Texan native Amanda Kate Ferris’ new EP ‘Pedal Steel’ is a slick, passionate and beautifully produced piece of work. As soon as we heard it (read our review right here) we knew we needed to talk to her all about it.
Ferris grew up listening to 90s icons like Wynonna Judd, Faith Hill, and Brooks & Dunn, but also loved pop powerhouses like Celine Dion and Christina Aguilera and you can hear that in her vocals. The daughter of singer-songwriter Kathy Wright, Amanda grew up watching her mother perform. Kathy, an original member of the “Dean Martin Golddiggers,” starred on the crooner’s NBC television program “The Dean Martin Show” when she was 18. Kathy also traveled the globe singing with Bob Hope and his USO-sponsored Christmas shows and bestowed her love for music on her daughter.
After an attempt to see what Nashville had to offer in her early twenties, Ferris left for the bright lights of California and eventually Texas. So what was it that pulled her back into the music industry again? Read on to find out!
I was blown away the first time I heard ‘Pedal Steel’. Congratulations on a fabulous EP. I’m not the only one over here in the UK talking about this EP either, there’s been a lot of buzz in Europe about it too.
That makes me so happy! This music is the best music I’ve ever put out and I’m super proud of it. We’re finishing up the album right now which we’re aiming to have out sometimes towards the end of the summer and it just feels really special to me. That fact that there are people in the UK and Europe listening to it is hard for me to comprehend! (laughing)
Texan artists are really popular over here. Drake Milligan and Randall King have just been over for the C2C festival in London and Randall is coming back to tour in September too.
That’s amazing! I love both of those guys. I would love to come over and play so if you know any booking agents or tours that are happening over there send them my way! (laughing) I would jump at the opportunity.
Have you been pleased with the reaction to ‘Pedal Steel’?
Oh yes! The way we release music in this industry now is all about managing expectations. With every project you release you have no idea how people are going to react these days. The weird thing is that 9 times out of 10 the songs that I think people are going to freak out over aren’t even the ones that take off! You just can’t predict it anymore.
The are some budgetary changes and considerations that, I think, have affected the way people are hearing about the music so we are doing things way more organically this time. With previous releases we had marketing agencies and people onboard to drive promotion but we don’t have that this time so we’re just trying to focus on people finding it through Spotify or via platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Although the numbers aren’t exceeding what I’ve had in the past I think the listeners are ‘stickier’, if that makes sense? They’re leaning in more and I’m gaining true fans doing things this way. It’s amazing the amount of traditional Country fans that I’ve found on TikTok! (laughing)
You have definitely got that traditional fiddle sound on tracks like ‘Tequila and Jesus’. TV shows like Yellowstone and the popularity of artists like Lainey Wilson really seem to have shifted the base Nashville sound back into a more organic, earthier place – do you have the sense that that has happened too?
Absolutely. When I think of Country music if it’s not covered in fiddle and dripping in pedal steel I don’t want it, you know? Jenee Fleenor played fiddle across my whole EP and she’s so good. That was the one instrument that was a non-negotiable for me this time around. (laughing) It’s an instrument that is having a huge comeback right now and I love that.
Your vocals on ‘Baby Don’t’ are so strong. It’s a song written by the Love Junkies (Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsay, Lori McKenna) which to me is the meeting of two fantastic worlds. How did that song come about?
That song was knocking about for a while and a couple of other artists have cut it before with a view to using it. It was sent to me by my team who’s job is to source songs for me and find ones that suit my voice and style. I wanted an upbeat song and one that we could enjoy live. I love singing ballads but when you play live you can’t just play those! (laughing) I needed something with a bit of tempo and something that would work live. We played it live to test it out a bit and the audiences that heard it reacted to it so passionately that we knew we had to cut it.
Lori McKenna pops up as a writer again on ‘When I Think About You’. Tell me about her influence on this EP.
Yeah, it’s crazy, right? Back when I was 15 I wrote in my journal that my dream would be to sing a Lori McKenna song or write with her. I’ve loved her from her early cuts with Faith Hill because no-one can write a sad song like Lori McKenna! When I get a song sent to me I don’t know who writes them, we just listen to the demo and go from there. We weren’t targeting Lori McKenna songs but I naturally do love the way she writes so it was no surprise to me that I fell in love with ‘When I Think About You’ and then was, like, ‘Of course that’s Lori McKenna’ when I find out she wrote it! (laughing)
I got a sweet message from her when the EP came out and she heard the songs. Having that kind of writer support you as an independent artist gives you the validation you need to keep going.
Your vocals on ‘When I Think About You’ remind me of Natalie Maines from The Chicks in the tone and cadence. Were they a big influence on you growing up?
