DAVE'S DIARY - 18 JUNE 2018 - KACEY MUSGRAVES INTERVIEW
KACEY MUSGRAVES
GOLDEN HOUR (Universal)
KACEY CELEBRATES GOLDEN HOUR WITH HER OUTLAW KELLY
“I used to get sad and lonely when the sun went down/ it's different now because I love the light that I've found in you/ baby don't you know/ that you're my golden hour/ the color of my sky/ you've set my world on fire, yeah, yeah/ and I know, I know everything's gonna be alright.” - Golden Hour - Kacey Musgraves- Shane McAnally.
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When Texan troubadour and dual Grammy winner Kacey Musgraves had her underwear and expensive Lucchese cowboy boots stolen earlier in her career in Nashville she wrote Five Finger Discount about the robberies.
But, now it's the welcome theft of her heart by fellow Texan singing spouse Ruston Kelly whom she met at the famous Bluebird Café in Nashville that sourced much of her seventh album Golden Hour.
Golden Hour - her fourth major label album release - features several songs inspired by new age outlaw Kelly including the title track and Butterflies.
Musgraves married Kelly on October 14, 2017, and credits him for her marital mood upswing in many new songs.
“ Butterflies was the first song that I wrote after meeting Ruston,” Kacey revealed from Mexico as she promoted Golden Hour on the eve of a possible second Australian tour.
“I met him right around the time that I started to be creative again and that just naturally influenced me. I was like, I wonder if I'm gonna be able to write, because I'm happy now. I experienced a major life shift around the same time I got off the road and started writing again. Songs just started pouring out. I wondered if when I found happiness. I would lose things to write about but I actually found it quite the opposite. I was very inspired to explore not only the feelings I was going through but also feelings about this beautiful world, reincarnation, and the other relationships around me.”
Musgraves named her album after her hometown Golden (population 200) about 75 miles east of Dallas and due north of where Kelly and her mentor Willie Nelson were born in East Texas.
Kacey and Ruston, both 29, also recorded To June, This Morning - a song based on a poem the late Johnny Cash penned for wife June Carter Cash - on another new album Forever Words produced by John Carter Cash.
“Ruston and I recorded that at the beginning of this year,” Kacey recalled.
“I'm very excited for people to hear it.”
KACEY HONOURS MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER
“Wish we didn't live, wish we didn't live so far from each other/ I'm just sitting here thinking 'bout the time that's slipping/ and missing my mother, mother/ and she's probably sitting there/ thinking 'bout the time that's slipping and missing her mother, mother.” - Mother - Kacey Musgraves-Daniel Tashian-Ian Fitchuk
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Musgraves blazed a creative trail on recent albums with provocative social comment tunes diverse as Follow Your Arrow, Merry Go Round, Blow Your Own Smoke, This Town, Biscuits and Good Ol Boys Club.
She won Grammys for best country song Merry Go Round and country album for her 2013 release Same Trailer Different Park.
Kacey has since topped sales chart, sold out concerts and appeared on TV shows diverse as Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Austin City Limits and Ray Benson's Texas Music Scene.
This time Musgraves tills her golden family history song sources.
She wrote Mother about missing her maternal creator while on tour and a different trip - acid.
“Yes. I was tapped into the sadness, feeling the weight of the social and political climate, nostalgia for the past and missing my family when she texted me and it inspired this song that I wrote while on an LSD trip and missing my mom. Then she texted me at that moment and I lost it and wrote most of it,”
Kacey also sang another new song Rainbow at the 2013 funeral of her grandmother Barbara Taylor who was her first booking agent-roadie-chauffeur when she was a child singer.
On June 21, 2017, Musgraves appeared on TV show Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry to receive a psychic reading and connect with Taylor - an ER nurse who died in a tragic house fire.
“My grandmother's name was Barbara Taylor,” Kacey remembered fondly of her mentor who had a vocal cameo on This Town on her 2015 album Pageant Material.
