Wednesday Video Spotlight: Pistol Annies release their debut album “Hell on Heels”
Back in April, Tishomingo resident Miranda Lambert introduced her new girl group Pistol Annies in appropriately splashy fashion: During the nationally televised concert special “Girls’ Night Out: Superstar Women of Country.”
Just four months later, the fiercely feisty singer-songwriter trio – Lambert, Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe – has already released its first album. “Hell on Heels” dropped Tuesday and takes its name from the Annies’ smoldering introductory single.
Earlier this summer, I got the chance to ask Lambert – who already is busy with her solo career, with her hotly anticipated fourth album “Four the Record” due out in November – what inspired her to take on the side project. Last week, I also got to chat with Presley about trio, and she said the Annies have developed a strong friendship since Monroe helped the other two singer-songwriters connect two years ago.
“We hung out and we were writing songs within 20 minutes of hanging out and just have built this awesome friendship over the past two years and made this awesome record,” Presley said of the trio’s first meeting, which followed a middle-of-the-night phone call she fielded from Monroe, who was in the midst of a girls’ weekend/songwriting session with Lambert and wanted desperately for the Oklahoma transplant to hear her pal Presley’s music.
While the Texas-born and bred Lambert has emerged as a bona fide superstar in the past couple of years, Presley said they operate on equally footing in the Annies, splitting vocals and songwriting credits based solely on the music.
“When we’re writing a song, whoever has the melody, it kind of just happens on its own. We don’t force it. If Ashley sounds pretty singing the melody, great. On ‘Bad Example,’ that was Ashley singing the melody, and there’s the line that says ‘With my “honk if your horny” sticker on the back,’ and she was like, ‘I just don’t know if I want to say that.’ And I was like, ‘Hell, I’ll say it. Let me sing that line,’” Presley said with a laugh.
Since April, Lambert has added a Pistol Annies set to her tour dates, including her CMA Music Festival show and “Good Morning America” performance, but the trio would love to do a full-fledged Annies tour.
“We’re not really talking about it yet, but we have a few surprises planned for December,” Presley said. “That’s definitely one of our goals, we want to do a Pistol Annies show. We want fans to see what our thing is just when we are by ourselves. They get like a glimpse of it in Miranda’s show when we come out, but we want to steal the stage at some point.”
It seems that the Annies might be starting a girl-trio trend: “American Idol” and Texas native Kelly Clarkson has started her own all-girl trio Already Famous with fellow singers Jill Pickering and Kate Rapier.
Already Famous was in Norman in late July to record its debut album at Blackwatch Studios, which posted a short and sweet note about the project on its official Facebook page.
And Clarkson and her cohorts tweeted that, yes, they are following in the high-heeled footsteps of their country sisters: “I love the Pistol Annies! We have a very different sound but I do love theirs! I can’t wait for their album!”
“My biggest thing is I just want to get our music out there, and if people love it and feel like they want to join in, that’s awesome and we welcome that,” Presley said. “I had heard something about that, and I’m excited to hear what they did. … Maybe we can all do a show together.”
Read more of my interview with Presley – featuring a few of Lambert’s thoughts on the Pistol Annies – on Friday here at BAM’s Blog, on NewsOK and in the Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
-BAM
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment