Singer-songwriters in the country music business continue to flourish in and around Nashville, but after years of turmoil, Caylee Hammack deserves a break more than most of them. This could finally be her year. Experience and hard work have turned Hammack into not only an accomplished performer who’s played the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium but a first-time novelist. On Friday (7 March), she’ll be in full bloom with the release of a two-pronged record/book project called Bed of Roses.
The self-proclaimed obsessive gardener blessed with a green thumb is also restoring a house in the Nashville area “that I could afford (along with) the land around it”, Hammack said during our Zoom interview in late February. “When I work on the house, I feel like I’m working on me. It’s the same way with my garden. That’s why I went with Bed of Roses. That is the perfect, most apt name for what I’m trying to cultivate within my life.
“It kinda personifies waiting five years and writing for ten years, you know, and then getting this album,” she added. “I’ve had to persevere through a few years of kinda having a winter and now I’m finally in spring. I finally get to watch my bed of roses grow.”
There’s plenty of work to keep Caylee Hammack busy now that her sophomore full-length album is coming out, five years after her debut LP If It Wasn’t for You was supposed to launch her promising career. What’s happened between then and now is the focus of this article. Still, some backstory is necessary to flush out the details of a lover of romance novels who used to “smuggle” those books away from “my Aunt Punkin”, she laughingly admitted.
Making the Move
The Georgia peach was born and raised light years from Atlanta in the tiny town of Ellaville, where her older brother and sister enjoyed rock and pop tunes. Country soon became Caylee Hammack’s passion, especially after her athletic career was cut short when, at age 16, the high school tennis player and college prospect underwent surgery to remove a tumor from her back. “The only thing I truly had left after that surgery was music,” Hammack said in a 2019 Billboard interview.
Feeling like a “hippie in a hillbilly town”, she took an ebullient personality, sparkling wit, open mind, free spirit, musical aptitude and her flock of flaming red hair to Nashville in search of a career in 2013. One of the first songs she played in a club along Nashville’s Lower Broadway was an original about a subject she knows too well: The raucous “Redhead”, cowritten with Natalie Hemby and Trent Dabbs, was the second cut on her first album and featured Reba McEntire, her partner in ginger.
If It Wasn’t for You was released 13 years after the 13-year-old (who began writing poems at the age of eight) begged her Dad, a water well driller, to see Loretta Lynn perform at Columbus Civic Center in Columbus, Georgia, about an hour’s drive away.
“I remember watching her and going, she did magic,” Hammack said during our interview. “All she did was tell her story in the most honest and raw, just straight-to-the-bone way. She put it to a melody that my brain, it makes my brain happy, and she’s got us all on the edge of our seats watching her and listening.”
Music Education
Caylee Hammack has been writing and singing music ever since, sometimes as a kid with the aid of a Shania Twain karaoke machine she owned. Signed to Capitol Records Nashville in 2018 after starting to work as a staff writer for Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville, she dealt with trauma and brief moments of triumph through those years of music education. One of Hammack’s first panic attacks happened in 2017, when an electrical fire burned down her house and she “lost 70 percent of everything I owned”.
During the global pandemic in 2020, “I’m living by myself and trying to figure things out. I’d get done with the Zooms all day trying to promote an album that I wouldn’t get to promote in person,” Hammack recalled. “I’m sitting there, finally able to put out an album, but I can’t perform live. So I felt like a racehorse that just broke its leg and I’m trying to figure out what to do. I had a lot of panic attacks just really hit in the middle of the day. I would lay down on the floor in the fetal position.”
Hammack found relief through the power of music, though, specifically from two songs — Roger Miller’s “Little Green Apples” and the Dolly Parton/Chet Atkins collaboration of “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” that she started to sing beautifully to an audience of one. “I would just repeat one or the other until I got to the point that I, like, steadied my breathing and I could get myself back up,” Hammack continued. “Those two songs, for some reason, just hit a soothing spot in my brain.”
That’s the reaction Caylee Hammack hopes to elicit with Bed of Roses. The 13-song LP includes 11 she co-wrote with various collaborators including Tenille Townes (who came to her aid after the house fire), Stephen Wilson Jr., and co-producer John Osborne, along with one by herself (“Oh, Kara”).
The bittersweet ballad “No I Ain’t”, co-written with Wilson and Mark Trussell, is an example of one “I really want people to listen to and hopefully connect with,” Hammack offered. “I wrote that as kind of a broken heart mantra. I was having a lot of difficulty trying to learn how to love myself more than I loved the person who never really loved me, and didn’t want to love me.”
Suddenly, Hammack laughs after getting interrupted by a falling lamp in the interview room. Gathering herself as the mood temporarily lightened, she tried to get back on track while discussing the strength or damage that lyrics or mean talk can bring. Remembering a line from 1986’s Labyrinth with a cast that included David Bowie, one of her musical influences, she says, “Words have power.” Hammack continued that theme by paraphrasing Psalm 141:3 from the Bible, which reads, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.”
