For the 100th episode of the podcast, we interview Jenna Paulette, one of our artists to watch in 2020, about her experience growing up in Texas, why she chose to pursue country music in Nashville and her idea of the ‘Modern Cowgirl.’
Your roots in Texas are such a huge part of your music, can you talk a little about what it was like growing up there?
Yes, so really I think being a Texan and growing up in a ranching family is what made me fall in love with country music to begin with, for me it was glorifying the life that I thought was so beautiful and I loved that about country music. So I grew up listening to George Strait, the Dixie Chicks and Brooks and Dunn and Shania Twain, all of them, but I really gravitated toward George – what he does with the pedal steel and what he represents as a man too, because those are the types of men I grew up admiring. So I really fell in love with the way that country music is and the way it makes people feel, through growing up in Texas.
I loved what you said that Texas made you fall in love with country music and not the other way round. Everyone talks about the Texan country music scene as such a unique and special place. Was it always the case that you wanted to pursue that more commercial-sounding country music from Nashville, because your music could have gone either way – you’ve got that traditional sound but also that contemporary feel in your music?
Well thank you, you hit the nail on the head because that’s the goal for me. When I first started I was driving back and forth from Texas to here, and I would be asked by A&R people at labels, ‘do you want to be Texas country?’ I’d think ‘gosh that’s such a weird question to me’ because I grew up seeing Texas country in particular not as a women’s game. There’s not a lot of Texas country artists that you see that are women, so for me I can’t help but be influenced by it, because I grew up with it and I love those sounds, I love the pedal steel and the fiddle – I haven’t really dove into the fiddle because it is so specifically Texas country, I want to do it at the right moment. The goal for me was always commercial and national, well international really. So yeah, people would ask me, ‘do you want to be Texas country or on the national country music scene?’ I’d say ‘I want to be on the national country music scene’ but I want to represent the world I came from because that’s what’s authentic to who I am.
Was it a really weird transition from Texas to Nashville and a massive culture shock?
Yeah, it was really hard honestly, because I like Nashville a lot, but the goal for me is to be somewhere out on the middle of nowhere, raising cattle and kind of do what George Strait got to do – which is be here when he needed to and do this on an extremely high level and be touring, but his place to get away was on his ranch. For me, if everything works out, I want to raise cattle and direct sell beef and kind of still be in that world. I think that’s what makes country music so great, is that it’s something rooted in reality, if that wasn’t part of my life, my music wouldn’t be authentic. Anyway, I have my retreat here in town, I go out and ride horses on this farm. It was a hard transition for sure.
You’ve talked a bit about arriving in Nashville and how it took you a minute to find your sound, and you’ve talked a bit in an interview with Unveiled, about going your separate ways from Ashley Gorley and finding your sound. It’s important that people are really honest about how hard your journey can be in the industry and finding that sound, how difficult a journey was that for you?
Yeah, I don’t know if he even realises what a big part of where I am right now he is – Ashley was so honest with me, he helped me figure out that it’s ok to be myself. I don’t think that he’d even say he was a part of things, but him questioning things and saying ‘hey, what is your sound, maybe you need to go and sit by yourself in a room and figure out what you want to say and how you want to say it’ – that’s really what brought me to being ok with the direction I’m going in and the ‘Modern Cowgirl.’ For the longest time I’d say ‘cowgirl’ in A&R meetings and they’d immediately go kitschy, old school, cheesy – nobody knows that cowgirls listen to rap music in barns, you’ll only know that if you’re in that world. I don’t, I have country music playing and I listen to pop music, but I know girls that do. It’s hard to not be influenced by the way that the world is evolving, and that’s ok, there’s no one way to look or sound to be exactly who you are. For me, it was sitting in a room and going ‘ok, I’m not just Texas country, I’m not just pedal steel, I’m pedal steel and…. X, Y, Z, new sounds that you can use to create new music.’ It’s figuring out what is commercial enough to be easily understood by as many people as possible within the country market, but being different enough to where some people are not going to like it, some people are going to love it, but that’s what makes an artist defined, going ok this is really who I am, like it or not and making that as commercial as you can make it.
It sounds like those years of arriving in Nashville and honing your sound were the most formative years – before there was a huge spotlight on you and you can figure out who you are.
Yeah, because I think if people see you too early they pin you for that one thing that they think that you are, rather than the great thing that you really are that just needs a push. I think that I got that time and I’m so thankful for it, because I think that all those artists that get a chance when they’re really young, there’s a whole A&R team that’s helping them put out music and they might be great songs, but it’s not something that the artist themselves wants to sustain for a career. You’re lucky enough to be an artist who gets to understand themselves and work from that place, which I honestly think is why guys work better than guys, because guys don’t have as much of a timeline on them, so they can figure it out and the spotlight from there. With girls, sometimes they just want to get them as early as they can, I don’t feel like the greatest music comes out in that young period.
Your first singles you put out were ‘ILYSM’ and ‘Coolest Girl in the World.’ I guess, why did you choose to lead with that as your introduction, was that a natural choice?
Yeah, so ‘Coolest Girl in the World’ especially was for me a great way to start out, because I think that set me out to figure out what the balance was between traditional country and pop and the way that it comes out of me. I think from there it was a great place to go ‘oh this is the goal’ and then fine-tuning it, as I’ve released more. I think less and less people are afraid of the cowgirl side of me, now they understand me better.
It’s part of your look and your style now, it’s iconic.
