Drenched in authenticity, barstool charm and Tennessee limestone gravel in her voice, Nashville-born and bred songbird Lauren Watkins writes, breathes, and lives country music. The 23-year-old grew up mesmerised by a jukebox rotation of country music: from outlaws like Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow to like Kacey Musgraves. Moving back to Nashville after four years at Ole Miss, Watkins’ sharp lyricism and ear for a melody quickly caught the attention of GRAMMY-nominated songwriter Nicolle Galyon, who signed her to publishing and recording contracts with Songs & Daughters / Big Loud Records almost instantly and ‘Introducing Lauren Watkins’ is the result. We recently reviewed the EP and you can read that now by clicking here.
Across the 7 tracks on offer on the EP you’ll find Country music staples like heartbreak, longing, smoking, drinking and jealously, all laid bare with an honest, raw and biting kind of lyricism that belies Watkins’ relatively tender age and inexperience. We were thrilled to talk to her all about it.
Great to speak to you today, Lauren, thank you for your time. Congratulations on the release of the EP.
Thank you so much! We were out on the road on release day playing in Biloxi, Mississippi. I was with my band and my manager, Melody. We couldn’t get champagne in the hotel so we ‘cheersed’ with water but that was probably for the best! (laughing)
You are Nashville born and bred, which is quite unusual for what is thought of as a transplant town. What was it like growing up in and around Music City. Were you always destined for a life on the stage?
You know, I think I probably was but I just didn’t know it for a while there! (laughing) People always think that growing up in Nashville must have been crazy and exciting and really industry led but it wasn’t! I grew up really normal. My parents weren’t in the music business and my family wasn’t musical. My older sister, Caroline, started writing songs when she was really young and that was kinda like my introduction to the whole thing.
We started playing shows together eventually in my early teens but I didn’t know it was going to be my career at that point. I probably was still a little scared to commit to that back at that point. I went off to college at Ole Miss thinking that that was it and I would never go back to Nashville now! (laughing) It was a classic hometown story, right, of the kid that just wants to get out of their hometown.
When you are in college everybody is constantly asking you what you are going to do with your life and every time someone asked I knew, in my heart, that I was supposed to be doing music and so halfway through I started going back to Nashville and writing and pursuing the music!
Were you and your sister Caroline ever an official duo at any point?
We kind of were. I don’t know if you could call it ‘official’ official but we would make little CDs of us and our songs and we did call ourselves ‘The Watkins” (laughing) I will say it was mainly her thing back then and I think she maybe just tagged me onto it to be nice! We had fun doing it. We did play Pucketts a fair bit downtown on a Sunday night songwriter feature night. Caroline would play the show and I would just sing with her.
‘Dark Places’ is my favourite song on your EP (It’s a co-write with Caroline and Shane McAnally) so you clearly do work well together even now!
Oh yes! We write together all the time. That’s the one we wrote together that’s on this EP but in the future there will be plenty more of her songs coming!
Nicole Galyon has been a big influence in your life. Tell me about her mentorship and what it has done for you.
Oh, she’s been huge for me. Basically we met when I was still in college and I’d just had this dramatic epiphany that I was going to go back to Nashville and do music. (laughing) During college I had been posting little clips of me singing on Instagram and it was Nicole’s husband, Rodney Clawson, who is a major songwriter himself, who somehow came across one of those videos. He showed it Nicole who DM’ed me and we started talking from there.
I’d been a fan of her writing for a long time. I made a trip home to Nashville and we met up and that whole last semester of school I was kinda going back and forth between Mississippi and Nashville all the time to lay the groundwork and to write on writes that she had set up with. Nicole then signed me to a publishing deal first and then a record deal a little later.
Nicole has been the biggest piece in the jigsaw of me getting to do this at all. She’s my publisher, label head and co-manager all at the same time!
You wrote with Rodney Clawson and the EP and lots of other terrific writers too. Was there any one writer that you vibe with so much that you’d love to write with again?
Oh god! Every single writer on the EP I look up to so much. Rodney was such an exciting write for me. I was already a huge fan of his and we write a good bit together now. Shane McAnally was awesome – I am such a big fan of Kacey Musgraves and what they did together on her first record so getting to write with him was the coolest thing ever and we’ve only written together once so if I could get to do that again, I would do it in a heartbeat!
Our review said that your EP had the lyrical bite of early Kacey Musgraves built ontop of lush, Sheryl Crow style melodies. Were we close on that? Did we miss anything?
That was the biggest compliment I’ve ever had. I hope that I’m close to something like that but I’m not sure if I can claim it! (laughing)
When Kacey put out ‘Same Trailer, Different Park’ I was probably about 13. That was the age where I really started paying attention to songwriting and the structure of songs and she was the queen of one-liners. I’d never heard anyone like her before. She had the same fascination and respect that I had for classic Country and I had never seen a girl do something like that before. I was the right age and it was the right time. Kacey would say things for shock factor and I would think she was so cool.
I’ve already mentioned my favourite song on the EP is ‘Dark Places’. Do you have a favourite or is that asking you to make an impossible choice?
It’s honestly an impossible choice! (laughing) There are so many different vibes on the EP that my favourite changes all the time depending on where I am and what mood I’m in. ‘Shirley Temple’ is probably the song I’m most proud of in terms of writing and the lyrics. That day, we were so on it and the song touches upon some really cool and deep things.
I remember being in the studio the day we cut ‘Shirley Temple’ and thinking that I would love to just live in the sound that we created in that song forever! We have a mini video for the song out on Youtube now and it’s exactly the vision I have for the song, a dark smoky bar and cheetah print top – it’s very cinematic.
There’s a lot of hurt on this EP. ‘Sleeping in My Make Up’, ‘Ole Miss’, ‘Anybody but You’ – is that all coming from your own personal experience or are you also drawing upon the stories and lives of your friends and the people around you too?
It’s all pretty personal, I will say that! (laughing) I get this a lot. People will say, ‘Girl, who hurt you?’ (laughing) I’m actually a very happy person but I think I can write about one situation in 20 different ways, you know? The songs are all about different times in my life and different people but maybe sometimes I’ll write about one story in three different songs. I’m not getting hurt all the time, I just like to pick apart what happened to me from different angles.
Even a song like ‘Grain of Salt’ could still be about heartbreak. The same guy could have inspired that song as the one in ‘Shirley Temple’.
You have some cracking one-liners that hit straight away. When you write a song, are you driven by the lyrics, the melodies or does it just depend on the song?
It depends on the song but I would say 9 out of 10 times I’m probably driven by the lyrics. The cool thing is that I write with a lot of songwriters who are the opposite. If you do that, you are complimenting each other. Some writers would rather start with feeling something out on a guitar and that’s cool because I can then add in lyrics.
I love titles, I love weird phrases and funny lyrical meanings so it is the words that usually come to me first. There’s probably about 100 titles stored away on my phone right now although there might only be 2 good ones in there! (laughing) I’ve got rhymes, lines and funny little combinations in there too.
Are you writing for other artists at the moment or just focusing on building your own catalogue up right now?
Not really at the moment. I do write a lot and I don’t record even half the songs that I write so I would be more than grateful if another artist wanted to cut one of my songs. If you know anyone famous who might be interested, let me know! (laughing)
You mentioned attending college at Ole Miss. That must have been a special moment up on stage there with HARDY recently, a full circle moment? Did you have friends in the crowd?
I think I black out a little there! (laughing) It was so perfect, the way it all happened. He was there on the Morgan Wallen tour and I was in Oxford playing a real cool afternoon show at a bar called The Library to celebrate the EP release and to kinda pre-game for Morgan Wallen and HARDY. We went to the show on Saturday night to just have some fun and then on Sunday HARDY texted me during the day and asked me to sing ‘One Beer’ with him. It was so perfect. The amount of football games I’d been to in that stadium……..I’ve got so many memories from being in there and it was the first concert they’d ever staged in there too, so that was special.
Since I only graduated a couple of years ago I still have a good amount of friends that still live down there and my little sister is there at school now too so it was cool having people in the crowd to support me. My whole family was there and I was getting so many texts from people who were, like, why didn’t you tell us you were going to be on!
What’s the plans for the rest of the year?
I’m still writing, there’s going to be a lot more songs, so I’m hopefully going to be putting out some more music. I’m also going to be out on the road too. We’re playing tons of festival and going to a whole bunch of places that I’ve never been to before, playing as much as I can live, anywhere I can! I’m really looking forward to playing The Watershed festival in Washington DC. My bass player, Hayden, is from Washington and I’ve never been there before so that’s one I’m really looking forward to playing. I’ve never really been anywhere before so to be doing that and playing music at the same time is so awesome!
Check out ‘Introducing Lauren Watkins’ on all platforms now. Click here for more details.
