Walker County are a sister duo from Indiana, comprised of Ivy Dene and Sophie Dawn. The duo are signed to Warner Music Nashville and are poised to take the country music world by storm in the next year, following the release of their successful singles ‘Bits and Pieces’ and ‘The Hamptons,’ the duo will be accompanying Old Dominion on the road this fall for a series of dates. Here, we interview Walker County about their journey so far.
Hi guys, how are you? Congratulations on the success of ‘Bits and Pieces,’ I feel like every release you guys do, you get better and better. Can you talk a bit about that one, it’s such a fun track?
I’m so glad to hear that! ‘Bits and Pieces’ was super special, Sophia and I got sent the demo and it was actually a male singing it, Sam Hunt. We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this song is so good’. We would crank it up in the car, roll the windows down. We just became fans of his version of it. I remember we said if he’s not gonna cut it, we want to work it up and put our own female spin on the song and we did, right before the world shut down. We got to play it out like twice and we noticed the crowd was singing along their responses. Everybody was already saying ‘Thank You, Jesus’. So we cut it and put it out and we’re so glad we did, because it’s just one of our very favourites.
I think it’s perfect time of year, the world slowly opening up and summer’s here. We missed nights like ‘Bits and Pieces.’
It fits so seamlessly into the roster of songs that you guys have put out. I guess that’s credit to having the right people around you, you already know your sound and what you guys are about and what you want to put out.
Absolutely, we write a lot of our own songs, but we’re so open to outside cuts as well. We’ve written ‘Shovel’ and ‘Drag It Out’ and put those out. We just heard ‘Bits and Pieces’ and we were like this is us.
The first time I heard you guys live was a few years back at CMT’s Next Women of Country where you sang ‘The Hamptons’ and I remember thinking how slick your harmonies were. That song is also so much fun, it probably speaks to so many people as a way to introduce you guys.
That’s one we also found as an outside cut. When we heard it the first time, it was one of those moments where I was like ‘this song was written for us,’ we had lived all of it, down to the little details. So we knew we had to cut it. It was so us, it was exactly how we were raised. We love our hometown, and we knew that we wanted to honour them in a certain way.
Obviously you guys have been singing together before you can probably even remember, what was the process in terms of moving to singing as sisters to pursuing this as a career? Was there a certain moment you can remember that you knew you were going to make the move?
Our Dad was a big influence on our music and always pushed us that if we love to do it, let’s follow the dream for real from day one.
Yeah, never once did we feel like it was just for fun or we couldn’t do it for a career. He always said you can make money – he was a labourer, he worked his whole life digging ditches and stuff and always said that he didn’t want that for us, he wanted us to follow our passion and have something we’re passionate about and be able to make money from it. He always told us ‘you can do this if you work hard enough at it.’ We’re just so thankful for him.
Yeah, we were big dreamers from day one. So, we started the band when Ivy was in fifth grade. I remember her telling people, ‘I’m a drummer in a band, I’m gonna grow my band, she was dead set that that was it.’ I remember we really made the move to Nashville seven years ago and that was when everything started changing. We got the record deal and we got a publishing deal and started opening up for people like Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn – the legends – and then realised ‘this is actually happening.’
You’ve been there seven years now. I feel like it’s always so easy to see up and coming artists and say that they’ve achieved overnight success and it’s happened so quickly, but it’s taken years. How much do you think your music has changed since being in Nashville, in terms of your writing style and sound?
It’s changed so much. The songs we wrote the first year that we were here are so cringe-y. They’re not bad – at the time, they were good – but we’ve grown so much. When we first moved, we were 16 and 19, so going from a 16 year old to now being 23 and 26, the meaning behind the songs and our voices are so different.
I guess the way that you view relationships too, the layers and complexities that you’re kind of looking at in songwriting.
Yeah, I mean we had songs about drinking a beer and I’d never had a beer in my entire life. Now, I understand what I’m writing about. It’s matured and this town is full of such talented people and you just learn from them. Naturally it’s really cool to live in the city and learn from everybody here.
Yeah, I mean the talent in Nashville is just out of this world. You guys released some singles and were having a succession of amazing things happening, like CMT, then the pandemic hit. How has it been over the past year to navigate this time? I guess being around each other helps, you can actually do that rather than be isolated.
The thing that I think we learned the most throughout the pandemic is how important social media is. We tried to do a lot of Facebook Lives. We tried to post more frequently, we did TikTok. We reached so many more people through that, from different parts of the country, who we would have never met or reached, even just traveling on the road, you have such a broader reach, so that was really important. We’re still growing. We did end up writing some of our favourite songs over Zoom, because I feel like when you’re stuck in the house and surrounded by four walls, you start feeling a lot.
I think we all just got in our feelings over the past year.
We did write and got deep. It was tough not being on the road and meeting people because that’s just what we live for, we just love it, but there were still some benefits to slowing down a little bit. We’re so glad to be back out on the road.
It must be really cool having released ‘Shovel and ‘Bits and Pieces’ to finally be able to hear the response and hear that people have dug into your music.
It’s true. When you’re doing a live, you don’t see the other person.
You’re just seeing a few likes floating in!
Yeah exactly! We’re opening up for Old Dominion a lot this summer, we’re on the road with them and getting to see the faces and them actually knowing the words to our songs – it’s so bizarre and awesome all at the same time. It’s been a dream come true for us, just to know people are even listening and learning the words.
Talking about what’s happening next, you guys have had some big tracks, do you think you’re going to release more stripped back emotional songs too? Are those things that are going to come?
We definitely have some of those songs coming your way. We’re going to release another song here soon, so keep an eye out. It’s definitely more on the emotional side, you’ll hear that. A lot of the songs that have emotion are coming out soon and we’re going back in and cutting them, which we can’t wait for that. All those songs we wrote over quarantine and the pandemic, we’re excited to get those out. They’re new and they’re different, we just keep growing and I feel like these newer songs have more of our heart in them. We’re excited and we’re on the road and we’re just pumped for this next year.
I’m excited to hear any new songs that you guys put out, I feel like every time you release something it’s even better than the last. Hopefully we get you guys to the UK at some point when all of this has gone away too. Thank you guys so much, see you soon.
