was on this writer's retreating
Speaker 3: Florida and I'll never forget. He answers, and I go,
Speaker 3: is she with you? Is she with you? And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's sitting right beside me. And I go the house
Speaker 3: is on fire.
Speaker 4: And he's silent for.
Speaker 3: A minute, and he goes, I'll put my pants on,
Speaker 3: I'll be there. And he had been my roommate for
Speaker 3: a few months right before his fiance at the time,
Speaker 3: Alex had moved down from Indianapolis and he needed a
Speaker 3: place to stay, so he had the key, and I thought,
Speaker 3: I was like, just keep a key in case anything
Speaker 3: ever happens and I need someone to go by the house.
Speaker 3: So I had a wonderful group of people around me.
Speaker 3: And I think at that point in my life, I
Speaker 3: was going through a lot of depression.
Speaker 1: You were, yes, what do you think you were depressed
Speaker 1: about everything? As someone was that when I was all crumbling,
Speaker 1: just like trying to be the best with the voice,
Speaker 1: trying to do this career and then just like realizing
Speaker 1: it's a freaking brutal, brutal game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's never feeling worthy for the things I've been given.
Speaker 4: Oh man, So wow.
Speaker 3: And I remember though it was the most beautiful thing.
Speaker 4: So you didn't feel worthy of your voice.
Speaker 1: That's why you felt so much pressure to always keep
Speaker 1: it perfect and keep it yes, make sure it was
Speaker 1: like you didn't want to lose it. There's so much
Speaker 1: pressure around it because you didn't feel worthy of it.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So with all of that, I realized how many people
Speaker 3: loved me, oh man, And people came out of the
Speaker 3: woodwork to be there for me, and I had seven friends.
Speaker 3: It took three days to go through the entire house.
Speaker 3: And there were seven things that I asked for when
Speaker 3: the house burned, and I said, God, if you can
Speaker 3: just give me these seven things, I can start over.
Speaker 3: And every single one of those seven things somehow made it.
Speaker 3: What were we? One of them was the blanket that
Speaker 3: was the biggest one, that was the catalyst that actually
Speaker 3: wrote about and forged in the fire. There was a
Speaker 3: blanket that I had found in my dad's well shop,
Speaker 3: in this old hope chest up top, and it was
Speaker 3: scraps of dresses that my grandmother had had, and it
Speaker 3: was a quilt that she made, and so I had
Speaker 3: brought it home and I'd had it on my bed
Speaker 3: well when I walked into the house and I look up.
Speaker 3: The walls were still up. The windows were all blown out.
Speaker 3: It was the oddest thing, but everything inside was just
Speaker 3: burnt or collapsed in the top floor burned and collapsed
Speaker 3: into the second one. So when I pull up and
Speaker 3: I see walls, I'm like, it's not too bad. And
Speaker 3: Thomas slipped at me and he goes, it is bad.
Speaker 3: And we walked in and my bed springs were melted
Speaker 3: into my ceiling fan. And there was a pie safe
Speaker 3: my mom had given me from an old lady in
Speaker 3: my hometown, and it was holding the beam up. I
Speaker 3: still have that pie safe and it has a burnt
Speaker 3: hole in the top of the pie safe. A pie
Speaker 3: safe was It used to be an open faced chesterboro
Speaker 3: that like chester drawers or whatever you call it, but
Speaker 3: it's it would open up and you had a chicken
Speaker 3: wire or maybe a piece of glass, but it was
Speaker 3: where you could keep pies safe and insects wouldn't come in,
Speaker 3: you know, critters wouldn't get to it, but you'd let
Speaker 3: your pies cool and you'd keep them in there. So
Speaker 3: I have, you know, little kitchen stuff in them. Anyway,
Speaker 3: when I got upstairs and We're walking in the area
Speaker 3: that there was still floor and I could still walk.
Speaker 3: I just finally was hit with this anger after just sobbing.
Speaker 3: It's going through it, and I just started kicking things.
Speaker 3: I don't realize until you go through it. But a fire,
Speaker 3: it's like it hollows out the top and it just
Speaker 3: everything is now black soot, but feed of it, you know,
Speaker 3: on the ground, and I just started kicking it all up,
Speaker 3: and I saw a flash of color and I reached
Speaker 3: down and I had remembered in my attic area across
Speaker 3: from my bedroom, I had all my painting supplies. I
Speaker 3: loved painting, and i'd paint for commissions for random little people.
Speaker 3: It wasn't anything big, but it helped pay the bills,
Speaker 3: and I loved painting just for me. And so I
Speaker 3: had remembered the night before it had been kind of
Speaker 3: chilly and I couldn't sleep, and I'd taken that quilt
Speaker 3: and I went into that other room and I'd wrapped
Speaker 3: around me as I was painting. And so when I
Speaker 3: saw the bed springs melted into the ceiling, I knew
Speaker 3: I'd lost the quilt, and that was one big thing.
Speaker 3: I was like, God, I can't give that back to
Speaker 3: my parents. And I found it, and three washes later,
Speaker 3: it was fine.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that was your grandma's dresses in this quilt.
Speaker 3: So that this little jacket that my dad gave my
Speaker 3: mom six months into them dating. It was just little
Speaker 3: things like that that all my other clothes had melted,
Speaker 3: My polyester clothes had melted into like a ball around
Speaker 3: that jacket. And I had to cut it open, but
Speaker 3: it was safe. It was like a geode.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I cut it open and found my jacket inside, and
Speaker 3: the coolest thing that I was upset about the most
Speaker 3: of the time, really, but I look back and I realized,
Speaker 3: I was, like, you're giving me a clean slate. A
Speaker 3: lot of the artwork that I'd done since I was little,
Speaker 3: that I had brought with me burnt. It all burned up.
Speaker 3: But every single new canvas that I had just bought
Speaker 3: at this cell at the paint supply company, every single
Speaker 3: one made it. Every single nice golden paint tube that
Speaker 3: I had it made it. The entire plastic drawer that
Speaker 3: had all my paint supplies, everything burnt except my brushes
Speaker 3: and my paints. The last one, it's like it stopped melting.
Speaker 3: In the last one way, and so all my tools
Speaker 3: to create and the canvases were fine. And I realized
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, God, you're giving me a clean slate.
