This week our #FBF is our first real feature in issue 1 - an article on songwriter Lori McKenna. She talks about writing, women in the industry, and Massachusetts.
Lori McKenna must rack up the frequent flyer miles. While most songwriters on the Nashville circuit commute to work from surrounding areas like Brentwood or Bellevue, McKenna flies down from her home base of Stoughton, Massachusetts whenever she has writing sessions booked for a few days at a time. Add in the touring in support of each of her CDs released over the past ten years, and you’ve got a lot of free flights.
Her latest record called Numbered Doors is a record filled with songs about characters, with the title track getting its inspiration from being curious about the lives of people that stay at motels. McKenna says it started with “that sort of idea of when you drive by a seedy motel you kind of think ‘who stays there? what’s going on there?’” The song claimed the title of the album, and she and producer Mark Erelli went through and “looked for the songs that were more story songs and less personal songs - they could be characters rather than from a personal side.”
The record is a great collaboration between her and Erelli. The intention was to only record four or five songs for an EP, but the first day in the studio went so well they kept going and made an entire record. “I’ve known Mark since I’ve first started playing music out- side of my house, so he’s in my band and is my musical director,” she tells us. “He produced my last record Massachusetts. He’s usually the guy when I’m driving in a rental car through Minnesota somewhere - Mark is with me because he does most of my shows with me. We’re kind of like siblings in the way we travel together really well. I don’t think we’ve ever been in a fight. Musically Mark kind of knows my songs better than I do. He’s a far more talented musician than I am, so I’ll write the songs and he’ll bring them up a level for me, and we work really well together that way. He’s super patient. He’s super conscious of what he knows I want out of a song, out of a recording, and how I want it to sort of end up sounding in the end.”
One of the story songs entitled “The Time I’ve Wasted” is a beautiful, sad tale of the end of a relationship the character wishes she hadn’t been in. “I could’ve served five life sentences for a crime I didn’t do / for all the time I’ve wasted on you,” she sings. McKenna’s writing partners for this track include one of her best friends Liz Rose. When describing the co-writing process with Rose, she says, “[W]hen you’re writing with someone you’re that close to, it’s not like you have to edit your- self. It’s almost like you’re alone in the way that you’re so comfortable with that oth- er person you can completely be yourself as a writer. You may say something stupid and they’re not going to be like ‘what are you talking about?’ or they’re not judging you as a person because they know you so well. So you can just be whatever writer you are that day. Liz is just lyrically so strong she just sometimes - I can’t even type as fast as she can say words, beautiful words. Everybody that knows Liz knows that about her. Sometimes it just starts coming out of her so fast that you can’t even type it fast enough.”
Another frequent co-writer is songwriter Barry Dean. “In [the cases of Barry and Liz] I’m in a room with a writer that’s way better than me in certain ways,” she says. “So your job that day is to just learn from both of them. I’ve had a lot of times when I get to write with Barry and an artist, and I just try to absorb off of Barry, like he’s so good at pulling things out of people, like pulling emotions out of people that you didn’t know were there, and we kind of tease him about it but he’s just a master at it.”
Often McKenna does spend a lot of time in co-writes, not just writing by herself. That’s a situation that she didn’t always think would be a possibility in her career.
“[I was] really introduced to co-writing years ago when I first started going to Nashville, I had never co-written a song before that.” The opportunity to be in a room writing songs with other people is something that she is very grateful for, noting “writing is like that where you can never be good enough, and you always want to get better. So you never go ‘oh I don’t have to reach anymore,’ you can never reach a ceiling. You can always keep learning and evolving, and co-writing really helps me as a song- writer.” The weeks McKenna isn’t in Nashville, she usually has someone coming up to her home in Stoughton to write with her. Emily Shackelton and Kelly Archer were the two up in Massachusetts the week that we spoke to McKenna, and she said she was looking forward to some “girl time” with them.
Talking about girls in the industry, we asked McKenna about her opinion on the lack of women on the country music charts as of late. “Everybody that I know is talking about it,” she says. “And it’s not just writers, it’s not just women songwriters, it’s the guys too, and it’s mu- sic fans. My husband who’s just a fan - he’s not a writer, he’s not a musician - but everybody is talking about it. I think that everybody that likes country music is just really missing women in that format. Everyone is just pushing it at this point.” It’s not just really recently that this has been happen- ing either she notes. “It’s been about, honestly it’s been about six years that I can remember everybody saying ‘they’re gonna come back around, the women are going to come back around’ and it’s been like six years of them saying that. So now [I’m inclined to say] ‘well now, surely it’s time,’ you know, but then again I thought that last year and I thought it the year before it.”
So what’s the solution? What could help the women stand out in the country world? “In my brain I start thinking back to the nineties - it was a huge thing of women songwriters that started at that sort of time - Sarah McLaughlin and Jewel - and they all sort of banded together and went on the road. Then there was a huge outpouring of women that were discovered by that. So in my brain I’m literally like I want to start a campaign - it would probably have to be Miranda [Lambert] - Miranda would have to start doing a summer festival that’s all women country artists. I feel like it needs a kick start, like a kick in the ass.” The idea of needing something to get everyone’s attention is definitely one to consider. Women have people talking about the lack of presence on the radio, but something has to be done to give it a kick start as McKenna says. Perhaps Lambert would be willing to take her advice and campaign for more women to be heard.
When it comes to women songwriters, the balance seems to be a bit different. Writers like Natalie Hemby and Nicolle Galyon earn places for themselves in the writing rooms and find their hits on top of the chart. McKenna has always written with a lot of women, saying “as long as I’ve been writing in Nashville there’s always been, in my eyes, this great community of writers that support each other. I never remember a time where it was just all dudes that you were writing with.” “In Nashville you’ve got Nicolle Galyon, you’ve got Liz Rose, you’ve got Natalie Hemby, these amazing women that write their asses off and they can just write anything for anybody - for a women, for a man, they can do any- thing. So there’s always been a great community of those women, so it just makes sense that they’re songs are making more of a splash right now. Natalie has been on such a run, but since I’ve known her she’s been one of my favorite writers, so it’s always great to see that. It’s always great to see women support each other in that way - and they really do in that town. They really nurture and support one another, and that’s one of the reasons I love Nashville because I’m so non-competitive. It’s great to see that. It’s great to see the friend- ships that come together from two people on the [same co-write] together.”
Besides her love for Nashville, her life in Stoughton has also been influential in her songwriting. “I think it’s been important mostly be- cause I’ve stayed here more than anything. You just become part of the fabric of where you’ve been if you live there long enough.”
Even though her latest record doesn’t delve into the personal stories of her life, the fact that she’s stayed in her town so long still plays a part in it. “I [have] always been drawn to those ordinary stories, people with ordinary stories. I love picking that stuff apart and just looking at a regular house and figuring out what the dynamics are relationship wise or life wise because - I think that’s how it translates to the whole Numbered Doors thing because - it’s sort of looking at a motel and thinking ‘why are they here?’”
This article first appeared in the first issue of Songbird, published in the fall of 2014.