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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 3 Westin Davis

It’s crazy how after just one phone conversation your whole perspective on songwriting can change. That’s exactly what happened after I interviewed Westin Davis. The songwriter behind many of my favorite songs by Kip Moore (“Dirt Road,” “Young Love,” “Lipstick”), the more I talked to Westin the more he gave me faith in my dream to be a songwriter. He told me he didn’t learn the craft of songwriting until he rolled up his sleeves and started putting the work in.

Westin explained that inspiration for a song comes from everywhere. He could be driving down the road, remembering a conversation he had or just thinking about his own life. What struck me most throughout our chat was his honesty. He opened up about his past and his struggles, never holding back. He even gave me advice when  I confessed that it’s my goal to write a song.

Below is some of the transcription from our chat. Stay tuned for my article on songwriting, which will feature Westin, early next year.

“I carry all of my yesterdays into my co-writes. I carry my home town, I carry everything bad that ever happened to me. So when I’m writing, I’m giving everything I have just like an entertainer would if he was performing for an audience. There still is that thing deep within me where the only motivation I need is my past. I take what I do very seriously.

“I think writing in general is therapy. Somebody told me recently, they said, ‘Man, I can hear you in every song that someone else sings or every song that I hear you play. I can hear your life story in it.’ I’ve always drawn from my life. I’ve been very fortunate to have very rainy days and sunny days. I’ve been very fortunate to live in black neighborhoods, to be poor, to be around crack dealers and drug dealers. To drive to a family member who lives 30 miles down the road and has more money than he knows what to do with and to see that side of life. And also be in love and out of love and heart-broke and lose somebody. I know that might sound crazy. It wasn’t until I started writing, that I looked back and actually thank God for hard times because I can draw from a deeper well than most people.

“If you want to be the best writer read books. Find out words. Follow the people you look up to. See how they said something and say, ‘Oh my gosh, they said that in a different way. How could I do that?’ It’s like anything. The beautiful thing about writing is it gives you the freedom and a sense of pride. Take a leap.”

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 4 Lady Antebellum

I’ll never forget the first time I interviewed Lady Antebellum back in 2010. At that time, their song “Need You Now” was everywhere–on country radio and pop radio. Heck, it even was made into a club mix, which I found so strange at the time. I prepared the entire weekend with the hope to ask them at least one question they were never asked before. (I succeeded!)

This year, I had the chance to sit down with the country trio for a bit longer and they were as nice as I rememberd. We talked about their latest album 747, songwriting and what it’s like for Hillary Scott to be the only girl in the band. Nearly four years after my first interview with them, I walked away even more impressed with the way the band has evolved and how they continue to make music that moves people. Below is an excerpt of my interview with Lady Antebellum

Recording 747 was fun for the band, and Hillary Scott said this is always the goal.

“That’s the ultimate thing, if you can have fun doing it then that’s the truest success,” she says. “We needed to step outside of what was comfortable for us. The three of us as a band needed the change. It felt the most like the excitement we had when this all started. It felt so much like the first record. In the eight years we’ve been a band, things can start to feel familiar, so to have that excitement and first time feeling again was really special.”

Charles Kelley reiterated Hillary’s sentiments, explaining that he also had to exit his comfort zone for “Freestyle,” which is the band’s new radio single. He said he was initially hesitant during the writing process (he and his bandmates wrote the track with Shane McAnally) because it was “such a departure” from their previous material. Today, though, it’s one of his favorite tracks to play live.

“The one thing we learned was not to be afraid,” he says. “‘Downtown’ was a good example of a song where at the time when we cut it Hillary was like, ‘I don’t know. This is so different.’ We’ve always found that our biggest and best songs always push us in a different direction. ‘Freestyle’ has this infectious energy to it. [You have to] keep it lighthearted sometimes.”

The lightheartedness heard on “Freestyle” weaves throughout Lady A’s album, from lead single “Bartender” (which reached No. 1) to opening track “Long Stretch of Love.”

The latter song Charles described as the most honest on the album.

“We’re all married. True love is ups and downs. You hit, you miss. You’re fire and ice,” he says. “But at the end of the day we’re not going anywhere. We feel that way in our personal lives and as a band. We’re going to have our ups and downs. We’ve been through a lot. We just have this long stretch of love. This long view of the group.”

“It’s going to be an interesting journey,” he continues. “Who knows where we’ll be in 10 years.”