Speaker 3: I have to start over.
Speaker 4: Did you need a clean slate?
Speaker 3: I think I needed a reminder that people loved me.
Speaker 4: Were you feeling?
Speaker 3: I think I needed a reminder of what was important.
Speaker 3: And it was the people, not anything to do with
Speaker 3: anything I've ever bought or the things that these people
Speaker 3: have passed down. It was my grandmother, not the quilt.
Speaker 3: That's just my memory connections to her. But anyways, through
Speaker 3: that I wrote Forge in the Fire, and through that time,
Speaker 3: my entire personal life started falling apart.
Speaker 4: Was that relationship?
Speaker 3: Was that?
Speaker 4: What were you in a serious relationship that went bad?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, No, that was just you know, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to rebuild my living room. Couch is two dining room
Speaker 3: chairs that made it. And it's you know, just buying
Speaker 3: socks after a while gets expensive when you don't have
Speaker 3: enough renters and insurance to cover what you lost. Little
Speaker 3: things cost so much money to replace, the everyday stuff,
Speaker 3: and so you're just rebuilding your entire life. Yes, and
Speaker 3: I had so many angels that came along along the
Speaker 3: way that helped me. But I got a new guitar.
Speaker 3: Universal Publishing gave me a guitar that I could I
Speaker 3: could play in my rounds and such, and I just
Speaker 3: started writing this record, this first record that I put
Speaker 3: out if it wasn't for you, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I find my manager and I remember Mary Hilliard. The
Speaker 3: second time we met. I told her, I said, I
Speaker 3: have nothing to lose, so I guess I'll work with you.
Speaker 3: I was like, there's nothing that can be worse or less,
Speaker 3: so I guess we can only go up from here.
Speaker 3: And she was like, I thought it'd take a lot
Speaker 3: more convincing, and I was like, what do I have
Speaker 3: to lose? You know? So the thing is, I really
Speaker 3: stepped into that part of my life, only really focusing
Speaker 3: on professional side. I made these songs me and a
Speaker 3: friend of mine co produced on mikey Reeves I love
Speaker 3: him dearly. We did these songs on a five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars demo budget sometimes and then that song Family Tree
Speaker 3: went to radio and it just kind of started the
Speaker 3: whole projectile of the career. And I got signed at
Speaker 3: Capitol Records, and you know, life started to make itself
Speaker 3: make right again. You know, things started to work out,
Speaker 3: and it just really put into perspective every little thing,
Speaker 3: how insignificant. Every piece of clothing is, every piece of
Speaker 3: furniture and hand me down in the grand scheme, it's
Speaker 3: really just the people that you get to call. And Yeah,
Speaker 3: the lessons that I learned through that were significant, and
Speaker 3: that entire time, I'm trying to find love and I'm
Speaker 3: finding it a few months at a time and it's
Speaker 3: not really love after all. And through the confusing myriad
Speaker 3: of relationships and friendships and the less since that I've
Speaker 3: learned throughout them, these records came to be and I
Speaker 3: talk about it on stage sometimes where it's like all
Speaker 3: of us go through they may not be similar situations,
Speaker 3: but similar heartbreaks. Yeah, the way that something can wreck you.
Speaker 3: There's been somebody in the world that has felt the
Speaker 3: exact same desolation from another situation. And I like to
Speaker 3: tell people on stage that as a songwriter, for three
Speaker 3: minutes and thirty seconds at a time, we get to
Speaker 3: make you feel a little less alone in whatever you
Speaker 3: have went through. And one of the coolest little moments
Speaker 3: I think of when I think of a heartbreak that
Speaker 3: really hurt me. That then later I've noticed people have
Speaker 3: found help in it and comfort in it. I love
Speaker 3: this so like you're the best is great, but I
Speaker 3: think that what was I saying.
Speaker 4: People have found a heartbreak healing and the heartbreak the
Speaker 4: three minutes.
Speaker 3: Oh, the silver lining of it is this moment in
Speaker 3: small time hypocrite. As we were writing it, I said,
Speaker 3: I want it to be seven years. You know, for
Speaker 3: seven years I waited for you because I said, there's
Speaker 3: something about seven years. They say that every cell in
Speaker 3: your body replenishes and it's renewed. And I said, I
Speaker 3: have to tell myself that from that one really big
Speaker 3: heartbreak that in seven years, there will not be one
Speaker 3: part of me that you made an impact on. There's
Speaker 3: not one part of me that you talk.
Speaker 4: Seven years is the number.
Speaker 3: So I put seven years in there for me. And
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how many women and men have
Speaker 3: had seven year relationships. It's that seven year itch, I guess,
Speaker 3: but seven year relationships in small towns or whatever that
Speaker 3: have held them back from going after whatever it is
Speaker 3: they've always dreamed of. And yeah, I'm so grateful when
Speaker 3: those coincidences happen. When say, if there's just one moment
Speaker 3: in this podcast that as I ramble and talk your
Speaker 3: ear off, somebody had one little moment of either clarity
Speaker 3: or reassurance that they aren't alone. Then that's exactly why
Speaker 3: we're meant to ramble.
Speaker 4: And it's so true.
Speaker 1: Like when you're talking about the tragedy like the fire,
Speaker 1: Like what a moment to lose everything but then realize
Speaker 1: what's worth everything? You know, it's crazy, like really to
Speaker 1: be stripped of everything, yeah, but then only to realize,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, what does matter? It really is people
Speaker 1: and your connections and your village. Is that when you
Speaker 1: really started building your village and realizing that you had one.
