Caylee Hammack has emerged as one of country music’s most compelling and fearless voices, blending classic storytelling with bold, genre-defying influences. Born and raised in Ellaville, Georgia, Hammack made the leap to Nashville at just 19, quickly earning a reputation for her powerhouse vocals and sharp songwriting. Her 2020 debut album ‘If It Wasn’t for You' highlighted her artistry, with Hammack not only writing but also producing the entire project. The album’s standout track, ‘Small Town Hypocrite,' featuring Chris Stapleton, was hailed by NPR and Esquire as one of the best songs of the year, reinforcing her reputation as a raw and honest storyteller. She also earned an ACM Award for ‘Fooled Around and Fell in Love' her collaboration with Miranda Lambert, and has toured with country icons like Luke Bryan and Brothers Osborne whilst also collaborating on Ashley McBryde's ‘Lindeville' album.
Now, with her latest album ‘Bed of Roses,' Hammack solidifies her place in country music as both a trailblazer and a traditionalist. Produced by John Osborne, the record is a masterclass in restraint and intention, ensuring that every lyric and note resonates with purpose. Across 13 tracks, Hammack channels themes of female empowerment, resilience, and desire, crafting a fierce and defiant message that showcases her growth as an artist. With a sound influenced by legends like Dolly Parton and Tom Waits, as well as innovators like David Bowie and Kate Bush, Hammack’s music is both deeply rooted in country tradition and refreshingly unconventional. We were thrilled to catch up with her to talk all about it.
Thank you for your time today Caylee, we know how busy you must be as you gear up for the ‘Bed of Roses' release.
Thank you for having me, it's always cool to talk to you guys. I'm excited to be able to finally get this record out into the world! (laughing)
We last spoke at the Long Road festival in August 2023. We spent a lot of time talking about gardening and fairies then so I'll make it more about the music this time!
(laughing) That's pretty much how a lot of my interviews and conversations go I would say!
It's been five years since you released your debut album. How would you say you've changed as a writer and as a person in that time?
I turned 30 last year and in the past five years, that 25 to 30 period, I have learned so much about myself. As this album came to be I tried to hone in and collect all the lessons I have learned during the last five years. I wanted to focus on the pivotal relationships and losses and heartbreaks that have made me who I am now.
I think that we are all mosaics of the people that love us and have loved us and the people that have hurt us and I wanted to reflect that in these songs. Being able to share this set of songs has helped me to heal from all the heartbreaks that are on the album. Through the heartbreak songs I feel like I have connected the most with my fans and the people that care about my music.
I can hear a very strong through-line of strength, empowerment and independence in these songs. Did you set out to make an album like that or did it just emerge in the writing process?
I wanted to focus in on songs that empower and songs that offer solace. Through expressing what I have been going through, even when I'm writing a song about a dark thunder cloud, I do try to slip in a song about a silver lining, you know? Specifically on a song like ‘No I Ain't,' I did set out with that idea that there has been so many different times in my life that I have loved someone else more than I have truly loved my own self and I have hurt myself over and over again. I wanted to create a mantra, on that song, that someone can sing back to themselves until they are able to choose themselves over the person that they are with or who has hurt them.
It's how the writing evolved so I went back in time and time again and finessed songs with those messages so that I could create a whole narrative that is joined and puts across a certain point about loving yourself. It means a lot to me that you heard that across the album, so thank you.
It may have been quite a cathartic process, then, putting this album together?
Oh, very much! (laughing) Writing anything, be it a song, a poem, a letter or even a diary, can get the hurt out of you in such a powerful way. I've taught songwriting courses for some young kids for the University of Georgia and getting to teach them that has been so amazing. In a class of 40 kids there might be one that moves to Nashville but there are a lot of them that just need a place that they can vent and an outlet to syphon the feelings that they have.
As I do some of this media stuff and film the video for songs like ‘No I Ain't' it's been really hard to tap into the same emotional place that I was in when I wrote the song. I remember curling up in a fetal position in the corner of my room as I played the song for the first time to my best friend. It wrecked me but now I can look back with it and think that my heartbreak can help to heal someone else's, you know?
You picked ‘Bed of Roses' for the title of the album – that phrase itself can have multiple connotations so what's the meaning of it for you, here, in this context?
There's different little facets to it, which is what I loved about the concept. Life is the bed you make, you know, every single choice you make leads you to the next step and you can make every single day either heaven or hell for yourself, right? The thing I've learned about growing roses is that some of the most beautiful ones also have the worst thorns and you learn how to avoid the thorns and appreciate the flowers.
I think there is also something about a rose that makes me think about a healthy person within a relationship. Someone who is able to bloom and flourish in the right environment. In ‘No I Ain't' I sing about barbed wire around my boundaries and I was thinking about roses and thorns then and how the thorns protect the rose from the things that might try to get at it.
What it all boils down to is that for my entire life I have waited for a man to bring me roses, not for valentines day or for an anniversary, just because he thought of me and wanted to bring me some. The whole time I was waiting…… I could just have grown my own, right? That's what the song and album is about.
Dan Huff and John Osborne, who helped you craft and produce this album are both renowned guitarists yet I think people might be surprised to hear that this album is not particularly guitar-heavy – I can hear a lot of beauty in the silences and the sparseness of this album. What was it like working with them?
It was like a masterclass with both of them. Both are savants in their own way, geniuses on the same instrument but in totally different ways. When I worked with Dan it was kinda a full-circle moment. He asked what artists I looked up to and I said that I wanted a catalogue like David Bowie's, like Tom Waits', like Dolly's and like Kate Bush. Those are the people that when you hear a song, you know it's them straight away, it doesn't matter if it sounds different to the last song they released, you know it's them. I wanted to create an entire collection of stories that can comfort people and be a place that people can retreat to. Dan then revealed that he worked with David Bowie one time and that blew my mind. He talked about it being a movie, a kinda weird movie with puppets and I was, like, ‘YOU MEAN LABYRINTH???' I was wearing my Labyrinth night shirt as I was talking to him on the phone! (laughing) Dan really pushed me to think outside of my own box and I feel like some of my best vocals came from those sessions working with him.
