Caylee Hammack joins Katie Neal in our new Audacy Studios located at the Hard Rock in the heart of Nashville to talk about her new album, new book, and more!
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00:00Her brand new album, Bed of Roses, is out on Friday and such a cool thing.
00:05There's actually a book by the same name that comes with it that's coming out this summer.
00:09Kaley Hammack.
00:10So many good things.
00:11Like, this is so fun.
00:12It's an exciting week, for sure.
00:14It's been five years, you know, since I put out an album.
00:17So very excited.
00:19And this is my first book.
00:20So let's see how it goes.
00:22Give me good reviews on Goodreads, please.
00:24We'll talk book in just a second.
00:25First I want to talk album.
00:27Tell me about this record, because I know you've been waiting, you've been working on
00:29it for five years, waiting to put this next record out.
00:32Talk about like what you wanted to say with these songs.
00:34Well, it was really about 10 years of writing to accumulate all of these stories and the
00:39life lessons and it encapsulates from 20 to 30.
00:43I turned 30 last year and I have learned so much about myself.
00:47I found myself on a pursuit of trying to find good, steady love.
00:51I have been on a search to find my soulmate, but also find inspiration in the heartbreaks
00:55come along.
00:56And I'm just so happy that throughout these different things, it's always the songs on
01:01the last record, on the first record, that people have connected the deepest to was the
01:05most vulnerable of songs.
01:07So with this album, I tried to really just wear my heart on my sleeve within the lyrics
01:11and the production and kind of go back to the basics as far as the organic rootsy sound
01:16that I grew up loving.
01:18John Osborne and Dan Huff helped me do that.
01:20But really, it's just an accumulation of the lessons I've learned and some broken heart
01:25mantras that maybe you can sing to yourself until you're strong enough to pick yourself
01:28over the person that's not picking you.
01:30A thousand percent.
01:31I like, I feel that very much.
01:33I hear that in these songs.
01:34Like some of them, I'm trying to think of the ones that really like I would like had
01:37a moment.
01:38I was like, like there was a one where you say, my therapist is going to be proud of
01:43me.
01:44No, I knew what you were going to say.
01:45Better than when you get to like show up to therapy and you're like, guess what I did?
01:48Guess what I didn't do last week and you're going to be so proud.
01:51Yeah, exactly.
01:52Sometimes more important.
01:53No, I ain't such a great song.
01:54Let's talk about that one a little bit more.
01:56Well, that was the one that there's a bunch of different moments in the Bible where they
01:59say something along the lines of guard your mouth.
02:02It's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you.
02:04It's what comes out of it.
02:05Be careful with your words.
02:06And as a child growing up watching my favorite movie, Labyrinth with David Bowie in it, there's
02:11a moment in that movie that watching it as an adult, it struck me when he says, words
02:14have power.
02:15Sarah, be careful.
02:17And I realized it's so funny that the Bible and David Bowie are saying the same thing.
02:23As I've gotten older, I've realized that the way I speak to myself profoundly changes how
02:28I feel and how I speak to myself today changes how I will feel about myself tomorrow.
02:34And I'm really bad about beating myself down whenever something doesn't go right and making
02:40something feel as if it's my fault.
02:42And I feel as if, and no I ain't, I wanted to be able to write a song that if someone
02:47is trying to be strong and to love themselves more than the person that doesn't really love
02:52them, that they are able to sing it back to themselves over and over again until they
02:56can positively manifest that boundary for themselves.
03:01Because I think that there is beauty in boundaries.
03:03A lot of healthy relationships, friendships, love relationships, working dynamics.
03:08Having healthy boundaries helps you be able to love people the fullest.
03:13And so that's kind of, it kind of just related back to Bed of Roses.
03:16I think that when a woman truly flourishes, I think of her as like a rose.
03:21I just remember growing up, there's a saying that compares women and roses, and I always
03:25hated it.
03:26And it was, roses are as finicky as women.
03:30You got to tend them all the time for them to be happy, for them to grow right.
03:33And it always made me angry.
03:34You know, I always had good luck with roses.
03:36I just gave them time and patience and water and I waited for them to flourish the way
03:42they wanted to.
03:43And I think that, you know, not to make it just for women, but just as a woman personally,
03:49trying to figure out where it is that I can plant myself that I can grow to my fullest
03:52potential.