For sure! Anyone growing up in the 90s listened to The Chicks. They were the biggest Country group around back then. The minute I hear ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ or ‘Wide Open Spaces’ it’s so nostalgic. I’ve always loved Natalie as a vocalist too. Anyone in Country music who says they haven’t been influenced by The Chicks in some way is not listening to the right Country music! (laughing)
You had a fascinating upbringing in terms of your mother’s career and being around musicians. Did that mean you were always going to be drawn to a life up on stage?
Music is all I have ever known. My mom was a singer-songwriter so I started travelling with her really early in my life and I started singing on stage somewhere around the age of 2 or 3 years old. Professionally, my mom figured out when I was about 13 that I could really make a career out of doing it too. I was in girl groups, I sang in church and I did a variety of different things in terms of a career. Music has always been my dream, there has never been anything else and my mom could see that I was good enough too.
‘In This Town’ is a real love letter to Country music and to Nashville. You left Nashville in your early twenties to go to California. Had you left the music industry at that point?
Yes, I’d had enough of trying to do it professionally at that point. It wasn’t working out for me – I didn’t get a publishing deal or a record deal. I wasn’t getting in the mix with the right people in Nashville and I just figured that God was closing that door for me at that point. I wasn’t particularly upset about it or have any feelings of anger towards the industry or anything, it’s just how it was.
I went home, got married and we had a baby. I spent time with my horses and sang in church and was still writing music all the time with my mom but that was kinda it. My mom ended up getting sick with cancer and that brought back all of these emotions and feelings about what I wanted for my life. It made me realise how short a time we all have on this earth and it made me want to do an album of the music that my mom and I had made. Just one piece of work that we made together, to share with my daughter, Hunter, and the rest of the family. That’s all it was meant to be. It wasn’t meant to be this re0launching of my career, which is what it ended up being! (laughing)
Some local press got involved and before we knew it I was playing shows and talking about the album and here we are, almost five years later at the point where I’m making music again and touring! (laughing)
…..And you found yourself on Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Clash of the Cover Bands’ singing Carrie Underwood songs too!
I know! It’s wild. I very much just roll with the punches and I have no idea what God has in store for me, I’m here for the ride. People have always requested Carrie Underwood songs from me and I love singing them. We put a tribute band together just for fun and then got a call from NBC saying they wanted to cast me as the Carrie Underwood in this reality show competition! We went to Hollywood and it was super-fun, I had a blast!
What’s your favourite Carrie Underwood song to sing and what’s her hardest song to sing?
My favourite would be something like ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’ or ‘Something in the Water’. ‘Something in the Water’ does something to me every time I hear or sing it. It’s such a powerful song. The hardest song to sing might well be ‘Cry Pretty’ – the ending takes a lot of breath control to get through! All of her songs, to be honest, are pretty challenging to sing and I am reminded of my technical training every time I try and sing one! (laughing) I have to get into a different mindset of how to use my vocal chords whereas my natural singing voice doesn’t sound like that, I have to manipulate it a little to get her tone. She’s an insane singer, I don’t know how she does it.
You mentioned earlier that you are working on an album and that there is more music on the way. What can you tell me about that?
So we’ve recorded five other songs that are going to be coming out. We’re still trying to work out just how we are going to release them though. There’s one song called ‘Rope the Wind’ that was written by a dear friend of mine, Jenna Paulette. There’s a song called ‘Build a Life’ that I wrote right after my mom passed which tells the story of the advice my mom always gave me about knowing what’s important in life. There’s another called ‘Are You a Real Cowboy?’ that’s kinda like an old school, Western song which features Jenee Fleenor playing fiddle and singing on it too!
There’s a good, old barn-burner song called ‘Till the Day I Die’ which is super upbeat and fun to play too and another song called ‘Chilli Pepper’ which is another fun crowd favourite that we play live. It’s hard to know whether to release these songs as singles, or a separate EP or add them to the ‘Pedal Steel’ project right now. There’s so much content and so much stuff that we want to do with ‘Pedal Steel’ – there’s a video coming out for ‘Pedal Steel’ and I want to do something for ‘In This Town’ too so there’s still a lot of work promoting ‘Pedal Steel’ to be done before we start releasing the new music.
Can it be a little overwhelming as an independent artist in terms of all the choices being yours – you don’t have a label saying you can or can’t do something, but at the same time, you don’t have a label’s backing or resources either?
It so challenging. I think it’s particularly hard for me because I come from an era where labels controlled everything and everyone listened to albums, right? I loved going to Walmart or Target and buying a CD and listening to it from beginning to end, and I still love to do that now. When Lainey Wilson’s album came out, I loved listening to it from top to bottom. In my heart, I want to release an album but from a business perspective I don’t have endless amounts of money to do that or endless opportunities to record music either! We kinda need to be strategic about it.
It’s awesome to hear that people in the UK and Europe are listening to my music so we must be doing something right! I need to lean in there and figure out how to come and play for y’all.
Go buy / stream Amanda Kate Ferris’ fabulous EP ‘Pedal Steel’ right now.
