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The most glaring elements of Lainey Wilson’s new single, “Watermelon Moonshine,” are its thematic similarity to Deana Carter’s 1996 classic “Strawberry Wine” and a lonesome slide guitar.
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But one of the track’s most daring aspects is so subtle that most listeners are unlikely to even think about it. The melody in the chorus is surprisingly similar to the one in the verses, which is a distinct departure from the way most modern songs are constructed. Consumers’ attention spans, it’s widely believed, are short, and writers and producers are generally sensitive to changing the tone of songs every few bars to keep listeners on board.
Wilson had that issue in mind even as “Watermelon Moonshine” came together.
“When we were working on that chorus, I remember thinking, ‘OK, this sounds really, really similar to the verses,’ because I try to make sure that my verses and my chorus sound completely different from each other,” she says. “We decided to go up, you know, melodically on certain words and down on certain words. We kind of massaged it to where it was just different enough. But it really just kind of felt like a lullaby, and I didn’t want to mess with that too much.”
The base melodies for those two sections originated with songwriter Josh Kear (“Need You Now,” “Most People Are Good”) building on the title “Watermelon Moonshine,” which he came up with in a simple brainstorming exercise.
“One morning, I made two lists — months before we wrote this song — ‘Things I love,’ ‘Things I strongly dislike.’ Not a fan of the ‘hate’ word,” he notes. “Then I looked at the lists and tried to combine my likes and dislikes into titles. My least favorite food of all time is watermelon and my least favorite alcohol is moonshine … I think I turned those lists into a handful of titles, but ‘Watermelon Moonshine’ is the only one I ever resonated with enough to try writing it.”
Kear was scheduled for an appointment on Jan. 12, 2022, with Wilson and Jordan M. Schmidt (“wait in the truck,” “God’s Country”). But he was under the weather and the COVID-19 omicron variant was raging, so to play it safe for his co-writers, he worked through Zoom. That morning, he dialed up the “Watermelon Moonshine” title and proceeded to write most of the first verse and chorus, waxing nostalgic about a first sexual experience. The top line’s persistence was decidedly not an issue.
“I find the melody somewhat hypnotic,” he says. “If anything, I felt like the melodic consistency allowed me to stay lost in the story without getting distracted.” Wilson and Schmidt immediately recognized that “Watermelon Moonshine” had a similar plot and title to “Strawberry Wine,” though Kear didn’t quite figure it out until later in the day.
“By then, I was so in love with the song as it was, I wasn’t really worried about it,” he says. “I felt like what we were creating was worthy in its own right. I also figure the world can probably handle a loss-of-innocence song involving alcohol once every 25 years or so.”
Wilson and Schmidt, working at Schmidt’s studio, helped guide the second verse, in which the woman recalls having her initial experience with both alcohol and sex at the same time. That, of course, spurred Wilson’s memories of her first taste of liquor. “I remember being 17 years old, and taking a few sips of whatever it was that we were trying to hide from everybody, and that I wanted to be drunk,” recalls Wilson. “I wanted to feel like I was drunk, so in my mind, I was like, ‘I think I’m a little tipsy,’ when the truth is, I probably got more tipsy off mouthwash.”
Written in the key of C, the bridge transitions into a B-flat chord — a departure from the natural key signature — and as a result, that section almost feels like a modulation to a new key, though it quickly returns to more standard triads. “This is one of my favorite bridges,” Schmidt says. “I do feel like our contributions altogether for that bridge took the song to a new level and kind of broke the monotony of it a little bit, and kind of makes the listener have to engage again, if they were becoming disengaged at all.”
Schmidt produced a demo that relies on finger-picked guitar, using reverb on Wilson’s voice in the chorus to demonstrate the song’s dreamy nostalgia. Producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Brothers Osborne) reworked it in the studio with Charlie Worsham strumming guitar to create a pulse at a slightly faster speed. Rob McNelley drew out the slide guitar for a long, aching sweep.