03:53Where do I want to sow good seeds of intention for myself to grow the things I want in my
03:57garden, aka my life, and how to weed out the things and the people that don't help me grow
04:03the best.
04:05Find a good gardener, find a good man that will love me and help me grow to my fullest
04:10potential.
04:11And I think that when a woman truly blossoms in their life, it is like a rose.
04:14But every single beautiful rose, the most beautiful roses have the hardest of thorns
04:20and it is to protect them.
04:21And I feel like boundaries are thorns on rose.
04:25And so I felt as if this song had to be in the bed of roses album to fit into the concept.
04:31When you hearing you talk about all of this, that was beautiful, by the way, like so wonderfully
04:36said.
04:37But I, you mentioned how this covers a decade of going from 20 to 30.
04:40Like all the things I hear you saying are the things that I feel like women start to
04:43realize after you turn 30.
04:45Yeah.
04:46Like, there's like, people will tell you at 28, 29, you're like, okay, what, like, what
04:50are you talking about?
04:51And then you turn 30 and something like truly like happens.
04:54And you start to realize all the things you're talking about all the things you're singing
04:57about on this album.
04:58Yeah.
04:59And I think life has just always kind of granted me these moments where the biggest curses,
05:03the biggest heartbreaks and things like that, that I would consider the bad parts, the most
05:08beauty has come from.
05:10And as a songwriter, I always tell people on stage that a lot of us have different types
05:14of heartbreaks, but we all feel the same type of hurt through different situations.
05:20It's a similar type of darkness that you go through.
05:23And you know, as songwriters, we get to take that these experiences that all of us experience
05:27and for three minutes at a time, we can make someone feel a little less alone in that moment.
05:33And looking back at that first album, I don't look at numbers, I try not to focus on the
05:37numbers, because it will drive you crazy.
05:40But I remember looking at my royalties one day, and I realized that the songs that were
05:43the most vulnerable and the hardest to write and the hardest to put out the scariest ones
05:48were the ones that quadrupled or five times the upbeat ones that I thought would get me
05:54on a good tour, whatever at the time.
05:55And so I just wanted to lay it all out there.
05:58And what were some of those from the first record that really looking for a lighter?
06:02I was hoping you were gonna say that whenever everyone requests that it shows and I just
06:07now I look back and I wish we had done something with it.
06:09Maybe I wish I had promoted it more, but I'm looking for a lighter, small town, a lot of
06:16people request just the beginning of just friends.
06:18They're like, finish that song, finish that part of the song.
06:21But yeah, it's the ones that were the hardest to write that connected to the most people.
06:27And that is the beauty of songwriting is that there are moments when you go through a crazy
06:32heartbreak and you get to be able to remind yourself that maybe this will help someone
06:36else through another one.
06:37Maybe that's why I had to experience it.
06:39When you experience pain, you are able to connect to other people that have experienced
06:42those pains and you can find comfort within that community.
06:46And yeah, I've experienced good love now, but I experienced a lot of not good love and
06:52thank God for him because I got a hell of a lot of good songs from it.
06:54I don't know if I can say that on here.
06:58It's funny.
06:59I have a friend who's going through a breakup right now.
07:00And I was saying to her, I was like, there's so much amazing creative energy that comes
07:03out of this darkness.
07:05I was like, I know it's hard, but like, if you can try to harness some of that, like,
07:09it's like you're saying, just taking the bad moments and like finding the beauty in them.
07:13I think that it's so special and you hear it all throughout this record.
07:16What song are you maybe most excited to see how people react to?
07:20Oh, it's probably No I Ain't just because that's the one we're really creating the focus
07:24track around.
07:26Another one that I love on this record is Kara.
07:29I feel like I've written a lot of songs about men or two men that have hurt me.
07:34And I wanted to write one to my ex's ex that I realized I was like, oh, wait, we went through
07:39the same things with the same man.
07:41I bet we would have been friends.
07:43But I've never met Kara, but I hope you're doing well, Kara, wherever it is that you
07:46are.
07:47I know.
07:48It's so funny how like you can hear about someone for so long and you kind of resent
07:50them and then you start to sympathize with them when this table starts.
07:54Well, that song, it was one of those things I always tell my friends that the first date
07:58you ever go on, ask them how their last relationship was.
08:03Not just how it ended.
08:04How was that person?
08:05How?
08:06How was y'all's dynamic?