For my complete interview, visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 5 Dustin Lynch

Dustin Lynch

(Credit: Paul Familetti)

For years, I’ve been hoping to interview an artist at Serendipity, my favorite dessert spot in New York. I’ve been going with friends and family since high school (always ordering the Frozen Hot Chocolate!) When I met Dustin Lynch last November in Nashville and told him I live in New York he said his favorite place to visit is Serendipity. I was speechless for a second because I never thought I’d meet anyone who loved the place just as much as me. When I told him I want to move to Nashville, he suggested I open up Serendipity Nashville and to be honest, it’s not a bad idea.

Nearly a year later, I learned Dustin would be in New York to do press for his new album Where It’s At. I thought Serendipity was the perfect spot to sit down and chat. When I interviewed him on a gondola at The Venetian in Las Vegas during the ACM Awards,  he compared one of the songs on his album, “Sing It to Me,” to sexual chocolate so I had a feeling Serendipity would be a fitting location. Below is an excerpt from our chat over Frozen Hot Chocolate.

A self-professed sweets fanatic, Dustin said he first stumbled upon Serendipity years ago when he was on the hunt for cheesecake in New York. His publicist had recommended Serendipity.

“We got here and it was like, ‘Wow!’ Every dessert that came out was bigger than life,” he told me.

So what did he think of his Frozen Hot Chocolate?

“Good grief,” Dustin said, after taking his first sip. “The gym has to happen tonight,” he said grinning, before going in for another sip. “We can run to dinner.”

Since we were sipping frozen chocolate treats in a popular dessert emporium, I had to wonder: Is there one dessert that best describes his album Where It’s At? “I’m going to have to go with Brownie Earthquake Sundae. A little bit of everything I love is in it,” Dustin said.

It’s true, Where It’s At does have ‘a little bit of everything’ in it, from heartfelt ballads like “She Wants a Cowboy” and “Your Daddy’s Boots” to uptempo live numbers including “Where It’s At,” “To the Sky” and the album’s kickoff track, “Hell of a Night.”

Dustin has previously described one song on the new release, “Sing It To Me,” as “sexual chocolate,” so since we were actually indulging in chocolate, I had to bring it up again. Dustin , to his credit, didn’t flinch. With R&B and pop influences, he said “Sing It To Me” is the sexiest song he’s ever written.

“‘Sing It To Me’ is our lovey dovey song on the album,” hesaid. “It’s not even really lovey dovey, it’s about not wanting to get out of bed with someone else in the morning just because it’s perfection.”

Once the interview came to a close and we finished the last sips, we headed outside into the bustling streets and sweltering July heat to say our goodbyes. Maybe it was the sugar high, but on my walk to the subway I couldn’t help but wonder if Dustin was right — that real cowboys do indeed still exist.

Earlier, when he discussed his song “She Wants a Cowboy,” he’d said there are plenty out there. “I think the song, it is digging deeper than simply ‘She Wants a Cowboy,’” he said. “She wants a guy that’s simple, down to earth and honest. She wants a guy that can kick back and peel back the layer of whatever persona you have to put on in everyday life.”

And despite my protests, he did personally pay for our Frozen Hot Chocolates. So maybe I did, in fact, meet my very first real cowboy.

To read the complete interview from Serendipity, visit Radio.com. You can also read our chat on a gondola at The Venetian here.

Had an amazing gondola ride @VenetianVegas with @dustinlynchmusic. Read all about it! http://cbsloc.al/1mZdjOl

A photo posted by Annie Reuter (@yousingiwrite) on

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 6 Big & Rich

Big and Rich(Credit: Paul Familetti)

Without a doubt, one of my favorite interviews of this year was Big & Rich. It wasn’t your standard Q&A over the phone or in the studio. This time, I took Big & Rich to Johnny Utah’s for some beers and two-stepping! I had never two-stepped before myself, and was hoping Big Kenny and John Rich would teach me, and boy did they.

John Rich started off with the basics, which included explaining the difference between two-stepping and line dancing. “Anybody can dance by themselves,” he said of line dancing. “You’ve got to have something going on to get somebody else to dance with you. It requires a little coordination.”

Which is exactly what I learned. Most importantly, the guy has to lead. And as John says, if the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing it’s going to be a train wreck. Lucky for me, I had a good teacher.

big-and-rich-26(Credit: Paul Familetti)

“Full step, half step, back. Full step, half step back. That’s all it is,” he recites. “Once you get it down it’s like you’re walking.”

With that said, he grabbed me close (much closer than I had anticipated) and walked me through it while I very timidly tried my best not to step on his fancy cowboy boots.

“John Rich can two-step backwards!” Big Kenny shouts as Rich twirls me.

“I can two-step anywhere!”

“He’s a good two-stepper,” Kenny asserts. “And you’re doing good. You’ve never two-stepped before? By golly, you look like a natural.”

For my complete interview with Big & Rich visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 7 Hunter Hayes

Before I tell you about this interview, let me just say that after watching Almost Famous for the first time in high school, it became my dream to tour with bands and interview musicians. While there were many bumps along the way, I officially accomplished that dream this year when I toured with Hunter Hayes as he broke the Guinness World Record for playing the most concerts in multiple cities in one day.

On Friday, May 9, Hunter kicked off his own record-setting journey at 8:17 a.m. with his first performance on Good Morning America. He was supposed to take a helicopter to Boston for his second show at Paradise Rock Club an hour later, but the weather got in the way.

“Essentially, right before we left to get on our plane we were told that the airport where our plane was nothing was leaving or coming into our airport,” he told me before the 10th show of the tour in Philadelphia. “We had to figure out another airport and another plane to get to Boston.”

Just a little hiccup in what took months of planning, Hunter and his team found another plane and got to Boston in record time. Not to say they weren’t worried. Lucky for Hunter and his team, the remaining shows ran early.

“I was astonished at how far ahead we got so quick and everybody was efficient coming in and out of the venues,” Hunter said.

Throughout each of his 10 shows, he apologized profusely to be playing a shortened set.

“We’re here for another two-and-a-half hours normally,” he said. “We appreciate you guys making this all happen because we’re spreading awareness and helping our friends at Child Hunger Ends Here today. What you guys have already done to make that happen is beautiful.”

“My goal is to make sure that every minute that we are lucky enough to spend with you tonight, we want to make sure you have all the fun,” he said on stage at the Palace Theatre in Stamford, Conn. “This is our seventh show we’ve done today. As you can tell, we’re still having all the fun there is to have. Let’s sing this next one all together, shall we?”

Meanwhile, the media team was feeling the exhaustion seven shows in, many of us opting to take a nap in the bunks before the eighth show in South Orange, being awakened just as Hunter was about to go on the stage. I tried out all of the bunks and learned that for the least interrupted sleep from bumps on the road, the top bunk is the best. Also, using the bathroom is extremely awkward. But that’s for another time.

Hunter played an extended set to a sold-out crowd at 7:30 a.m. at Philadelphia’s Trocadero. At the end of the set, he was presented with his official Guinness World Records certificate before a stream of confetti hit the stage.

So how is he going to celebrate? By sleeping. That, and eying yet another world record.

“Everyone goes to bed. Everyone gets some sleep,” he said. “I’ve had my eye on how we could break this if we wanted to.”

If he does, I hope to be along for the journey!

Read my complete recap over on Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 8 Little Big Town

I was fortunate to interview Little Big Town back in 2012 for Billboard when their single “Pontoon” was about to hit No. 1. They were as delightful to speak with as you’d imagine and this year I got the chance to sit down with Little Big Town again in our studio in New York as well as attend their album release show for their latest album, Pain Killer. With their first single off the release being called “Day Drinking,” I had to ask them what alcoholic beverage best describes their latest release.

Kimberly Schlapman doesn’t miss a beat. “Fireball!” she asserts, as her three bandmates nod their heads in approval.

Karen Fairchild then asks Kimberly if she has ever tasted the cinnamon-flavored whiskey. “No, but maybe I will,” she jokes.

Meanwhile, Phillip Sweet, who began the interview by singing Taylor Swift‘s “Out of the Woods,” says that Fireball “packs a punch and it’s sweet,” just like Pain Killer.

Karen, on the other hand, likens the new album to an Old Fashioned because “it has a bit of a vintage throwback to it, but it’s strong.”

One of the standout tracks on the album is “Girl Crush,” where Karen takes the lead and sings of how she has a crush of sorts on the object of an ex’s affection.

“I want to taste her lips, yeah ’cause they taste like you/ I want to drown myself in a bottle of her perfume/ I want her long blonde hair/ I want her magic touch/ Yeah, ’cause maybe then you’d want me just as much,” she sings.

“It’s written like a good old country jealousy story,” she explains. “I think we’ve all felt that, where we’ve lost a relationship and been rejected and we look at, ‘What did he want that I didn’t have?’ I think it’s a really easy thing to relate to, and yet you’ve never heard it said in that way.”

Other highlights on the album include “Save Your Sin,” which Phillip likens to a garage band rocking out. For this track Kimberly is on lead vocals, and as Phillip explains, “her voice went to a new place that we’ve not heard her do much of in the past.”

