Girls of Nashville’s Caitlyn Smith, Heather Morgan and Mags Duval join Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen to talk about curating all-female lineups for Girls of Nashville shows, female representation, writing with other females, change they’ve seen for women in Nashville and more. Tune in and listen to the episode in-full on-demand here.
Caitlyn Smith on Curating All-Female Lineups for Girls of Nashville Shows
The truth is is that I think maybe we’ve been told there’s only one spot [for female artists.] But, what we were realizing is that when we started listing all our favorite females, the list is so long and there’s so much talent in this town. And so, curating these shows are actually hard because we have 50 people that we want to have in this spot. But, it’s just a testament to the truth of… That the talent is massive. I would just love to make the spotlight a little bigger.
Heather Morgan on Writing With Other Females
The first time [Caitlyn, Mags, and I] wrote together, Lindsay Ell, an artist we love, cut the song. And we had been in an all-female writer retreat. And that’s one thing that we just said we wish would happen more, even in our own day to day with our calendars for songwriting. Do we just need more combinations with more females? There’s plenty of female producers these days. And I think it’s more of having that like conscious… Maybe we just have to be conscious of it and start pushing for that.
Heather Morgan and Mags Duval on Change They’ve Seen for Females in Nashville
HEATHER: Part of it, some of the girls that have played Girls of Nashville have started their own publishing companies. Nicolle Galyon and Hillary Lindsey doing that. Just getting in more leadership roles where they have some say so in that way.
MAGS: Definitely. And I think Maren [Morris} and our bass player, Annie, actually met at one of the Girls of Nashville shows and they’ve gone on tour together. So, cool relationships have started from this where women have gone on to write together or to become friends and have each other to support each other. And I think even just seeing the way it’s changed since I moved here, when I was that young, it’s really incredible. I felt super fortunate to have my first publisher be a powerful female. Beth Laird. And her husband, Luke Laird, too, is an amazing songwriter. They both really nurtured me in that time of my life. And I got to see a woman in that position really young.
Caitlyn Smith on What the Nashville Music Industry Could Do Better for Females
I feel like we’re working toward it. Right? And we’re starting here with just trying to create this community of supportive women. And I feel the Girls of Nashville, it expands beyond just songwriters and artists. It’s expanding to publicists and producers, and women at Apple… It’s this community just growing.
Mags Duval on the Importance of Representation
I think, and obviously I can only speak so much for someone who’s not exactly in our situations, but I think representation is so important. So much change is inspired by representation. And when young women can see someone doing something, it’s real to them. I can do that because I’m seeing it being done. And it almost makes me get emotional to think about because in so many ways I can imagine just we felt like we’re not really seeing many women on stage. Can we do this? A young black woman seeing Mickey Guyton persevere. And we’re friends and we all follow her, too. And she shares sometimes just the hate she has to face outside of the industry. And she is so strong and so talented. And I think she’s paving the way for so many young women and just seeing her is going to instill the belief that it’s possible for them and for all of us to be able to help create opportunities for that representation to be normalized.
Caitlyn Smith on New Music Coming Soon
CAITLYN: ’High & Low’ it’s coming soon. I’m so excited. I can’t even wait. I’ve spent the last year pouring my heart, being in the studio. And self-producing a record for the first time, which I’m very… I’m shaking talking about it because it’s something I felt, like music… We talked about this the other day. Music was kind of mystified a little bit for me as a woman, as a young girl moving to this town. And I almost felt like those roles are reserved for dudes.
KELLEIGH: The production side.
CAITLYN: The production side. Right. But, I’ve always been like, “But I’m curious about it.” And this, I think all goes hand in hand with the things we’ve been talking about today. I just felt like, you know what, what’s the worst that can happen? Let’s produce this record. Let’s try it. I brought along Gena Johnson. Some of the most incredible ears in Nashville to engineer the album. She’s worked on [Chris] Stapleton and [Jason] Isbell. And so, [I] poured my heart and soul into this album. It will be released in a couple parts this year.