“I remember everybody just kind of feeling extremely laid-back, like a melancholy feeling,” says Wilson. “It did seem like everybody in the room was reflecting as they were playing. I know I definitely was.”
After the fifth or sixth take with the band — which included bassist Joel King, guitarist Aslan Freeman and drummer Brad Pemberton — it felt like that bridge section needed even more separation from the rest of the song. Joyce left space in the track for an additional guitar segment, filled later with a descending passage that keeps the melancholy while injecting a new creative thought. Additionally, it breaks up a sentence: The last line of the bridge is a lead-in to the third chorus, and by dropping the guitar into the middle of that thought, the new material leaves the listener in bittersweet suspense.
“It did take me a second when I heard the master to switch gears in my head; like, ‘Oh, this is how Jay envisioned it,’ ” Schmidt says. “Now I’ve gotten used to it and I love it. He’s one of those producers where he’ll never take it in the way you think it should go. He’ll take it the way he thinks it should go. And I appreciated that about him. I don’t know him — I’ve never even met the guy — but I feel like I know him through his productions.”
Wilson sang all through the process — on the demo, on every take during the tracking session and in vocal overdubs at a later date — finding small nuances to exploit as she progressed, though the final version doesn’t sound much different than her performance on the demo. “I literally did maybe three passes,” she recalls of her overdub appointment, “because I still wanted it to feel real and raw, and not completely overdone.”
Stoney Creek released “Watermelon Moonshine” to country radio via PlayMPE on May 9, as a follow-up to “Heart Like a Truck,” which peaked at No. 2 on Country Airplay. Two days later, Wilson won four Academy of Country Music Awards, including album of the year, for Bell Bottom Country. “Watermelon,” the project’s sophomore single, moves No. 55-47 on the Country Airplay chart dated June 10.
Should there be cause for a No. 1 party, watermelon moonshine is certain to be on the drink menu.“Better be there,” she says, promising a buzz: “I will give you a glass of mouthwash.”
Jana Kramer will soon welcome her third child and her first with fiancé Allan Russell. Kramer said via social media, “We’ve been keeping another secret from you guys…but I’m pregnant!!!! Beyond blessed and grateful for this baby to be a part of our story.” Kramer also told People, “I didn’t think it would ever happen […]
Chris Stapleton has canceled his scheduled outdoor concert in Syracuse, New York, due to ongoing air-quality issues caused by smoke from Canadian wildfires. The upstate cancellation follows a series of called-off events throughout New York City on Wednesday night (June 7), including Broadway performances and sports games. “Due to the ongoing air conditions in the […]
Carly Pearce, Lily Rose, Madeline Edwards and Lady A member Hillary Scott joined Beverly Keel, Middle Tennessee State University dean of the College of Music and Entertainment, to discuss the ongoing struggle of women artists in country music. The panelists discussed building careers despite the general lack of support from country radio, while also celebrating the supportive community women artists have cultivated.
Keel noted a recent study from Dr. Jada Watson and Jan Diehm of The Pudding that showed that country radio plays back-to-back songs from women artists less than 1% of the time. The stats from the study are even worse for women of color and LGBTQ+ artists — though the greater country music industry has made strides in welcoming a more diverse range of country music artists.
Edwards noted that when she was having conversations with executives at Warner Music Nashville, where she signed last year, she asked them, “Are you signing me because this is a checkbox on your social consciousness and you just need to sign a Black female right now, or is it about me and believing in my music?”
“It’s good to ask those questions and wrestle with those kinds of things,” she continued, “because I truly believe that [Warner Music executives] have my best interests at heart. It really is about my music and that gives me a lot of encouragement.”
Rose spoke of the tireless, dedicated work that CMT’s Leslie Fram has done to support women artists in country music, most notably, the CMT Next Women of Country franchise. Earlier this year, CMT’s Next Women of Country celebrated its 10 year anniversary.