Speaker 3: That's when I solidified my village. I think I started
Speaker 3: really building people around me and just kind of figuring out. Also,
Speaker 3: it's hard in our in our industry. I feel like
Speaker 3: that you have friends and then you have work friends,
Speaker 3: and it's trying to defer and she ate that and
Speaker 3: be a good friend and also a good work friend
Speaker 3: as well. I always I think something I always worry
Speaker 3: with is sometimes I feel as if the busier I get,
Speaker 3: the more I let friends fall through the cracks, Like
Speaker 3: my I don't know the more friends I make. The
Speaker 3: harder it is sometimes to keep up, but it's a
Speaker 3: really good problem to have, you know. I think that
Speaker 3: the village stuff. It took probably three years into Nashville
Speaker 3: before I really had somebody. I remember it started with
Speaker 3: one person. Started with my best friend Emily. She just
Speaker 3: kind of showed up and she's from North California. I'm
Speaker 3: from South Georgia, and somehow we just connected on so
Speaker 3: many different things. And it was the first time in
Speaker 3: my life that I met someone outside of a family
Speaker 3: member and I thought we could be related. You're It's
Speaker 3: like I'm talking to another sister or something. So I
Speaker 3: kind of ran people through that radar, run people through
Speaker 3: my gut, you know. I when I take people in,
Speaker 3: I try to go does this resonate with me? Can
Speaker 3: I be fulheartedly myself? Do I feel that they are
Speaker 3: as well? And if it passes that test. I like
Speaker 3: making friends. It's just hard to keep up with it
Speaker 3: when you're on the road. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like I've realized when I was younger
Speaker 1: in Nashville and I was out all the time, always
Speaker 1: on the scene, and I'm always wanted everyone to like
Speaker 1: love me, that was my whole thing. I needed to
Speaker 1: make sure everyone loved me so I could feel worthy,
Speaker 1: because like, if you don't love me, then I feel
Speaker 1: like there's something wrong with me, because my whole job
Speaker 1: is to make sure that you approve of me so
Speaker 1: that I can feel validated. So then I can like
Speaker 1: be okay, because okay, you like me, like not even
Speaker 1: not even romantically, just like people in general accept me.
Speaker 4: And so I've had so many friends.
Speaker 1: Because I would go above and beyond to like and
Speaker 1: I'm such an empathetic person.
Speaker 4: I can read people very well.
Speaker 1: I can feel when someone's energy's off, when someone's upset,
Speaker 1: when someone I'm really good at reading people to the
Speaker 1: point where I would kind of use it as like
Speaker 1: a tool to like figure out what someone needed, and
Speaker 1: then I could like be that for you so then
Speaker 1: you could love me. And it was genuine I would
Speaker 1: be like genuinely wanting to make you feel better but
Speaker 1: also to make you love me. Yeah, And it took
Speaker 1: its toll on me, Like after a while, I finally
Speaker 1: realized I was like burning out and that I.
Speaker 4: Couldn't keep this up.
Speaker 1: And I was just trying so hard to like always
Speaker 1: be what everyone needed me to be so that they
Speaker 1: would love me and accept me. And finally, I talk
Speaker 1: about this a lot, but like I hired a life coach,
Speaker 1: I had a daughter, and when I did that, I realized, like,
Speaker 1: I can't give people all of me if it's not
Speaker 1: a genuine relationship, you know, like I can't give you
Speaker 1: everything I have just to make sure you like me.
Speaker 1: When now I have this little human that like I
Speaker 1: don't need to be running myself ragging and you know,
Speaker 1: like giving myself away to people who don't give a
Speaker 1: crap when I need to be fully whole and present
Speaker 1: for her.
Speaker 4: So that's when I really did some deep inner work.
Speaker 1: I've been doing therapy like my whole life, but that's
Speaker 1: when I was really like, I've got to get this
Speaker 1: shit together, Like I've got to figure why don't figure
Speaker 1: out why don't feel worthy and why I feel like
Speaker 1: I have to make sure everyone loves me so.
Speaker 4: I can feel worthy. And then I realized it was
Speaker 4: a high functioning codependent and I needed the whole world
Speaker 4: to love me so I could feel great.
Speaker 1: And then I slowly won by one stopped just like
Speaker 1: stopped giving myself away to people, and I realized I
Speaker 1: actually have a lot less friends than I thought I
Speaker 1: had because I was keeping them all up, you know.
Speaker 1: And I also don't want to have all those friends
Speaker 1: because I don't have time for them. And also I
Speaker 1: can love people and be kind, but I don't have
Speaker 1: to like put everybody in my nest.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like I can like love people and like be
Speaker 1: so happy to see people, but it's like I don't
Speaker 1: have to like let everybody have a best friend's status
Speaker 1: or try to get there with somebody. And I used
Speaker 1: to try to get to like best friend status with
Speaker 1: everyone because I just needed everyone to love me. And
Speaker 1: then that now I'm just like Okay, So now with
Speaker 1: my village, I've gone through so many things, like people
Speaker 1: have gotten divorces, people have like just totally changed course,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, I feel like now it's like
Speaker 1: these people who I've lived life with for ten plus years,
Speaker 1: and we have truly weathered the storms and we've continued
Speaker 1: to regroup and come back to each other and like
Speaker 1: want to be in each other's life and want to
Speaker 1: have the hard conversations and want to do the work.
Speaker 1: Like that's how I know that we're gonna make it.
Speaker 1: And it's not that someone can't new come in, but
Speaker 1: it's like you have to have somebody who's really I
Speaker 1: don't have time for, like just a flighty fair weather
Speaker 1: friend like I need and I'm sure you're the same
Speaker 1: way I need roots. I need to know this is
Speaker 1: like worth investing in because like there's no time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3: Can't spread yourself that then I'm really bad about I
Speaker 3: call it a shell silversteining and shape shifting myself. I
Speaker 3: want to be that missing piece.
Speaker 4: Oh see it, that's it.
Speaker 3: Let me be that thing you're you're missing, whether it's
Speaker 3: that person that you convent to about that thing that
Speaker 3: no one else will listen to, and a friend, whether
Speaker 3: it's the healer and the helper and almost the mother
Speaker 3: in a relationship. It's things like that that I was like,
Speaker 3: just let me help you, let me be of service,
Speaker 3: let me be of help.
Speaker 4: Love me, love me, love me, love me.
Speaker 3: I remember one day Mikey Reeves, we're outside of the
Speaker 3: Blackbird Studios and he goes, I don't remember how it
Speaker 3: came to be, but I'll never forget when he looked
Speaker 3: at me and he goes, it's okay, you want to
Speaker 3: be everyone's favorite. But that's okay out. Oh. It's like
Speaker 3: when a kid points out one of your flaws or
Speaker 3: like something that you're nervous about. No one would ever
Speaker 3: say something, and then they say something.
Speaker 4: You're like, oh man, you just called me out.
