For episode 104 of the podcast, we interview Renee Blair about her urban sonic roots, her girl crush on Leslie Fram and what her next project will look like.
The past few months have been insane. I managed to catch your performance at CMT Next Women of Country, and ever since then, so much has happened in your career. It must be a lot to take in?
Yes, it’s a very exciting time in my life, I’m not going to lie.
You’re from St Louis, Missouri originally. Can you describe the country scene there to a UK audience?
You know, there really is no country scene in St Louis. When I was growing up in middle school, Nelly – the rapper – was the biggest artist in the world and liking country music was the most uncool thing to do, but my dad lived on a farm and was definitely a hillbilly and a red-neck, so I kind of felt this weird polarity. I had this country side and I had this rap-loving side, but when I was in high school, Carrie Underwood won American Idol and something inside of me thought I need to move to Nashville. I moved to Nashville when I was 17.
That makes total sense because your music is so totally country, but there is also this strong urban element imbedded within it.
Yes, I don’t know if you heard me talk about this at the CMT event, but I talk about falling in love with Mariah Carey and the Dixie Chicks at the same time. I love the big powerhouse divas and the RnB melodies that are associated with their music but the thing that draws me to country music are the storylines and the authenticity, and how honest and raw the country songwriting world is.
You’ve been writing since you were 15, so have you always written stories? How did you get your start in songwriting?
To be completely honest, I would skip school and high school for about one day out of the month – because Nashville is only a 4 to 4 and a half hour drive from St Louis – my mom and I would pack up the car at 6am and I would go down to Nashville to publishing meetings or take voice lessons and we’d leave at like 6pm and drive back to St Louis, and get home around 10 o’clock. So, I was 15 and took a meeting with a publisher, who was trying to pitch me all these songs and what’s so funny is that he’d pitch me songs and I’d think ‘I think I know this voice’ and the songs would be Gretchen Wilson songs that she sang the demos for but never put on her album. At the time, Gretchen Wilson was one of the biggest, if not the biggest female voice in country. The publisher said to me, ‘why don’t you try writing a song,’ and I thought ‘oh my gosh, I’d never even thought about that’ – I just thought that if you had a great voice, people show up and give you songs. That whole car ride back home to St Louis that night, I was jotting down in my notebook from school different ideas about this boy, and tried to make it into a song. It was probably the worst thing in the entire world that’s ever been written.
Publishing meetings at 15 must have been a crazy thing to process. I guess it’s a good thing starting so young but you must have learned so much over the years.
I’ve learned a lot over the years, definitely, but what’s funny is that the meetings are almost a little more stressful now than they were then, because I didn’t realise back then. I was so young and naive and I was the only person I knew who was trying to make it. I didn’t know how many other artists were in Nashville taking those same kinds of meetings and so I was a little naive. I used to walk into everywhere and think ‘oh everyone’s going to love me because I’m awesome,’ I didn’t know that you basically have to go through a couple of thousand rejections before you get a yes. The one thing I love about Nashville more than anything is that the town truly loves a fighter, and a hustler and loves the story of people trying to make it. I’ll never forget when Little Big Town won their first CMA Award – and I was up in the nosebleeds – and they said ‘we’ve been a band for 15 years.’ That’s when I thought I’d better strap up and be in this for the long haul, because you’ve got to fight hard.
That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always gravitated toward the genre, people have this notion that they’re going to have to work so hard for it, and it almost makes them more humble when they do succeed.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s been an interesting ride, by no means has by success been linear, it has been a rollercoaster – pretty crazy.
Talking about that, you moved straight to Nashville after high school, but then got involved almost straightaway in a car accident. I feel like you’ve had everything thrown at you possible, but you’ve come out of the other side. You put out a video after the accident called ‘Through the Wire,’ which is such a vulnerable video, how important was that for you to put out?
Like I said, I started coming to Nashville when I was in high school, that was what landed me a development deal with the same people that were starting Jason Aldean and myself at the same time, so I thought that my twentieth birthday was going to be celebrated at the Grammys, but instead life took a different turn and I fell asleep at the wheel at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I hit a bus. My jaw was wired shut for twelve weeks, and during those twelve weeks I made a video singing with my mouth wired shut like Kanye West – what’s so funny is I made that video right before Kanye West took the mic from Taylor Swift and then he became the most hated man in country music. This is not in that video, but after my car wreck and after my mouth got unwired, I was in an even worse accident on a boat, I was in an inner tube that was attached to the boat. I got thrown off the inner tube and landed in the water and had a bad landing. Both of these accidents happened within one year of each other, that’ll really play tricks on your brain. Of course, during the first few years of my twenties, I was in and out of the hospital recovering and I lost the first record deal that I had. I was kind of ashamed to tell people what had happened to me, because I didn’t want to be the victim girl, that got hurt. Once I was put back together, I started writing again with anyone in town who would write with me and three and a half years later I got my record deal and my publishing deal and made a lot of the music that I’ve put out. Right now, I’ve just entered into a new record deal, so it’s been a crazy rollercoaster but I think my accidents taught me to fight, that life’s going to give you curveballs that will challenge you and your dreams aren’t going to reach themselves. I definitely have had it a lot harder than most artists that I know of, but it’s shaped me into being a relentless artist, I really fight for what I believe in.