Oh my gosh thank you so much! Yeah, cowgirls are having such a moment right now, pop culture… I couldn’t have planned it better, so I’m super thankful for that. I think it’s allowed me to press more into the traditional side and let the pop side be more of an undertone and I think ‘ILYSM‘ is as far as I’d go the other way, it’s way more pop than anything else I’ve put out, but I love that song.
I managed to see you live at Song Suffragettes, and seeing ‘F-150’ live – I’ve always loved ‘Midnight Cowboy’ – but seeing that particular one live was a big moment for me. That song has been the start of the next wave of your music and a tipping point – do you feel the same way?
I definitely feel the same way. The day that I wrote that song I was walking out to my truck, I was about to write with Mark Truckle, who I love to write with – he’s got cuts with Maren Morris and just about everybody – and he’s just an insane writer. I wanted to go in with a really great idea, but I was just so dry, so I was walking out to my truck to drive to his studio and I saw the logo for my F-150. I was like ‘F-150?’ that rhymes with a lot of things… crazy, maybe…it works. I was driving over to his place and singing into my phone chorus ideas for that song. We wrote it, finished it and when I got it back, I was like ‘yes, this is it.’ It’s got a lot of energy and it’s so country but so riding that line of feeling very edgy.
It’s definitely got more of an edge to it than a lot of country music does.
Thank you. I love performing that one live, especially when it’s tracks and almost full-band sounding it’s amazing. The response when I was out with Mason Ramsey was incredible to that song, it’s easy to perform on stage.
Last year was a huge year for you with the release of ‘Modern Cowgirl.’ I love the way you define ‘cowgirl’ and how strong they are as women. Was that something you really wanted to be personified in this EP? Was there a vision that you wanted to call it that beforehand?
Yeah I actually was called a ‘modern cowgirl’ by some outlet and I was like ‘oh my gosh, that is what I represent,’ it made so much sense and just clicked to me. I feel like that’s what I represent and I think it gave me a lot of clarity and it was cool that someone else said that and were seeing that in me, because it was something I wanted to represent and I don’t think I realised that it was working until somebody else called me that.
‘Midnight Cowboy’ was one of my favourite tracks from last year – can you talk about the inspiration behind that one?
I was flying to El Paso to shoot music videos, I was about to drop down and it’s a three hour drive south to Marfa. The plane was landing and the idea of ‘Midnight Cowboy’ popped into my head and I started singing the chorus into my phone – I’m sure I was annoying the crap out of people but I get my best ideas on airplanes – and I ended up writing it with the same guy I wrote F-150 with and another buddy of mine, Will Bundy. I got back and we were just diving into the idea, I didn’t want it to be cheesy but I wanted it to have a rodeo wives feel – it’s not just them who are experiencing that it’s universal. When I got the demo back, I played it for my husband and we were both like ‘oh my freaking gosh, this song.’ I almost forgot about it and listening to it again, I just thought this song is the heart of what I wanted to do. When we shot this video that was special too, I wanted to represent what cowboys actually are. I think they’re glamourised and I do think that it does glamourise that lifestyle in the music video but it does it in a real way and the response from a lot of people who live that life was like ‘oh my gosh, I felt everything in that song before I saw the music video and now I relate even more.’ I love doing really realistic videos, not super abstract artsy stuff.
You’ve supported some amazing people, including Zac Brown Band and High Valley and most recently Mason Ramsey on his tour. Do you find you have learned a lot from those people
Oh my gosh yes, there was not a night on the Mason Ramsey tour that I did not sit side stage and watch a twelve year old hold an audience in the palm of his hand. You would think that it would get old after 26 dates but it didn’t. It was absolutely one of the best things that could have happened in my career – just being able to watch him. My confidence level after 26 days out there with him was just through the roof. You figure out how to talk to people. I think that the cool thing about watching him – because he’s twelve is that he’d say ‘well I messed that one up’ and then he’d move on to the next thing, and just no one cared. I think that it’s cool to watch someone who’s so free to be themselves because they don’t have any confidence issues yet. They don’t let him see any of the negative ever, which I think is incredible – he doesn’t even really get to hold his phone, somebody helps him with that, so he’s not really affected by anyone’s negative comments because he doesn’t know about that. So really I just got to watch him do that and really just put on that whole spirit about it the whole time I was out on the road with him. I think that’s the best thing that could have happened for my live show, because I want to perform with that much abandon and that much ‘I don’t care’ about me. I think it made for some really organic moments between songs. I loved it, I love that kid – I think he’s one of the best people on the face of the planet and I play he remains that kid.
Before I go onto my final few questions, I wanted to ask you – in the current climate – as listeners to country music what can we all do to support women in country music right now?
Love that question. Listen to women, discover women and go to the shows because I think so much can be gained from seeing somebody live. All those things prove that we can work. I do think that there is a responsibility, being a women in country music, to do things better and to figure out why it not might be working as well as men – I do think there are some political things that play into that, but for me personally I want to figure out what makes people want to listen (girl or boy) because it doesn’t matter in pop but it does in country. Is it an internal problem? Have we got in the habit of singing a certain type of song that men don’t want to listen to, or women don’t want to listen to? If so, how do we fix the problem and be better and give them every reason in the world to play us? I do think it needs to be shifted, but I think we can always do things better.
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Final Few
Wine or whiskey? Whiskey.
What would you do if you didn’t do music? I’d raise cattle and babies.
What is the record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island? George Strait’s Strait Out of the Box Part Two
Complete the sentence…
Music is… Feelings.
Country music is… Stories.
Jenna Paulette is… Modern Cowgirl.
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