“She passed several years ago very unexpectedly. She was too young to go. This was one of her favourite songs I've ever written so we played it at her funeral. I'd always wanted the song to live on a project but none seemed to be the right home until now. It was written as a note to myself but also to anyone with any kind of a weight on their shoulders. We decided it best to keep this song a very organic and raw moment on the album. I sat by the piano and sang it live. I feel like it's a good balance against the more produced sides of the album.”
SHERYL CROW STABLES STUDIO SLOW BURN
“Born in a hurry, always late/ haven't been early since '88/ Texas is hot, I can be cold/ grandma cried when I pierced my nose/ good in a glass, good on green/ good when you're putting your hands all over me.” - Slow Burn - Kacey Musgraves-Daniel Tashian-Ian Fitchuk.
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Musgraves produced her album with fellow singer-songwriters Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian at Sheryl Crow's home studio above her stables on her 50 acre farm near Nashville.
“Sheryl is a friend of ours and she was very gracious to let us come make a creative home at her personal studio which also happens to be a beautiful horse stable with Guinness on tap,” Kacey explained as Sheryl and Melissa Etheridge enjoyed an Australian tour.
“We wanted to avoid the rat race and commercial industry feel of typical Nashville studios. I'm so happy we did. We really got to take our tome. I couldn't have experienced feeling more Zen physically and mentally while making an album. We ended up talking about reincarnation one night and getting so heady. I was like, ‘this is amazing!' It set the tone.”
Kacey's karma expanded by recording during the summer solar eclipse.
“Throughout the making of this album if felt as if the universe was majestically telling me to be present and be a witness to the beauty that surrounds us that we easily forget about,” Kacey added.
“The total solar eclipse happening on my 29th birthday, as we were completely engrossed in making the album, was one of a kind.”
Musgrave rides in a punchy posse with fellow Texans Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe and peers Margo Price and Ashley McBryde who broaden their appeal by appearances on nocturnal TV variety shows and creative videos.
“I'm just as visual of a person as I am lyrically,” Kacey explained.
“I almost instantly see songs in music video form when writing them. As we speak I'm actually heading up a mountain in Mexico City to shoot two music videos! It's something I have fun with.
“Being obscure doesn't always mean you're credible. Now that I have the right foundation personally and feel more grounded than ever, I feel comfortable pushing past where I've been and bringing my brand of country music to the world.”
She also expanded on other new songs.
“ Slow Burn is one of my most personal and introspective songs yet. It's a clear representation of my mentality at this stage in my life. Being OK with things taking time to come to fruition because it's not a race. I wanna be doing what I love for a long time.”
WONDER WOMAN ON A LONELY WEEKEND
“But, baby, I ain't Wonder Woman/ I don't know how to lasso the love out of you/ don't you know I'm only human/ and if I let you down, I don't mean to/ all I need's a place to land/ I don't need a Superman to win my lovin'/ 'cause, baby, I ain't Wonder Woman.” - Wonder Woman - Kacey Musgraves- Hillary Lindsey-Amy Victoria Wadge.
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Musgraves frequently turns her travels and post tour emotions into songs. “ Lonely Weekend was inspired by the feeling you get when you've been on tour and come back home and feel like you have no friends, like everyone naturally is busy and has moved on with their lives and that you find peace with that as you get older and require to be stimulated less.” But Wonder Woman had a vastly different source. “ Wonder Woman , weirdly, had nothing to do with the movie. But they ended up coinciding. I loved the idea of telling your man he doesn't have to carry the weight of being a Superman for you because you're not perfect and strong all the time.” |
Space Cowboy was definitely not inspired by Kelly – it's about letting go and escaping a clingy cowpoke.
“It's a look into where I've been, and where I am now,” Musgraves said.
“I like that it's very sparse. And it's just about making peace with a door closing in your life. I feel like everyone can relate to that. When you're just like, ‘I don't understand this. It hurts right now.' But it allows something better to come in.”
Kacey also recruited Willie Nelson, 85 on April 29, for Willie Nice Christmas on her Very Kacey Christmas album after recording his 1965 song Are You Sure as a duet hidden track on her 2015 album Pageant.