Her secret to getting that guttural growl on the song? Fireball whiskey.

While Kimberly admitted during our interview that she’d never tasted Fireball, that all changed the following night during their album release show. After the band notices a fan holding Fireball in the front row, she remarks, “I get crazy when we talk about Fireball,” confessing that she has never actually tried it. At first, despite prompts from fans to take a swig of it, she refuses. “I can’t do that in public! My mama might see.”

Not wanting to upset fans, though, her defense soon changes. “As far as I know, my mama’s not here tonight,” she says, then she takes a swig. “I feel it. This is kinda like moonshine. Don’t y’all tell my mama, now. I will deny it. I will lie to my mama.”

Catching up with her backstage after the show, I had to ask: Now that she just tried Fireball, does she still liken Pain Killer to the whiskey?

“Yes,” she says as she grabs my hand with a big grin. “It burned all the way down.”

Read more of my interview with Little Big Town at Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 9 Jake Owen

Jake Owen was one of the very first country artists I interviewed. In 2009, I headed to Nashville for the first time with two friends for CMA Fest and I instantly fell in love with country music. We wound up chatting with Jake on his bus shortly before his debut performance on the main stage at LP Field. He was super honest about the songs he wrote and why he loves living in Nashville. Little did I know, after that trip I’d be dreaming of moving to Nashville.

This time around, I talked with Jake about why it’s so important to cut outside songs and how it changed his career. We also discussed why he chose to mirror his first major headlining tour this year to where he began performing at The Riverside Cafe in Florida, complete with palm trees and Tiki bars.

“There’s a lot of people out there that didn’t live a life like I did growing up. I realized that’s what separates me from other people,” he explained. “You have to embrace the things that make you different but also embrace the things that make you unique to who you truly are. That’s why I was really adamant of making our show on the road look and feel like you’re back home in Florida with me when you come see my show. A show should be something that takes you somewhere in a place.”

His new single is “What We Ain’t Got,” a song written by Travis Meadows and Travis Jerome Goff. Jake explained that when he picks an outside song it has to do something to him.

“It has to live in my ear and continually tickle it. What I mean by that is continually make me want to listen to it again. Or, it has to have some sort of deep meaning on it and it’s easier for me to sing songs like that,” he said. “A great career comes from great songs. That’s why guys like George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, they all recorded outside songs. Once I started recording the outside songs it really helped change my life. Whether I wrote it or didn’t write it, the best song should be the song that makes the album.”

Read more of my interview with Jake Owen at Radio.com. Watch my very first interview with Jake from 2009 below.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 10 Miranda Lambert

Interviewing Miranda Lambert was truly an incredible experience. While I’ll admit I was a bit nervous as she has this “don’t mess with me persona” onstage when performing hits like “Kerosene,”  “Gunpowder & Lead” and “Somethin’ Bad,” she was such an inspiring interview and incredibly down to earth.

Miranda released her latest album, Platinum, this year when she was 30-years-old and since I was about to turn 30 myself, I had to ask her advice.

“There’s Spanx and Botox, you’re fine,” she joked, before getting serious. “When I say aging, I’m only 30. I’m just not 20 anymore. In the last 10 years, I feel like I’ve learned a lot. I’m so excited to head into my 30s. It’s like an adventure. It’s something to look forward to and hopefully get smarter and learn lessons from the mistakes you’ve made and hopefully not make as many mistakes as you did in your 20s.”

She added: “It’s not a scary thing. It’s exciting. With age you gain knowledge and knowledge is beautiful in my opinion. I just am really glad to be where I am. I’ve worked really hard and I have a lot of work ahead of me.”

The more we chatted, the more I could see how humble Miranda is and how being in the spotlight hasn’t changed her one bit. She chose 16 songs that spoke to her and where she is at in her life for her album Platinum. The 30-year-old Texas native said everything on the record is “a picture of who I am right now.”

“I know just being a girl, I’m just like everybody else and I know some of the things I’m going through, good or bad, surely there are other people out there that can relate to something on this record because it covers the gamut,” she said. “There’s all kinds of different songs on this record and there’s some humor too, more than I’ve ever had before on any other album.”

“I’ve been so blessed in my career to be able to sing the songs and write the songs that I really believe in,” she added. “A lot of people have struggled to keep going. I feel so lucky to always write songs like ‘Bathroom Sink’ and for people to come up and go, ‘Hey, I really relate to that.’ It’s not an easy thing to do, to lay your heart out there.”