“We’ve all grown up in a society where in entertainment and movies and TV, the women are kind of pitted against each other,” Rose said. “At the 10 year anniversary, they had almost every single woman from the 10 classes. And you just look around, it’s like 110 female artists, the camaraderie’s through the roof, the vibes are great. It’s really cool that we all have each other’s back … Even having conversations like this, where we get to be vulnerable and talk about the things that are potentially not progressing and what we can do to make them stronger and more hopeful for us moving forward.”
Pearce offered a personal anecdote that highlighted the camaraderie of women artists in country music, sharing how Scott showed her kindness and an example of welcoming in the next generation of women artists into the country music fold.
“We were traveling overseas, and it is not glamorous,” Pearce said. “You have to take these ferries through the night. [Hillary] did not even have speak to me, but she came in and she was like, ‘How are you getting over to Ireland? I said, ‘I’m going on a ferry,’ but she said ‘No, you’re not. You’re going with us.’ She knew as a female how hard it was to travel in those kind of circumstances. She let me ride on her plane and she bought me a room at the hotel [they were staying at]. She has shown me true kindness and humility. To meet somebody that has influenced you so much and for them to exceed your expectations, it pushes me to make sure that somebody one day will say that about me.”
“I feel like there’s a theme we’ve been circling around this whole time, which you can apply to life in general,” Scott summed. “Show up and be there for whoever you’re in front of and be the person you wish you had.”
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Morgan Wallen had some long-awaited, great news for fans on Wednesday (June 7) morning. After cancelling six weeks of shows on doctor’s orders a month ago to go on vocal rest, the “Last Night” singer announced in an Instagram Story “we back.”
The story included a photo of Wallen sitting on the back seat of his fishing boat, arms outstretched, with the message “Also, the doc cleared me to talk and sing… we back.” That was the best-case scenario after Wallen announced on May 9 that he would have to put his tour on ice for more than a month to rest his strained voice, crossing off shows through June 17.
“I’m just gonna go ahead and get straight to it. I got some bad news from my doctors at the Vanderbilt Voice Center yesterday. After taking 10 days of vocal rest I performed three shows last weekend in Florida and by the third one I felt terrible,” the singer said at the time.
“So I went in and go scoped yesterday and they told me that I re-injured my vocal cords and that I have vocal fold trauma,” he added in the intense video. Wallen said his doctor’s advice was that he go on vocal rest for six weeks.
“They told me that if I do this the right way, I’ll get back to 100% and they also said that if I don’t listen and I keep singing, then I’ll permanently damage my voice,” Wallen said of his doctor’s diagnosis of vocal fold trauma after playing three shows in Florida, where he reinjured his vocal cord. “So for the longevity of my career, this is just a choice I had to make. I hate it. But I love you guys, and I appreciate all the support that you always give me.”
Wallen said his plan was to listen to his doctors, who advised him to not to talk at all, but cleared him to make the tour cancellation announcement. In addition to the cancelled shows, Wallen also had to skip out on last month’s Academy of Country Music Awards and push his 2023 festival appearances to 2024.
At press time the next scheduled date on Wallen’s One Night at a Time tour with HARDY, ERNEST and Bailey Zimmerman — according to the singer’s official website — was a June 22 show at Wrigley Field in Chicago. At the time of the cancellations, a Wallen spokesperson said tickets for the original dates will be honored for all rescheduled performances, with a 30-day refund window open at the point of purchase when the new dates are announced.
Wallen made news after canceling a planned show at Oxford, MS’s Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on April 23 after his opening acts performed and just moments before he was to take the stage. “I thought I was going to be good to go and I just wasn’t,” he said in a message to the 60,000 disappointed fans who were sent home that night without seeing him.
Billboard cover star Jelly Roll headlined Billboard’s inaugural ‘Live in Concert’ event on Tuesday evening (June 6) at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works, leading a show that offered an electrifying performance, emotional catharsis and an uplifting message all in one — or as Jelly Roll calls it, “real music for real people with real problems.” His […]
“Them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye.”