Speaker 3: So for your co producer to say that, I realized
Speaker 3: was like, oh goodness, I do do that. And I
Speaker 3: think that if I'm not someone's favorite, even down to
Speaker 3: this is something I saw myself when I was younger.
Speaker 3: If the stage hands weren't didn't seem to be impressed
Speaker 3: by me, down to someone I'm never I may never
Speaker 3: see this guy again. We just met and we're only
Speaker 3: working together on this gig for a few hours. I
Speaker 3: still want him to think I'm I'm a great you know,
Speaker 3: I'm one of the good ones. And I realized, I
Speaker 3: was like, what does that come from? It is a
Speaker 3: it is an acceptance yearning that I want, but not
Speaker 3: just acceptance. I want it really. I think it boils
Speaker 3: down to I want to make people happy, and with
Speaker 3: you though yeah, yeah, but it's I want to make
Speaker 3: you happy. Yes?
Speaker 4: Is it so then you love me? Or is it
Speaker 4: just so?
Speaker 3: Yeah? There? There definitely is a rooted something in there,
Speaker 3: you know, in the Vanda, and.
Speaker 4: You also want to use your gift to make people happy.
Speaker 3: I like I like making people smile. It makes me
Speaker 3: feel good and my One of my favorite things in
Speaker 3: the world is to feel things. And I know that
Speaker 3: sounds crazy, but sometimes I want to watch a sad
Speaker 3: movie and I want to just mourn and I want
Speaker 3: to be that character and I want to feel everything,
Speaker 3: because what a beautiful, sacred thing it is to experience
Speaker 3: the highs and lows of life. There's so many people
Speaker 3: I know that have passed on at young age is
Speaker 3: and they'll never get to So sometimes I want to
Speaker 3: watch this sad movie and I want to cry. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I cry about things that make me happy. I cry
Speaker 3: when I pray all the time because I'm just especially
Speaker 3: when I'm praying about my friends. And I don't know
Speaker 3: why that is. Like my friends and my family are
Speaker 3: the ones that make me tier ay when i'm praying,
Speaker 3: because it's just so nice to have people you want
Speaker 3: to pray for, you know, it just feels so good.
Speaker 3: But as someone who made herself lonely in my life
Speaker 3: a lot of it, but desperately wanted acceptance and wanted
Speaker 3: to be loved, I think I'm having to retrain young
Speaker 3: me on how to view acceptance, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think she's I still have a lot of learning
Speaker 3: to do. I think with younger me.
Speaker 4: What do you want to tell? What do you want
Speaker 4: younger me to know?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: At your age, right now, with all the work you've
Speaker 1: done on yourself, If you could go back in, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cry, not.
Speaker 4: Even this is not even yep.
Speaker 2: If you could go back into her and give her
Speaker 2: a big old hug and tell her all the things
Speaker 2: that you wish you would have known, and that you're
Speaker 2: so proud of her for, and that she doesn't need
Speaker 2: to worry about.
Speaker 4: What would you tell.
Speaker 3: Her it's gonna be okay?
Speaker 4: And what would you tell her stop trying to do?
Speaker 3: Oh? Not? Every day is the last day. You have
Speaker 3: a lot more time than you actually think. I remember
Speaker 3: the kid not thinking I could make it past eighteen.
Speaker 4: You thought you're gonna die young Yeah. Why, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just I was like, it'll never work out past that.
Speaker 4: So then when the cancer is never half.
Speaker 3: Twenty one and then I got to twenty five, and
Speaker 3: then I got the twenty seven club and I didn't
Speaker 3: die because that was the number. As a musician, they
Speaker 3: always make you worry about And now I'm at thirty
Speaker 3: and I'm like, there is life after this. I don't
Speaker 3: know why, but my brain was not able to compute
Speaker 3: life after a certain year.
Speaker 1: Maybe because you just weren't supposed to see farther ahead
Speaker 1: been a few years.
Speaker 4: Probably so you're such a deep soul.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I know we loved a very emotional music video
Speaker 3: last night. What was it for my song No I Ain't?
Speaker 3: But it's just me being emotional for the entire video
Speaker 3: and I'm just sitting on a bedsotional sad. Just said,
Speaker 3: don't kidding when I wrote No I Ain't, it's on
Speaker 3: this bed of roses. But I wanted to create a
Speaker 3: mantra because there is something I love when movies or
Speaker 3: books that shaped me as a child. I somehow find
Speaker 3: something that resembles it in the Bible, and something that
Speaker 3: I've found in the Bible in a few different places.
Speaker 3: It speaks of your mouth guarded, because it is not
Speaker 3: what you put in your mouth, It is what comes
Speaker 3: out of your mouth that defollows you. Words have power,
Speaker 3: and I Labyrinth was one of my favorite movies as
Speaker 3: a kid, and David Bowie. SA's words have power, Sarah,
Speaker 3: And it just something about that I have talked badly
Speaker 3: to myself for so many years, self talk that I
Speaker 3: really wonder like I had to have poisoned myself along
Speaker 3: the way with just the things I would say to myself.
Speaker 3: What could I have grown if I had never done
Speaker 3: that and I'd only poured love into it? You know
Speaker 3: what if I had tilled that in versus sowing those
Speaker 3: seeds of mistrust within myself, doubt within myself for no reason,
Speaker 3: no reason at all, just doubt. You know. It's I
Speaker 3: think some of the hardest things is when you have
Speaker 3: feelings like that but you can't really find where it
Speaker 3: comes from. It just is the self worth that I think.
Speaker 3: I honestly think a lot of people, specifically women in
Speaker 3: my life, as far as the friendships that you know,
Speaker 3: I have deep connections with, it's usually the women that
Speaker 3: have a thing with our self worth. We connect it
Speaker 3: to our work and we struggle with it. And I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: this world. I'm sure that it's probably you know, I
Speaker 3: love the word myriad a myriad of things, but I
Speaker 3: wish I could go back and tell her you don't
Speaker 3: have to be so hard on yourself to be worth something.
Speaker 3: You're just worth it. I remember one of my girlfriends
Speaker 3: telling me when she was getting into sorry, I'm talking
Speaker 3: about God a lot.
Speaker 1: I love God, Okay, No, I mean we need God everywhere.