I think that’s so admirable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdoqwAT2pK4
Your first single was ‘Gotta Quit Drinking,’ which was the first time I ever heard your music. It must have been so hard to choose the first single, given how much material you have created?
I kind of picked that one, because in the verse it does have that more rap thing, so I figured it was a great way to set a name for myself and say ‘hey I’m not going to sing traditional melodies, or traditional phrasing, I like to push the limits, and be unconventional.’ I joke at every one of my shows that the song is not because I have a drinking problem, but because I have a problem when I drink – I text ex-boyfriends. All the girls in the crowd go nuts and point out one of their friends who does that as well. I was in my mid-twenties when I wrote that song, I was literally texting this guy who was awful to me but every time I would get more than two glasses of wine inside of me, the first thing I’d do was open my phone and text him. I felt like if I was doing it, and my girlfriends were doing that, there must be a million other girls doing that as well, and I wanted to write songs that people could relate to.
Another one that’s incredibly relatable is my favourite of your tracks, ‘Girlfriend.’ I feel like that track was such a tipping point in your music.
Yeah, ‘Girlfriend’ has been my biggest song to date, I actually wrote it with Jordan Schmidt and Matthew McGinn who wrote ‘What If’ with Kane Brown. They are some of the best songwriters I’ve ever met in my life, they have such a way of taking an idea in such a different place and pushing the boundaries a bit and we were trying to write a different song and Matt came in. The guy I was dating, when I met him he was a taken man, but I just knew that I was in love with him. Matt always preaches write what you know, like ‘why you gotta have a girlfriend? Why you gotta be taken?’ Again, it became a really honest, vulnerable spot that I was living in, it’s my truth. I think most successful artists write their truth and write what they’re going through – so, yeah I fell in love with a guy with a girlfriend.
CMT have been huge supporters of your music. How important have they been as supporters of your music and for women in the genre?
To be completely honest with you, the president of CMT – Leslie Fram – I just sat in her office on Friday, she’s had me coming in once a month, every Friday now, so that we can talk about the women of country and how men are getting played a lot more than women. She’s such a fighter and a trailblazer. I know they’ve just implemented the ‘Equal Play’ thing in the last couple of weeks, where they’re playing 50% men and 50% women and Leslie is one of the most inspiring and beautiful souls that I’ve ever met. She’s just incredible she really cares, and it’s very rare in this town, a lot of people have egos and want to do what everyone else tells them. I have a girl crush on her….
I do too and I’ve never met her!
So, in terms of this year, what is the plan? Can we expect to hear new music soon?
So, in December, I recorded my own album – I paid for it all by myself, because I was getting out of one record deal and I just signed another one a couple of weeks ago, but during that gap between deals, all the money I made from touring and streaming last year, I used every penny I had left in my own name and I made my album. It was scary but amazing. Everything has changed so much because of streaming, an artist used to release an album every other year and tour off that album but now artists are releasing a single at a time. I’m trying to bridge the two and I am coming out with three songs next week that will be the first three songs from the new record which is called ‘The Ones.’ I’m going to release three singles at a time every quarter of this year, so the first chapter will be called ‘The Ones To Slow Dance To,’ so it’s going to be three ballads, and in the summer I’m going to do ‘The Ones To Listen To On A Boat’ and it’ll be all fun, summer songs, then in the fall I’m going to do ‘The Ones For Your Heart’ which are mostly heartbreak songs, and in the winter it’s going to be ‘The Ones For A Night Out,’ so those are all fun, party songs. If you think of the Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe cover, it’s kind of going to look like that where we do one chapter at a time. At the end of the year, it’ll be one cohesive album cover of all the packages combined.
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Final Few
Wine or whiskey? Ooh, wine. I’m a sucker for wine.
Record you’re listening to on repeat at the moment? The Band Camino.
Record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island? Let’s say mine, the album I’m putting out this year. I’m a firm believer that if I was a fan and I wouldn’t listen to it on repeat, I shouldn’t be putting it out.
First concert you ever went to? Old Dominion
Complete the sentence..
Music is… the story of our lives.
Country music is… honest stories.
Renee Blair is… a wild, crazy fighter, hustler and iron woman.
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