In January 1972 — “a long, long time ago,” as Don McLean said in the opening salvo of “American Pie” — his eight-minute pop opus rose to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks, lamenting “the day the music died.”
Just a few months later — also a long, long time ago — the Country Music Association inaugurated Fan Fair, an annual Nashville music event now named CMA Fest. The festival’s music definitely hasn’t died, though the pandemic forced a pause for two years. It will be presented for the 50th time June 8-11.
“American Pie” wasn’t intended as a prelude to CMA Fest, though in some ways, McLean foretold its emergence. At the festival, them good ol’ boys drink whiskey on Lower Broadway, or they sing about it onstage. The event features a reported 80,000 music fans moving “helter skelter in the summer swelter.” And McLean’s whole “American Pie” football scenario — “The players tried to take the field/The marching band refused to yield” — parallels CMA Fest, too: Its marquee performances are hosted in an NFL venue, Nissan Stadium.
2023’s Nissan lineups include Luke Combs, Eric Church, HARDY, Dan + Shay, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan and Ashley McBryde. There’s no Carrie Underwood this year — maybe the “Church Bells” all are broken? But the festival keeps bringing people back to Nashville in search of a good time.
Don McLean photographed in 1972.
David Redfern/Redferns
“One of my favorite lines [in “American Pie”] as relates to CMA Fest is ‘I can still remember when the music made me smile,’ ” CMA CEO Sarah Trahern says. “That’s what I always think about every year. I usually ask all of our young staff, ‘Tell me about an artist you saw for the first time,’ because one of the things I think we really value is the opportunity at the festival to have artists in all different stages of their career.”
That’s certainly true this year. The lineup includes current hitmakers Lainey Wilson, Jason Aldean, Jon Pardi and Jelly Roll. It has its share of heritage acts, including Reba McEntire, Tanya Tucker, Trisha Yearwood and Shenandoah. And it even features some new ones — for instance, Kidd G, Harper Grace, Avery Anna and Noah Thompson —who are so young that they were born after the last time the festival changed its location, in 2001.
CMA Fest launched at the Municipal Auditorium downtown in April 1972 and stayed there until 1982, when it moved to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. It returned to Lower Broadway downtown in 2001, and McLean appeared that year with a performance of “American Pie” at the Riverfront Stage — appropriate, since it coincided with the festival’s move from the racetrack to the riverfront. Or, better put, from the “Chevy to the levee.”
It’s doubtful that anyone who heard “American Pie” in 1972 thought the song, or McLean, would have country connections. But it didn’t take long for them to build. Pop singer Perry Como recorded one of his songs, “And I Love You So,” in Nashville exactly one year after “American Pie” hit No. 1. Before the ’70s were over, McLean recorded Roy Orbison‘s “Crying” in Music City with The Jordanaires on backing vocals, and it brought him a country hit in 1981. McLean became close friends with producer-guitarist Chet Atkins (who, ironically, died June 30, 2001, just 17 days after McLean played CMA Fest). And “American Pie” had a huge influence on Garth Brooks, who said it “could quite possibly be the greatest song in music history” in a 2022 documentary, The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
“That song was about that undeniable chorus — you hear it once, and it’s stuck in your head forever,” says Charlie Worsham, who will play June 9 at CMA Fest’s The Cadillac Three & Friends concert at Ascend Amphitheater. “It was a story, and you kind of had to listen to the words to get the full value of the song. And it was a song that could be delivered with an acoustic guitar and a voice on the back of a truck.”
Since those are the kinds of songs that Brooks was frequently attracted to, his penchant for “American Pie” influenced the generations of country artists who have followed him. He has occasionally dipped into mortality in hits such as “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” “Papa Loved Mama” or the long version of “The Thunder Rolls,” and “American Pie” is famously built around the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash.