Speaker 3: Gloria Gaynor told me one time. I said, let's write
Speaker 3: a gospel song, and she goes, let's write about God
Speaker 3: without ever using his name. Okay, because it will bring
Speaker 3: more people in, yes, than push people away, because people
Speaker 3: that know God will know you're speaking of him just
Speaker 3: by speaking of love. And she goes, but people that
Speaker 3: may be turned away by the word. Let's figure out
Speaker 3: how to write a song that is about God and
Speaker 3: about his love and mercy but never says his name.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, my goodness, that's such a
Speaker 3: wonderful way to look at it. If you want to
Speaker 3: be able to speak of the love and the mercy
Speaker 3: you have within your life from that but not ostracize others.
Speaker 3: That's something I struggle with is being a spiritual person,
Speaker 3: someone that sometimes doubts religious organizations and sees how there
Speaker 3: is man made fault that happens in that and takes
Speaker 3: away the spiritual and the holiness and the sacredness of
Speaker 3: those places.
Speaker 4: I struggle with that too, Yes, but.
Speaker 3: I am very spiritual same and I do believe. Now,
Speaker 3: oh God, I can't. I shouldn't get into religious stuff.
Speaker 3: I have moments. I have a little section of my
Speaker 3: Bible that's just questions, and I have this like weird
Speaker 3: thing that I'll ask God. I'm like, can I just
Speaker 3: ask you these questions one day? I just want to
Speaker 3: know why did this happen? This doesn't seem fair to me.
Speaker 3: Why why? And I just write when I have questions
Speaker 3: like that, I just write it in the back of
Speaker 3: my Bible and I have it. And that Bible actually
Speaker 3: is one of the things that made it through the fire.
Speaker 3: So it's like this big now because the water damage
Speaker 3: like made But it's kind of cool now because when
Speaker 3: I go back and I read my book, I have
Speaker 3: to peel the pages apart, and so I know if
Speaker 3: I haven't read a section since the fire, because I'm like, ooh,
Speaker 3: new pages. It's almost like when you're playing a video
Speaker 3: game and a little area is unlocked. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: now we're in Hosea.
Speaker 4: I'm amazing.
Speaker 3: Uh sorry, I'm rambling that way to religion.
Speaker 4: But I love that you write questions to God.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that that's something I've struggled with some
Speaker 3: of my atheist friends. You know, if I bring up
Speaker 3: questions and stuff, They're like, well, aren't you not supposed
Speaker 3: to doubt God? And I said, I think He made
Speaker 3: us inquisitive creatures for a reason. Yeah, because the more
Speaker 3: I ask and the more questions I have, the more
Speaker 3: I go to Him for things, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: the more I seek it. But what I was saying
Speaker 3: with worthiness, the reason I went into religion, sorry, is
Speaker 3: because one of my friends told me that she'd always
Speaker 3: wanted to know God. She wanted that connection, but she goes,
Speaker 3: I just don't feel as if I'm worthy. I'm just
Speaker 3: if something is so beautiful and wonderful and powerful and great,
Speaker 3: I'm not beautiful enough on the inside for that to
Speaker 3: love me. And the coolest thing is, I feel like
Speaker 3: when these moments happen where you don't know how to
Speaker 3: handle the moment. I do think that when you go
Speaker 3: into prayer and you can manifest, I think manifesting is
Speaker 3: just an audible prayer that you do with your eyes open.
Speaker 3: I started praying and I said, just help me figure
Speaker 3: out a way that I can be a safe space
Speaker 3: spiritually for my friend, but not push it. How do
Speaker 3: you tell someone that they're beautiful enough to have any
Speaker 3: love in the world but they won't get it. How
Speaker 3: many times if someone said something to you and you're like,
Speaker 3: uh huh, and it's not you don't even allow it.
Speaker 3: Your brain doesn't allow it at that time to actually
Speaker 3: sink in that kindness. And I went to McKay's, the
Speaker 3: used bookshop that I love on the west side of Nashville,
Speaker 3: and there are two free book bends in the front,
Speaker 3: and there was these two books on and it said
Speaker 3: beautiful Bibble Stories and they both matched and it was
Speaker 3: just like the abridged versions of short summaries of Bible
Speaker 3: stories from back when we were kids. And so I
Speaker 3: gave it to her and we started kind of diving
Speaker 3: into faith and diving into God and the lessons that
Speaker 3: we can learn through it together going through Bible studies
Speaker 3: and then relating it back to the Bible. But I
Speaker 3: think that there's different villages. Sorry, I keep going back
Speaker 3: to villages, But I think it's really important because I
Speaker 3: think it's two young women that are now I mean,
Speaker 3: how long have you been in Nashville itself?
Speaker 4: Twenty years?
Speaker 3: Twenty years? It's like now I'm at ten years. So
Speaker 3: I'm like anyone that is twenty or less and you're
Speaker 3: a woman in a big city or somewhere new. It
Speaker 3: takes time to build your village, and there's going to
Speaker 3: be different facets of your village. Like for me, I
Speaker 3: mean my friend that now is very spiritual and I
Speaker 3: mean more spiritual than me, are connections and doing Bible studies.
Speaker 3: It helps and it heals me. Then I have my
Speaker 3: musical friends that inspire me. Then I have I call
Speaker 3: them my wise sages. I have a group of older
Speaker 3: friends that have just taken me under their wings, and
Speaker 3: they're the people I go to when I just need
Speaker 3: life advice. I have people in different realms of my
Speaker 3: life that it's not utilitarian friends, because it's not just that.
Speaker 3: But I have friends. I have places that I can
Speaker 3: seek solace that I know someone will get me. And
Speaker 3: I think that if you can just find one person
Speaker 3: that gets you in a facet where you can truly
Speaker 3: be all of yourself and truly vulnerable in it, hold
Speaker 3: on to it and be that for that person and
Speaker 3: that is the first step towards building your village. You
Speaker 3: build them one by one as they come. Yes. And
Speaker 3: also one thing I've had to accept is sometimes friendships
Speaker 3: pass on.
Speaker 4: They run their course.