08:07And if they call them crazy or the B word, you know that they're going to be calling
08:11you that when it ends, even if you don't do anything wrong.
08:15And so he had said that he was very grateful for her and said all this nice stuff.
08:19And I was like, OK, green flag, you know, winner.
08:22And a few months later, he was talking about cleaning out a storage container that he had.
08:27And it was one of her boxes there.
08:29And he goes, well, I guess I got to go see that B word again.
08:32And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, where in this time did this happen?
08:36And I remember going, I don't like you calling her that.
08:38And he said, well, you don't know her.
08:40You don't know what we went through.
08:41And I said, OK, I'm going to step back.
08:44I don't know her, but it stuck with me and it bothered me that I didn't speak up more.
08:50And so when it ended and it ended on the basis of he wasn't communicating very well.
08:56And he had said that was a thing that she got the angriest at him for.
09:00I was like, I have to write a song like, oh, Kara, I see what you're saying.
09:06He's not saying very much at all.
09:09And I was like, it's true.
09:10He was a beautiful man, but one of the most indecisive people I've ever met.
09:15As so many of them are.
09:16One of the other songs I wanted to talk to you about is Pot and Kettle.
09:22When I heard that like turn of the phrase, talk about writing that song and like, oh,
09:26it was the most random of days.
09:27I was writing with two friends of mine, Steven Wilson Jr. and Connor Thewitt.
09:31And I had rented this little cabin in Leapers Fork, Tennessee, and I'd invited my friends
09:36down to write for the week.
09:37And we were just talking and I don't know who said it.
09:41It's the funniest thing that I can't remember how it really came to be.
09:44But one of us said, well, that's the pot calling the kettle back or black.
09:48And I think Steven was the one that said, did you say the pot calling the kettle back?
09:53And we all kind of just looked at one another and it just kind of fell out.
09:56I started talking about kind of the dynamic of my mom and dad and a couple of different
10:01couples in our lives around us.
10:03And it just came to be it was so much fun to write.
10:06And I feel like Steven Wilson, anytime he ever plays on something, he just brings that
10:10certain sound that I just love.
10:12So I've brought him into tracking sessions before just to try to get a little bit of
10:17that magic because he has magic.
10:19That's amazing.
10:20The record is so beautiful.
10:21Coming out March 7th.
10:22Now tell me about the book and how this like how did this idea happen for there to be a
10:27book Better Roses and the album?
10:30It felt fitting to have an album that was it's a little bit more sad song centric than
10:37then say more positive songs.
10:40It's a lot more reflective songs, I guess, or introspective.
10:45But through this, something I've always just been drawn to is romance novels.
10:50And it's because when the world feels out of control, or I'm going through a heartbreak,
10:54and I'm not really believing in true love anymore.
10:56It was always such a comfort to be able to read one book and know that at the end of
11:01this book, these two people will end up together and they're going to be happy because they
11:04were written for each other.
11:05They were meant to be.
11:07And I think there's a little part of me that wants to believe and still does believe no
11:11matter how much the world tries to tell you differently, that we have people that are
11:14meant for us.
11:16We were written for each other.
11:18And so getting to write two people to fall in love and also focusing in on this romance
11:23novel, I wanted it to not just be about the love.
11:26I love a book where a woman finds herself through the things that she's going through
11:31in that book.
11:32And there's love.
11:33So trying to focus in on the main character has to listen to her gut and hoping that through
11:40reading this book for enjoyment, that people kind of take from that that when your gut
11:45speaks up, listen to it, God's in your gut.
11:48And yeah, I hope that people enjoy it and I hope they get maybe just a few little moments
11:52where they reflect on their lives and listen to their intuition a little bit more after
11:56reading it.
11:57That's amazing.
11:58And talk about, you know, you wrote this with, I'm drawing a blank on her name.
12:02Carolyn Brown.
12:03Oh my gosh.
12:04I'm talking about working with Carolyn.
12:05What did you learn in this process?
12:06What was similar to writing songs?
12:07What was completely different?
12:08What was hard?
12:09What came easy?
12:10It was so much fun.
12:11I mean, I would have loved more than two and a half months.
12:14We had two and a half months to get everything done from the beginning to the final edit.
12:18And it was a little nerve wracking.
12:20The first meeting I go into with a literary agent when they say, all right, normally we
12:24have a full year for this and we have two and a half months.
12:27So we're going to have to get on this.
12:29But I would write 10, 12 hours a day.