Working with John came out of the same kinda situation. We were talking on the bus one night after a show that we had done together. I asked him straight out, I said to him that I'd loved working on Ashley McBryde's ‘Lindeville' album with him, it was so easy, fun and refreshing and I asked him if we could record a song together and he was open to that so we just kinda hopped into it! It was cool to see someone who is relatively new to producing go about his business in such an artist-focused way. As someone who is obsessed with learning new skills and learning more about this industry I couldn't have worked with two better role models and different points in their respective careers. I cannot say enough good things about both guys.
I love the concept of the ‘Tumbleweed Man' that you create on the last song on the album. Where did that idea come from?
That's one of my favourite songs!!! (laughing) I'm really glad you like it. The idea actually came from my therapist! We were talking about this guy one day who was a co-writer and a friend of mine for many years, I thought we were leading somewhere but he thought we were leading somewhere else, it turns out! (laughing) He wanted casual and I loved him, you know?
I was stuck in this cycle of still wanting other people to like him, you know, telling people that he was really nice and that he was just a little confused right now……I was going through all this bull crap with my therapist and he stopped me and said ‘You gotta let go of the tumbleweed men. You need someone who is happy to set roots with you, not people who are going to blow in and out of your life when they want.' The right person will want to build something with you, that's the message in that song.
Some people are meant to pass through the scenery of your life – it's like looking at a beautiful sunset and being grateful that you got to experience it and then it's gone. And then the sun rises again next day. ‘Tumbleweed Men' was born out of that discussion and I ran with it! (laughing) I am finally listening and I am finally in a good love and I hope that I have given up ‘tumbleweed men' for good now!
Talking of ‘good love' – the album has a kind of sensual, sultry three-song mid section with ‘Bread and Butter,' ‘Cleopatra' and How Long.' did you sequence those sexy songs together deliberately?
Very much so. I'm wanting to produce a vinyl of this album and so I sat down and worked out how many minutes I have on one side, which is about 22 minutes, and I wanted to sequence the songs so that every time you flipped the vinyl over there was a different kind of vibe. ‘What My Angel Thinks' and ‘Back Again' kind of flowed into one another, that was a happy accident that John and I stumbled upon. (laughing) I knew the emotions of ‘Oh Kara' and ‘Tumbleweed Men' had to be set together side by side but that little three song section…. I call it my saucy side! (laughing)
I love my heartbreak songs and I love healing through them and helping others to heal but I also love having some fun songs, exciting songs and songs that bring the energy up at live shows so I had to put those ones on there, all sequenced together.
The other song that stood out to me, and I'm sure that it must have for you, because you didn't write it, was ‘Mammas' – lots of people are going to want to talk to you about that song!
I hope so! You never really know what songs are going to resonate with people until they reach them, truly. We're all just making guesses as to what people might like based on what we think people want. I'm excited to see the reception to that song and see which ones on the album really speak to people.
‘Mamas' is my very first outside cut! I've talked to Reba before about cutting outside songs and needing to give every song a chance to speak to you. She told me to always keep my ears open for a song that could have been written by me even though it wasn't – ‘Mammas' is one of those.
I have a musical cousin, Matthew, the only other person in my family who was really musical. He was diagnosed with MS at 34 years old and he went from being a perfectly able man to having to rely on his parents as he was bed-ridden. He lost the ability to play guitar but he kept writing. When I was a young girl he asked me to sing on some of his songs, I loved him and didn't get to see him as much as I'd liked as we lived on different sides of the state growing up. I got a call from my father whilst I was throwing pottery with a very good friend of mine, Mia Mantia, who is also a great songwriter – keep an eye out for her – and my dad called to tell me that Matthew had passed away. The funeral was the same day as my fan club event had been scheduled for at CMA Fest and other events that I had to go and my team and I realised that there was no way that I could be there. I honoured him at my fan club show and then later on I walked back into the garage and told Mia why I was crying. I asked her to distract me by playing me a demo of something that she had written recently and the first one she played was ‘Mammas.'
Matthew was such a fan of old Country music and I knew that I had to cut that song. Matthew would have loved what the writers did on that song (it is a re-imagining of the classic Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson hit from 1970s) and I wanted to cut it for him. It's cool being able to cut a song written by one of your friends and I hope people feel the specialness with it that I heard the first time I heard it.
Every time I listen to the album a different song stands out and resonates – which is the sign of a very strong album isn't it?
I just want to say, personally, I so appreciate that you have really spent your time with this music – I can tell in this interview. Sometimes you talking to people, and no offence to them, because people have to listen to so many projects and songs, they've only heard one or two songs and you have to do the ‘elevator speech' across the whole interview but I so appreciate getting to really dive into it here, it feels so good to be able to talk in depth with you about this album.
We're getting to see you over here in the UK in May supporting Eric Church at the Royal Albert Hall!
YESSSS! The Royal Albert Hall! Wow! I'm already practising for it because I will be playing it solo. I want it to be a unique and special night that stands out above all the other shows I'm playing because there's something telling me that this is an important show, a one-of-a-kind experience. I'm not sure what I can tell you right now but I will say that we will have some more dates over there in the UK too. I feel the respect and the love from the fans over in Europe and I want to come back as soon as I possibly can, over and over again!
Go check out Caylee Hammack's excellent new album ‘Bed of Roses' – our review is here