“Just writing a song about that shit — can you imagine?” asks Jaren Johnston, who founded The Cadillac Three with Neil Mason and Kelby Ray. “It’s like, ‘Hey, I got an idea, Neil.’ It’s me and Ashley Gorley and Neil, let’s say. ‘Man, you remember that [Lynyrd] Skynyrd crash? Dude. Let’s do that today for Tuesday. That’d be fun.’ It just doesn’t exist anymore.”
Of course, there’s the “pink carnation and a pickup truck” line in “American Pie” — that pickup truck is still big business in country music: “wait in the truck,” “Heart Like a Truck,” “Truck Bed,” “I Drive Your Truck,” “New Truck,” “Out of That Truck,” etcetera.
But not to be forgotten is McLean’s reference to the spirit world with “the three men I admire the most/The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.” Many of the artists who were crucial to that first Fan Fair are gone, including Ernest Tubb, Tom T. Hall, Roy Acuff, Porter Wagoner, Skeeter Davisand Marty Robbins. Like the genre itself, the festival is built on those memories, which is why Johnston skipped it last year. His father, former Grand Ole Opry drummer Jerry Ray Johnston, frequently took him to Fan Fair in the ’80s and ’90s at the fairgrounds. When the senior Johnston died, it made the thought of playing CMA Fest an emotional trap.
“Everything’s a memory there when you get into that world of grief and loss,” Johnston says. “You kind of stop yourself from going places where you think something might be triggered, and Fan Fair — CMA Fest — is definitely one of those for me.”
His father’s death affected each member of The Cadillac Three, which is why the group is appearing at the festival this year in a different form, joined by boundary-pushing acts such as Boy Named Banjo, The Randy Rogers Band, Tenille Townes and Elvie Shane, plus some unannounced guests who will likely demonstrate the wide-reaching net of the genre.
“CMA should be the big tent,” says Trahern. “And in the big tent, there is space for mainstream country music, and there’s space for Americana and space for bluegrass. If you think about it, the Country Music Hall of Fame has Emmylou Harris, who identifies as an Americana artist as well as a country artist, and has Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe, who identify [as bluegrass]. So I’m really excited about that Ascend show.”
Oddly enough, that “American Pie” reference to “the three men I admire the most” could translate in CMA Fest history to Merle Haggard, George Jones and Johnny Paycheck. The three traditional country singers performed a group show at the festival in 1997 — the only time they would do so. Given their checkered pasts, it could easily be considered sacrilege to place them next to a line about the Christian Trinity. Worsham disagrees.
“I would argue that George Jones and Merle Haggard and Johnny Paycheck are the perfect country music examples to hold up as a story of redemption, of grace, because they all walked through the fire, and they all had their come-to-Jesus moment,” he reasons. “For them to stand on that stage together, and at a later time in their journey, I feel like is very spiritually accurate to the point of Christianity. And because gospel music is one of the parents of country music, country music has always been found in that path from the bar to the church and back, and those guys blazed that trail quite literally.”
McLean’s American Pie album featured the stars and stripes imprinted on the singer’s thumb, creating a metaphor that’s particularly useful to country music in 2023. Critics continue to debate — thumbs up, thumbs down — what constitutes country, and this year’s festival arrives at a time when some Americans are having a difficult time giving a thumbs-up to democracy.
“Country music’s real message is Willie Nelson going, ‘Good morning, America. How are you?’ ” Worsham says. “You lock arms and sing along and literally reach to the person in the concert sitting next to you who canceled you out in the voting booth, point your beer cans together and sing along to that. That’s what we need so badly right now, and that’s what country music has to offer right now, like it always has.”
“American Pie” may have lamented the “day the music died,” but despite the song’s surprising similarities to modern country, CMA Fest’s 50th installment serves as a symbol for a genre that’s willing to ponder the grave without actually stepping into it.
“Country music was alive and well in 1972,” says Trahern. “And certainly it’s alive and well today in 2023.”
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