12:31I just sat there.
12:32I wish someone could have taken a cinematic time lapse, like all the boxes piling around
12:37me.
12:38I was also shipping stuff in for some shows coming up and I just all I did was right.
12:42And I enjoyed it so much.
12:45The first day after I sent the final edit in, I woke up and I was sad because I was
12:50like, I miss my characters.
12:51I don't get to build any more story today.
12:54And so I started writing songs and anyways, Carolyn Brown, it was the coolest thing that
12:59she was willing to write this with me because I needed guidance.
13:02I need a professional to help me create this in such a short amount of time and really
13:06get it to the point that I want people to be connected to it more so than just outside
13:11of you like my music, so you want to read the book.
13:14I want people from just the romance genre that love Carolyn Brown's books to come in
13:20and try this out and maybe be intrigued and want to go listen to my music.
13:23So working with her was just a dream come true because the first character I created
13:27in the book was an older lady that was very sassy, a Texan, and she's kind of the wise
13:33sage to the main protagonist, which is more fashioned after me.
13:36And I ran all of her conversations and all of her decisions through a filter of me.
13:41Would I make that decision?
13:42Would I say something like that?
13:44And so then with Kathleen, who was named after a pseudo grandmother of mine that passed away,
13:48we weren't related, but she was my grandma, you know what I mean?
13:52And I named the older character about that.
13:54And I have this entire outline of where it's going to go and who, you know, what characters
13:58are involved.
13:59And then Carolyn Brown says that she's willing to come in and help me.
14:03And she is Kathleen, like she is truly just like the character that I'd already created
14:10to be the wise sage that helps and guides the main protagonist.
14:15And so it was so cool to live that while writing the book because she gave me so much knowledge
14:21and it was like a masterclass.
14:23It truly was.
14:24Wow.
14:25Making this album was a masterclass.
14:26I've just worked with so many just incredible geniuses with so much respect, you know, of
14:33their caliber that, yeah, I can't wait to write another book, to be honest.
14:37That was gonna be my next question.
14:38Yeah, I already have ideas for three new ones.
14:40So I want I want to keep creating the town of Homestead.
14:45And this is the silliest thing that I'm doing right now.
14:47But I had a song on Sims 4 and as a child that loved Sims to the point I've locked 2000
14:55hours of playing Sims in my life.
14:58My computer reminds me of that and it hurts.
15:00But I have started I've created the entire town I'm still creating right now.
15:04But I've created the entire town of Homestead because as people have been reading the book
15:08on my team, they're asking, they're like, yeah, you know, I'm trying to find where everything
15:12is.
15:13I'm building the town out in my mind.
15:14And it got me thinking about Sims and I was like, I could build the entire town and create
15:19the characters and then create some of the fans that come in and follow and then create
15:24an entire town around that.
15:26So right now I'm creating a Sims 4 Homestead is the name of the town.
15:31That is so cool.
15:33It's fun.
15:34It's just different.
15:35Like I don't.
15:36I just I love video games and I love connecting to people and just like, I think releasing
15:41an album in 2020 really made me hone in on I like doing tick tock lives.
15:46I like I don't like getting glammed for it sometimes.
15:49But I like being glammed on tick tock live and an Instagram live and getting to talk
15:53to people as I'm playing and kind of having that more live, you know, feedback.
16:00So doing the Sims and just getting to answer questions as we're going.
16:03It's it's been pretty cool.
16:05That's amazing.
16:06Are you going to get to do some book tour stops?
16:07That's what we're planning.
16:08We're planning some of that stuff right now.
16:10And so the official physical copy will be coming out on June 3rd.
16:14And I think that's when we're planning on doing all that and kind of pumping the album
16:18up again.
16:19So well, I'm in a book club.
16:20So I might have to suggest this.
16:21Oh my gosh.
16:22This summer.
16:23That would help me so much.
16:24And I also just love hearing how people are going to react to it.
16:27That's the thing I'm the most nervous and excited about is how are people going to react
16:32to the album in the book.
16:33So if you like it, please go comment.
16:36If you don't, don't don't call crap.
16:40Please don't know everyone.
16:41This is going to be so amazing.
16:43Congratulations on this beautiful record and congratulations on the book, which will be
16:46out this summer.
16:47Kaylee Hammack, thank you for coming to see us.
16:48Thank you for having me.
16:49Transcribed by https://otter.ai