“It’s the stuff that comes out of your mouth that defiles you,” Caylee Hammack conveyed. “Be careful what you say to yourself and others, and so it was just one of those songs that I thought, ‘Well, what if I wrote a song that when you’re broken-hearted, you can sit and you can listen to.’ You can sing it back to yourself until you feel better, until you are firm enough to say, ‘I love myself more than them and I can be their friend but I will not allow this to go any further because I’m not getting the respect that I deserve.’”
Strong Support Group
It could be a touchy subject for a warmhearted woman who’s dealt with fleeting romances yet has experienced all kinds of kindness professionally. As the nice acts mounted, she was pleased to call herself a proud member of the country family. Especially after sharing stages on tours with “impactful” female artists like Trisha Yearwood, McEntire, and Miranda Lambert or Darius Rucker on the male side.
“He got me a frickin’ tour bus on the road when he saw that I was driving my boys (in the band) in a van through a snowstorm from Boston to New York City with my tour manager,” Caylee Hammack said of Rucker, who brought her along as a supporting act on his 2022 tour when she couldn’t afford a nicer mode of transportation. “I was sleeping on the floor in the theater, in the dressing room. Just the relief that took off for me, that probably gave years of my life back because I was so stressed out.”
Yearwood, a fellow Georgian, took Caylee Hammack on her Every Girl on Tour in 2019, the year before they sweetly sang “Georgia Rain” together after making Peach Melba Pie on Trisha’s Southern Kitchen. The Food Network cooking show aired the “Georgia Gals” episode again on 1 March. After hearing that news a few days in advance, a surprised Hammack excitedly yelped, “Well, heck, I want to watch it. I didn’t know about that. (laughs) I’ve got too many things going on.”
The appearance that concluded with Yearwood’s 2005 song was the first time I remember seeing Hammack on TV, impressed that another new face on the block made BBQ Pulled Pork and Onion Bacon Dip seem so endearing. “A huge fan” of Yearwood’s, she also got some well-needed recognition from a highly visible source.
“I always looked up to her,” shared Hammack, who was taught to cook by her Momma (“food is our love language”) but finally learned how to make gravy from the show host. “When I was in sixth grade, I dressed up as (Yearwood) to be a famous Georgian for this presentation. As a kid going to Georgia 4-H show choir, I had to go through Monticello, Georgia, which she’s from, and there is a highway, Trisha Yearwood on it, on this green reflective sign. I remember thinking, ‘How big do you gotta be to have a road named after you?’
“Then I got to know her and became an even bigger fan. She’s just a genuinely great human being. I think that she’s really good about trying to give platforms to people, especially young female artists that need it. She’s taken a lot of female artists on the road, such as myself.” Other supporting acts on that tour included Caroline Jones, Kim Richey, and Rachel Wammack.
Caylee Hammack hopes some promising performers carry on Yearwood’s tradition. “I feel like (country performers) have more of a family interaction than many of the genres. So I hope that young artists feel that, younger than me, people just now coming into it and experiencing some of the things I’ve experienced in the past few years. I hope we all feel that. Because they deserve it.”
Stage Presence
As if she isn’t busy enough promoting the new album and novel, Caylee Hammack will give a sneak peek of her latest batch of songs when she performs again at the Grand Ole Opry on Friday (7 March).
There also will be an album release party backstage. “I’m very grateful for the Grand Ole Opry,” said a humble Hammack, who went there recently as a spectator/supporter to watch friend Ashley McBryde hit the stage. “Playing the Grand Ole Opry was one of my biggest goals in my life. Now, getting to do my sophomore album and having a launch there is special. … I hope that we can make the Grand Ole Opry … a hangout (for fellow artists). I think that would be kind of cool.”
Recalling her debut there on 23 August 2019, Hammack reminisced about one of her fondest memories and how it relates to the Opry shows. “My parents (Mike and Connie) brought (Elberta peaches) to give to all my team. They’re kind of like a delicacy. I used some pliers and I cracked the seeds, the kernels, open and planted them. This year, I’ll finally have fruit on those trees. So that’s a good feeling.”
Hammack’s first 45-minute opening set at Nashville’s renowned Ryman Auditorium in 2021 naturally turned into a spiritual experience. Before taking the stage with a full band at the Mother Church of Country Music, she pleaded for God to help her reach out through the heavens to country’s patron saints like Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn.
“I said, ‘If I’m not meant to be here, if I’m not meant to do this, be a musician in country music, make it abundantly clear tonight. … But if I’m meant to be here, please God, make me feel at home,’” Caylee Hammack recollected. “That was the best show I’ve ever done in my life. And I barely remember any of it.”