Speaker 3: They run their course, and that's completely okay. When I
Speaker 3: was younger, I used to be offended by that, or yeah,
Speaker 3: I would have a weird feeling, you know, if I
Speaker 3: into the friendship. But you know, but I had to
Speaker 3: start running people through a barometer of if my gas
Speaker 3: tank from E to F, from empty to full. If
Speaker 3: E is grief and F is joy, where is my
Speaker 3: tank when I leave hanging with them? Is there more
Speaker 3: grief or more joy? I talk about days off are
Speaker 3: I have to feel my well? I think everyone has
Speaker 3: a well inside them And even Rick Rubin talks about
Speaker 3: it in his book. He calls it the vessel. And
Speaker 3: you have to fill the vessel in order to give
Speaker 3: from the vessel. And yeah, I think that you have
Speaker 3: to find stuff and things that feel your well. And
Speaker 3: when you leave those friendships, is your well fuller or
Speaker 3: full or is it just a little emptier? And then
Speaker 3: you need to remind, like remind yourself though that sometimes
Speaker 3: like friendships are given takes, so sometimes you will have
Speaker 3: to give more. You may have to be more for
Speaker 3: that person than they are for you in that hang.
Speaker 3: But if it's a consistent thing, yeah, that you leave
Speaker 3: heavier than you were when you walked in. It's okay
Speaker 3: to let people go so that the right people can
Speaker 3: come in. My dad always told me, he goes if
Speaker 3: you're dating the wrong man. When mister Wright comes along,
Speaker 3: that's you're not going to have a chance at him
Speaker 3: because you're wasting your time with the wrong person.
Speaker 4: That's so true.
Speaker 3: Don't allow the wrong people to stay in your life.
Speaker 4: That is so true. And it is so hard to
Speaker 4: sounds brutal, but it's not.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was so much love. I still pray
Speaker 3: for those people. Yeah. No, there's no one in my
Speaker 3: life that I hold anger. Yeah, right now, and that
Speaker 3: is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: But knowing when to let people go and knowing that
Speaker 1: they are not adding to your life, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there's anything wrong with them, It just means that
Speaker 1: it is time to move on and to open that
Speaker 1: space up again. You're so right, because if it's filled,
Speaker 1: else can come in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the same thing for them. They may not
Speaker 3: even notice it yet, but one day when the right.
Speaker 3: It's like in a relationship. I mean, it was hard
Speaker 3: for me to get emotional the other night because that
Speaker 3: song was a broken heart mantra, like I was saying,
Speaker 3: words have power. I wanted to create a song that
Speaker 3: when a woman is trying to choose themselves and love
Speaker 3: themselves more than they love someone who doesn't actually love them,
Speaker 3: that they can sing it to themselves. And it's just
Speaker 3: I don't know what to tell you, honey, I'm putting
Speaker 3: barbar around my boundaries. There's no more late nights. Are
Speaker 3: you up still? Like I'm not coming over, I ain't
Speaker 3: coming over, and the versus like you know, i'll watch
Speaker 3: your dog, I'll get stoned with you any day, but
Speaker 3: I ain't coming over tonight. And having to put that
Speaker 3: boundary down. I think boundaries really hard thing to do
Speaker 3: when you're a giver, when you want to be a giver.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people want to be a
Speaker 3: giver until the world takes too much. But yeah, sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm rambling. I love podcast. It's just so funny because
Speaker 3: I normally doing the series XM Show and doing radio
Speaker 3: segments things like that, I have to do soundbites that
Speaker 3: there are thirty seconds I start going into all this
Speaker 3: and I'm just going into like past trauma and like
Speaker 3: bring me back to the fire.
Speaker 4: That's my favorite.
Speaker 1: Tell me, though, why this album Better Roses is so
Speaker 1: special to you? Tell me what you love about it.
Speaker 3: It's it's just an entire accumulation of all the lessons
Speaker 3: that I've learned. It's the love I've experienced, it's the
Speaker 3: loss that I've experienced. It is me from eighteen and
Speaker 3: thirty finding myself. And I think that there has been
Speaker 3: so many times where I've wanted a song that I
Speaker 3: can go out to, and then there's been even more
Speaker 3: times that I've needed a song that I can lay
Speaker 3: and listen and bed and cry to. And I put
Speaker 3: a bunch of those on there. I try to put
Speaker 3: one or two love songs, but a lot of it
Speaker 3: is really learning to love yourself in the process of
Speaker 3: letting go.
Speaker 4: So are all these songs deeply personal, too.
Speaker 3: Oh deeply personal. The only one that is an outside
Speaker 3: cut is because uh, a friend of mine wrote it
Speaker 3: and my cousin, who was a country lover, he was
Speaker 3: a writer as well, passed away. He had MS and
Speaker 3: I got the call that he had passed away when
Speaker 3: I was in me and my friend's garage. We were
Speaker 3: throwing pottery.
Speaker 4: And you're throwing pottery, you're so quick.
Speaker 1: No, I made all my dishes and stuff, throwing it
Speaker 1: like against walls.
Speaker 3: No, so you have to throw it down onto the plate.
Speaker 3: There's a really cute place that does pottery. You should
Speaker 3: get a girls screw.
Speaker 4: Yes you go, yes, yes, I've been wanting to do pottery.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's a really cool place to Neil Town's actually
Speaker 3: was the one that introduced me to it.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you're throwing pottery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we were throwing pottery. I got the call
Speaker 3: from my dad. We have a rule in the family,
Speaker 3: but if someone calls twice, that means you need to
Speaker 3: answer right now. So he called, I have my hands muddy.
Speaker 3: He calls again. I go, okay, I need to answer
Speaker 3: right now, and he said the Matthew would die. And
Speaker 3: I realized it was right before CMA Fest and I
Speaker 3: had a full weekend then going into Brothers Osbourne shows,
Speaker 3: and so I was told like, look, you can't skip this,
Speaker 3: like this is a fan. There's too much going on.
Speaker 3: You can't go home for the funeral. And so I'd
Speaker 3: accepted it but I felt like I was doing a
Speaker 3: disservice to them or something. And Mia said, do you
Speaker 3: need to go? You know, I came back in crying
Speaker 3: and she goes, do you need to go? I said,
Speaker 3: I can't go home, like I'm just gonna go back
Speaker 3: to my house in Nashville and sit alone. Now, I
Speaker 3: was like, play me some demos. We always play each
Speaker 3: other demos that we've liked, songs we've written recently, and
Speaker 3: she played one called Mamas Don't let your Babies grow
Speaker 3: up to Love Cowboys.