Pageant featured Dime Store Cowgirl in which she name-checks Willie.
“Willie has been amazing to work with,” Kacey confessed
“He's a true sweetheart and so is his family. It's always an honor to tour or collaborate with him. He's an icon but he's down to Earth.”
So will we see Kacey return here this year?
“I had an amazing time coming to Australia several years ago and I can't wait to come back,” Kacey added.
“I found Aussies and Australia to remind me a lot of Texans and the spirit back home.”
Kacey begins her 12 concert Oh, What a World Tour on October 21 in Amsterdam with more shows in Europe and the U.K.
Golden Hour, released here by Universal, will add to Musgraves international success and profile by breaking her way beyond the country genre.
Kacey credits her producers and collaborators for much of her success.
“I worked with different producers and collaborators for this record,” Musgraves explained.
“While I love the creative team from the past couple albums, it was imperative for me to explore some different lanes this time around. My friends Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian co-produced and wrote most of the songs with me. I learned so much from them in the process and we had an indescribable amount of fun!”
THOSE BOOTS WERE NOT MADE FOR WALKING
“I don't really care 'bout the Mona Lisa/ I need a Graceland kind of man who's always on my mind/ I wanna show you off every evening/ go out with you in powder blue and tease my hair up high/ you're my velvet Elvis, I ain't never gonna take you down/making everybody jealous when they step into my house.” - Velvet Elvis - Kacey Musgraves-Luke Dick-Natalie Hemby.
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Kacey may be a big fan of fellow Texan Willie Nelson, who first toured here in 1981, but she also had a soft spot for a later Mississippi born star who never made it down under.
But her new song Velvet Elvis was not inspired by Kentuckian singer-TV-movie star Billy Ray Cyrus who made his second Australian tour in March.
“I have a velvet Elvis painting from the 50's hanging in the house and one day I looked at it and thought it would made a good song title. Likening it to a real person.”
And those lingerie and Lucchese boots thieves?
“When I first moved to Nashville, a friend stole a bunch of shit from me and was dumb enough to post all these pictures of herself in my clothes on Facebook. Anyway, I caught her,” Musgraves recalled at a Texas concert.
“Nothing really happened with it. They issued a warrant, but then they never found her.”
About the panties, though. “I won't get too awkward here, but I have this matching bra and underwear set. She literally did take the panties from the set and put that on Facebook, too,” she said, adding, “I did write a song about it.”
And those boots that were not made for walking?
A man who broke into Kacey's car on January 4, 2016, and stole her brand-new boots was arrested.
Darnell Cunningham was arrested when he produced a receipt while attempting to return a pair of Lucchese boots to the Lucchese Boots store on 12th Avenue South.
Darnell had a small problem - the receipt had Musgraves' name on it and the store manager recognized the boots as the pair that he had sold to Musgraves.
“Stupidity leads to victory,” Musgraves tweeted.
“Someone had expensive tastes and cheap standards,”
The original theft occurred while Musgraves' car parked across from 3rd and Lindsley music venue where Kacey was playing a benefit concert.
Cunningham caused $500 damage to the car window and boot scooted with the Lucchese boots, made in El Paso, and a pair of Charlotte Olympias with a total value of $900.
Although Musgraves has now topped charts and sold out major venues she hasn't forgotten her embryonic era in Nashville.
“I guess technically my first job in Nashville was singing demos for writers who needed demo work done,” the singer confessed.
“But I also got a job where I would dress up for little kids' birthday parties to entertain. I only did it once or twice. I signed up because I thought I could be Cinderella or Ariel or something like that. But I ended up having to be Hannah Montana.
“They'd be like ‘this is the party, this is the time, this is the character they're requesting.' The kids would be trying to pull my wig off. But after they asked me to entertain at a music industry birthday party at the Palm - where there would be a lot of music industry people there - and they said they needed a French maid to come and deliver balloons and sit on the birthday boy's lap. I was like, ‘bye. Never mind. I signed up for the G-rated jobs.'”