Read more of my interview with Miranda Lambert at Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 11 Angaleena Presley

angaleenapresley

I walked away from my interview with Angaleena Presley speechless. By far the most honest interview I’ve ever had, Angaleena opened up to me so much about her life, her past and what many of the stories behind her songs on her debut solo album American Middle Class dealt with. I’m always grateful when an artist opens up so freely because talking about some of these songs is like giving me her diary to read. Like music, sometimes and interview can be therapy, and I can only hope I helped her get some of these thoughts off her chest and out into the world. Read some of our chat below.

“I got introduced to the world as Holler Annie with these two blondes beside me,” Angaleena told me of her bandmates Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe of the Pistol Annies. “I feel like I had to get in a band, make history and kick down a door so I could walk through it as a solo artist…I’m an older artist and I could sit there and be like, ‘Oh this should have happened.’ No. If it didn’t happen like this, you wouldn’t have had this story to write or this song that so many people connect with. I feel like everything happened the way it was supposed to happen for me.”

Angaleena has no trouble speaking her mind and American Middle Class makes that clear. On each of the 12 tracks, she gives an honest portrayal of her life covering the moments that others may want to forget. On “Drunk,” which Presley wrote with Sarah Siskind (who has written for Alison Krauss), she details the hurdles she faced during the “most horrific, tumultuous, part of my marriage,”

“I had gotten pregnant three months after knowing my ex-husband,” she recalls. “We were both wild, living the artist lifestyle and I got pregnant and I grew up and he really struggled with it. He just couldn’t do it. I went to write that day and I just started venting to [Siskind] because a lot of times writing appointments that’s like our therapy. We can’t really afford therapy at that stage in our career so we are literally each others’ therapists.”

While it felt good to get these things off her chest, Presley admits that she’s worried to play the song for her seven-year-old son being that it’s a “laundry list of how my marriage ended.”

“It’s so scary to think about the day that he puts two and two together and he’s like, ‘Oh, daddy did that?’” she says. “I’ve always tried to be really honest with him.”

While sitting with Presley at a French bakery in the heart of Midtown, she even tells a “TMI” story about how she had to explain menstruation to her son after he found a tampon in her car. “He’s like, ‘What is this?’ and I explained to him a woman’s cycle,” she says. “So I feel like that’s how I’m going to handle it. ‘Mommy and Daddy were young and wild and you were in Mommy’s tummy and Daddy didn’t have a baby in his tummy and it took him longer to be a grownup.’ I think I just figured it out in this interview. That sounded pretty good to me.”

Read our complete chat on Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 12 Cole Swindell

Cole Swindell has had an amazing year. Not only has he had back-to-back No. 1 singles as an artist, but songs he has penned for Thomas Rhett and Luke Bryan have also gone to No. 1. Not to mention, he released his debut album in February and is currently on his first major headlining tour.

I’ve been lucky to talk to Cole twice this year, back in February right before the release of his first album, and just last month the day before he performed at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Stay tuned for that interview later this week on Radio.com.) It was incredible to see his career transform over the year, from hearing how he made his way from Luke Bryan’s merch guy to his opener to now headlining his own shows. Cole remains as down to earth today as he did the first time I met him and you can see how grateful he is for his success as he is all smiles when talking about where his career has taken him. Below is an excerpt of our chat from earlier this year.

Cole Swindell first met Luke Bryan as a college student at Georgia Southern University, the same school the Crash My Party singer attended a few years earlier. “When I was in college he had already moved to Nashville,” Cole told me. “He came into town to do a show [and] me and my buddies were sitting on the front porch of the fraternity house waiting on his show that night. He came up needing to change his strings and played something he had written and I was like, ‘Man, that’s what I have to do.’”

The two kept in touch and when Cole moved to Nashville nearly six years ago, Luke happened to need a merch guy. While on the road, Cole focused on songwriting and began writing with the “Drink A Beer” singer and Florida Georgia Line, who were Luke’s opening act at the time.

“Just getting to write songs out on the road like that, that’s what got me started,” he said. “Everybody has their own path and mine started through songwriting.”

In fact, one of his favorite songs–not just on the album, but that he’s ever written–is the album’s closer, “The Back Roads And the Back Row,” a song that he says tells the story of his life.

“I grew up playing sports before I started singing,” he recalled. “Friday nights we were on that football field, Saturday we might be riding some back roads, chasing girls. But Sunday morning we had our butts in church.”

For more of my interview with Cole Swindell, visit Radio.com.