Speaker 4: I love that one. Yeah, I put your spin on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that one. She wrote that one with two
Speaker 3: different friends and it's based off that wayling Jenny's. It
Speaker 3: was just so cool and I just I was sitting
Speaker 3: there and the sun was shining. It was a hot day,
Speaker 3: and I just remember sitting there thinking Matthew would love
Speaker 3: this song. And for the first time ever, my brain said, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is an outside cut. And my team was like,
Speaker 3: are you sure you want to do an outside cut
Speaker 3: because you've always written all your own stuff, You've produced
Speaker 3: the original stuff. And I was like, no, I'm suppose
Speaker 3: to put this one out so it'll be cool to
Speaker 3: have my very first outside cut on a record. But
Speaker 3: I still love it like it's one of my babies.
Speaker 3: So that's nice.
Speaker 4: It fit right in. It's meant to be.
Speaker 1: And this podcast will air by the time your book
Speaker 1: has released as well.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, and I know we're saving it to
Speaker 1: the end because we're already in an hour. So tell
Speaker 1: me though about the book, because this is so amazing.
Speaker 1: You're such like a mystical creature with all this going on,
Speaker 1: and so it makes so much sense that you would
Speaker 1: write it like a romance novel to accompany the album
Speaker 1: Better Roses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it felt like the right move. It just did.
Speaker 4: Do you wrote the whole novel with you would co edart.
Speaker 3: It with Carolyn Brown? Oh my gosh, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: Incredible too. It was so cool to like as a
Speaker 3: kid my oh sorry me as a kid. My mom
Speaker 3: always told me like, you wouldn't get a toy everywhere
Speaker 3: you'd go, but if you want to buy a book,
Speaker 3: you can buy a book if you're going to read it.
Speaker 3: And I was obsessed with books. I love words. I'm
Speaker 3: obsessed with words. I look like a path. How many
Speaker 3: words I have written on windows and like mirrors in
Speaker 3: my house. But yeah, writing a book was something. When
Speaker 3: I was thirteen, I wrote, I got like page seventy three,
Speaker 3: I think, And then at fifteen I wrote another book
Speaker 3: and it was like page sixty five and I gave up.
Speaker 3: But I always wanted to create. I like creating a universe.
Speaker 3: I get. I love having a place that you can
Speaker 3: go into. And as a child that used to sneak
Speaker 3: my mother and my aunt Punkin's romance novels. Aunt Punkin,
Speaker 3: Aunt Punkin. Uncle Thurman said her head looked like a
Speaker 3: pumpkin when she was born, and she just was Punkin
Speaker 3: to them. But God bless her, but I love her.
Speaker 3: She's like on my second mama, oy, if your name's
Speaker 3: a Punkin, you gotta be awesome. Yeah, pu In Kate
Speaker 3: i In Punkin, Okay. But yeah, so I read all
Speaker 3: their romance novels and stuff. I would sneak them, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, I just I know this sounds really weird,
Speaker 3: but as a kid, I love to take a pen
Speaker 3: and I would edit their romance novels, like there would
Speaker 3: be typos or something and I'd be like, mmmm, that
Speaker 3: should be that there, and I'd write it, but I
Speaker 3: loved that was so weird of me now that I
Speaker 3: look back, But it's pretty cool that now, as I
Speaker 3: was writing this book, it felt like younger me was
Speaker 3: stepping in. That was a big healing moment. She finally
Speaker 3: got to use her imagination. She got to write the
Speaker 3: book that she wanted to write. She tried twice and
Speaker 3: she didn't get to And now, at thirty years old,
Speaker 3: I get to write a book. I get to write
Speaker 3: a happily ever after. And that's what I wanted. I
Speaker 3: wanted a comfort book. I didn't want the first book.
Speaker 3: We also had two and a half months to get
Speaker 3: it done, so I was non stop writing. I was
Speaker 3: doing eight ten hours a day and not leaving my house.
Speaker 3: I look like a horder. I mean, things would come
Speaker 3: in and I just sit it on the ground and
Speaker 3: I'd sit down in my one spot and keep going.
Speaker 3: So it came out. I mean, what's the concept of it,
Speaker 3: the whole concept. It's a small town romance. It is
Speaker 3: about some It's about a girl trying to follow her
Speaker 3: intuition and find herself. I always loved romance novels where
Speaker 3: the girl gets placed in a situation where she has
Speaker 3: she never makes the really bad decision, you know. I
Speaker 3: hate when the protagonist does something You're like, I would
Speaker 3: never do that, you know, But I love it whenever
Speaker 3: they create them in they like kind of get them
Speaker 3: stuck in a place or scenario and they have to
Speaker 3: figure their way through it. She is getting over a
Speaker 3: heartbreak that sort of resembles the one that Small Town
Speaker 3: Hypocrite and Stuff was about, and then she finds herself
Speaker 3: in Homestead and there's a little mystery at the very end,
Speaker 3: but mostly it is a small town romance. It is
Speaker 3: a burgeoning love that blossoms between two of the characters,
Speaker 3: and she learned some lessons throughout the way.
Speaker 4: And each chapter is a song title, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, every single song is a chapter and something based
Speaker 3: off of it. So it was cool. I got to
Speaker 3: put so many Easter Eggs in it. Yeah, I love
Speaker 3: Easter eggs. That's the details. Like as a as a kid,
Speaker 3: I would play video games just to find the Easter eggs.
Speaker 3: I didn't really care about the mission. You want to
Speaker 3: find the end. I want to find every single jewel
Speaker 3: on every single level. I want to open every single
Speaker 3: chest in the game and figure it out. So, you know,
Speaker 3: music videos I love putting stuff in the backgrounds. I
Speaker 3: love somehow connecting them to one another to tell a
Speaker 3: different story outside of just that video.
Speaker 4: You do create universes.
Speaker 3: I want to you do. Thank you.
Speaker 4: What's the book called.
Speaker 3: Clever? But yeah, I wondered. I was like, should we
Speaker 3: name it something different? And they were like, no, same name.
