Ashley Monroe feels music from toenails up

Rising Nashville songwriter spends two nights at Eddie’s Attic

Ashley Monroe lives to make music. She loves country music, and it’s been that way for as long as she can remember. When she was a small child, Monroe would sit and cry when she heard Vince Gill sing. “I would get chills head to toe, and I was just a little girl, you know? Like seven or eight years old,” she says. “I was just enamored with him, always.”

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Back then, Monroe lived in Knoxville, Tenn. with her mom, dad, and brother. “Everything was ideal,” she says, until her father died of cancer when she was 13 years old. At 15, she moved with her mother to Nashville, in part so that Monroe could pursue a life in music.

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These days, Monroe is one of country music’s brightest lights, a viable recording artist who built a reputation as a top-notch songwriter before breaking through in 2013 with her near-perfect effort Like a Rose. That album’s success coincided with the rise of Pistol Annies, Monroe’s outlaw country trio with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley, as well as acclaimed releases by other female country artists Kacey Musgraves and Brandy Clark. The three were part of a “renaissance moment” for women in country that year according to NPR Music critic Ann Powers, as quoted in an article titled “Quiet As Kept, Women Dominated Country Music in 2013.”

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But 2013 was two years ago, an eternity in the age of the Internet, and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of mainstream country music. In July, Monroe released her third album, The Blade, produced by her old childhood chill-maker, Vince Gill. It earned effusive reviews and debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart, but its songs haven’t had much impact on country radio, which is still a crucial driver for success in the genre.

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Not that Monroe cares much. She acknowledges that country radio has mostly ignored her this year, but says her musical motivation isn’t tied to airplay. “I try to make sure that when I make an album I love the songs,” she says. “And when I sing it I feel it from my toenails up. My job is to deliver the best music I can, and you know what? When I see people in the audience that are singing it back to me, I know they have the record because I don’t have anything on radio right now. It’s like, ‘Wow, these are die-hard fans.’”

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Those fans are Monroe’s target audience. They have been since her early days in Nashville, and they still are, even after Monroe’s wider success. “Music saved me big time when I was down and out,” she says. “It was the only thing that kept me going. So anytime I make music and someone is into it, ever since the very beginning, it’s like, ‘OK, my best reward is that other people would get some sort of joy or feel something from it.’”

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It’d be hard not to feel something about The Blade, a well-crafted set of songs that find Monroe spreading her wings stylistically, edging away from the pure twang of Like a Rose to a slightly more pop sound. “I Buried Your Love Alive” is a slinky blues tune about booze and zombie heartbreak. “Weight of the Load,” co-written with Gill, is a thematic update of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” set on cruise control and imbued with soulful keys. It’s gorgeous and uplifting.

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The title track is a worthy addition to country music’s tradition of beautiful, slow-burning breakup ballads. “Winning Streak” is a scrappy rockabilly tune Monroe wrote with one of this year’s breakout country stars, Chris Stapleton, while “Mayflowers” was penned with power-pop god (and longtime Monroe collaborator) Brendan Benson. Lastly, lead single “On to Something Good” is a wonderful blend of pop and country with a rollercoaster chorus that would’ve anchored a radio hit in any reasonable world. Just not the real world.

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Monroe co-wrote 12 of The Blade’s 13 songs, and there’s always more where those came from. “I’m always on,” she says. “If someone says something in a conversation two tables over, I hear it and I write it down. I can’t turn my songwriting brain off. I have a bucket of ideas in my brain and I’ll go through a spell where I’ll just write and write and write and I can’t stop writing and then it slows down for a little bit and I have to live life and soak everything in again.”

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Spoken like someone who truly lives to make music.