Speaker 3: And I want to try to do it so that
Speaker 3: people will listen to the album and listen, you know,
Speaker 3: listen to the book and read the book.
Speaker 4: This is exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is all coming out February.
Speaker 3: But no coming out so okay, yeah, how long it's
Speaker 3: coming out March or February fourteen, Chine Day. So that's
Speaker 3: the love that love song of the record. And then
Speaker 3: I felt like the slow dancing song of the whole
Speaker 3: album needed to be on Valentine's Day. March seventh. Is
Speaker 3: the actual album that of Roses and the book, the
Speaker 3: e book and audiobook. We have a print version coming later.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. Okay, Hayley, so tell us anything else
Speaker 4: we need to know.
Speaker 1: There's I could talk to you for one hundred more hours,
Speaker 1: Like literally I could too.
Speaker 4: You're so fascinating.
Speaker 3: Union where I'm a little more caffeinated and focused. This
Speaker 3: was the best.
Speaker 1: You're so fascinating, Like you're such like a just like
Speaker 1: a mystical fairy, imaginative creature, just creating these worlds, sharing
Speaker 1: with us, and it's so it's so cool to get
Speaker 1: a peek in your brain. I love how multifaceted you are.
Speaker 1: I love your depth. I love how you feel so much.
Speaker 4: And you expressed yourself through everything, through your hair, through
Speaker 4: your clothes, through your music.
Speaker 1: You're so detailed, intricate, oriented, it's amazing, Like it's amazing
Speaker 1: to see how you express yourself.
Speaker 4: And then your voice.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, before we wrap up, though, have you
Speaker 1: gotten to a place through your voice where you're not
Speaker 1: scared of this gift anymore?
Speaker 4: Because it is it is such a voice.
Speaker 3: I'll talk about that in therapy. No, there's always a
Speaker 3: fear of losing it or somehow messing it up or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I've come to find myself outside of just my voice,
Speaker 3: like getting to write this book even I just realized.
Speaker 3: I told my boyfriend, I was like, this won't be
Speaker 3: the last book I write, and he said, why did
Speaker 3: you say it's so honestly, and I was like, because
Speaker 3: I want more than two and a half months to
Speaker 3: write an entire book. But you know, it was just
Speaker 3: so cool to create in a different way. And I
Speaker 3: have collected journals from two thousand. It was from the fire.
Speaker 3: I got a typewriter after that, and every day I
Speaker 3: would just type pages and pages of things I was
Speaker 3: going through, things I was thinking, went through the record deal,
Speaker 3: went through everything up to today, and I have a
Speaker 3: fire safe full of it actually, and one day I
Speaker 3: want to put that out, but I feel like I
Speaker 3: need to get a little bit more going before I
Speaker 3: do that. But I know that it won't be the
Speaker 3: last book I write, and it won't be the last
Speaker 3: album I make. So it's just been to find different
Speaker 3: facets I can create outside of just restoring my house
Speaker 3: and writing songs. I love that.
Speaker 4: Okay, what do people need to know? Where can they
Speaker 4: find you?
Speaker 3: But you yeah, you can find me everywhere, follow me everywhere,
Speaker 3: just don't follow me home all the social media's also,
Speaker 3: if anyone reaches out to you and it is not me,
Speaker 3: for my blue check, it is not me. Okay, weird
Speaker 3: people in the world, but also Sirius XM. I have
Speaker 3: a show on their own Prime Country and it plays
Speaker 3: every Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday if you wanted to tune in?
Speaker 3: Do you love it? Really? Help me?
Speaker 4: Do you love that?
Speaker 3: I do like it?
Speaker 4: That's so fun.
Speaker 3: It is sometimes it's hard because I start trying to
Speaker 3: tell the same stories every week. I'm on show sixty,
Speaker 3: so twelve twelve segments every week.
Speaker 4: Howpen do you go into film it record it?
Speaker 3: I do it every week. Okay, yep, So it's really fun.
Speaker 3: It's taught me a lot. But what's so funny is
Speaker 3: this is my first podcast in a really, really long time,
Speaker 3: and I realized how jointed I'm a lily patter in conversations.
Speaker 3: So we're just two little frogs in the sea life
Speaker 3: and we jump on this lily pad and we talk
Speaker 3: about self worth, and then I go into childhood, and
Speaker 3: then we hop back into the fire, and then we
Speaker 3: hop to bearded dragons, and then I promise though by
Speaker 3: the end of it, we will find our way back
Speaker 3: to the first lily pad. It just yeah, I feel that.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so serious acent what's the show called just Kaylee
Speaker 1: hammick Show?
Speaker 4: Okay, Kaylee hammock Show. Social media is Kaylee?
Speaker 3: I try to be clever and then I was like, no,
Speaker 3: keep it simple.
Speaker 4: You're clever enough in just all the things. So I
Speaker 4: think just.
Speaker 3: Keeping the complicate things a lot, just no.
Speaker 4: Not complicate. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So I think keeping the finding is easy and then
Speaker 1: the whole world opens up. Yeah yeah, okay, so Kaylee
Speaker 1: Hammick across the Board, Yeah okay. And new album coming
Speaker 1: out Better Roses Book, coming Out Better Roses Single coming
Speaker 1: out February seventeenth, fourteenth on Valentine's Day. All right, I
Speaker 1: always wrap up with one question, which is leave your light,
Speaker 1: and it's open ended.
Speaker 4: What do you want people to know? Drop some inspiration.
Speaker 3: If you're lonely right now, you won't be lonely for
Speaker 3: long and one day you will find the place that
Speaker 3: you will shine your brightest. You just have to remember that.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: Haley Hammock Randel so much for coming on. This was amazing.
Speaker 4: I loved every single second of it. You're so fascinating, Caroline.
Speaker 3: I've seen a bunch of your different interviews. I like
Speaker 3: to watch them versus listen. You just have a wonderful
Speaker 3: light about you.
Speaker 4: You have a.
Speaker 3: Glow that comes from inward and it's yeah, it's really
Speaker 3: nice to officially get to meet you, so thank you.
Speaker 3: It means a lot.
Speaker 4: Hey back at you. This is awesome. Thank you so much,
Speaker 4: Kaylee