Tour Guiding
Next on Caylee Hammack’s list of goals is playing Carnegie Hall. This New York City performance palace came to mind when she read a Ray Charles interview online, and saw a picture of the late legend and fellow Georgia native on that stage back in the day. “It was something that singularly pulled me in, in a way not many things have,” Hammack declared. “Something in my gut said, ‘You need to do that. You need to play Carnegie Hall. You will. You will play Carnegie Hall. So I think sometimes I don’t give myself enough musical goals. Once I saw that interview, my brain went, ‘Ding, ding, ding! That’s your venue now to think about.’”
With a tour calendar slowly filling up while finally getting to share her music live, it feels like a rebirth for Hammack, who believes she’s “kind of starting all over again. The work seems to be working because I get to do this. So the way I’ve always seen success is if I could help cover my Momma and Daddy for the rest of their life and if I could be happy doing what I do and know that I’m making a good difference, then that’s success.”
Even if Carnegie Hall has to wait. For now, though, her tour itinerary includes stops at the Tortuga Music Festival in April, followed by “some songwriting stuff” with Wilson in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Then she heads across the pond to play two shows at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall on 16-17 May, the first “special night” on a bill with Molly Tuttle and Eric Church. Other European dates follow in Amsterdam and Cologne, Germany. “It’s a great thing,” she stated. “I’m very happy.”
Time to Shine?
If Caylee Hammack is heading toward her breakthrough baptism, it’s better late than never. She cites Chris Stapleton as an example of an artist who bided his time “until he had his moment to shine onstage on a major platform” at the Country Music Awards in 2015, and “finally he was actually heard”. The “Stapleton moment”, as she calls it, was a source of inspiration for the practitioner of the phrase “practice makes perfect”.
“My belief is whenever my time comes, may I be undeniable,” asserted the determined multi-instrumentalist, who plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica. “The only way you can become undeniable is if you practice your craft and you really take the tools you’ve been given in your toolbox of talents, hone them, work with them, and get good with them. I just want to make music that connects with people. What I mean by connecting is someone finds either solace or joy within my music and the songs themselves. I also hope to have the respect of my fellow musicians and such for being known as a kind person and a great musician.”
While finding herself performing at shows that included different rap artists or sometimes delving into pop, rock, and Americana, she’ll contend that variety is the spice of life. But with influences as wide-ranging as Bowie, the Chicks, Kate Bush, Dolly Parton, and Tom Waits, an outspoken Hammack reiterated that, in an industry currently starving for attention while branding becomes more reckless than a reality competition show, “Country music is more of a family than any other genre. … I notice that it’s a dog-eat-dog world.
“These camps oppose one another and I just hate that thought because I don’t believe that music was meant to be subjective. I don’t believe that it is something that we should even be able to give awards. … Most of that is off of stats and figures.”
Caylee Hammack did share an Academy of Country Music accolade in 2020 for Musical Event of the Year (“Fooled Around and Fell in Love” with Lambert, Townes, McBryde, Maren Morris, and Elle King) and other Artist to Watch mentions. However, she might start a trend that’s worthy of a special commendation: Best Dual Release on the Same Day. Her novel’s album and digital version will undoubtedly double the pleasure for fans of Hammack in particular and country admirers in general. (Physical copies of the book are expected to arrive in June.)
‘Beginner’s Luck Feeling’
The novel, co-written with New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown, focuses on the exploits of a redheaded woman named Samantha and her dog Nibbler as her 1965 Mustang breaks down on the way to Mena, Arkansas, and winds up in a place called Homestead.
Because Caylee Hammack knows the format, it was easier for her to write the album, which “is a collection of lessons I’ve learned,” and finish it first, she explained. “It is me trying to remind people of a silver lining in a storm cloud. I think that it’s a lot more sad song-centric. Whereas I wanted the book to be almost like a soft place for people to land.”
What’s especially intriguing is how Hammack uses each song title on the album as a name for each chapter in the book. She suggests listening to the record in reverse order, starting with “Tumbleweed Men” and “Oh, Kara”. Then when starting the novel, readers will discover “different Easter eggs from either production or a songwriting inspiration or the backstory behind a song throughout dialogue within those chapters. I just wanted to be able to create a universe.
“My favorite romance novels are the ones where they plop you into a place that you feel as if you can go there. You feel as if you’ve been there. The person, the woman specifically for me, is having to learn about herself through the lessons in the book. … She finds herself as well as love.”
After failing in previous attempts to write a book at ages 13 and 15, Caylee Hammack found “something creatively freeing about” this project.
“Have you ever gotten into something that you do almost better before you know all the rules?” she asked. “You’re almost better at the game before you actually practice the game at all. You have this beginner’s luck feeling. … So now at 30 years old, getting to write this book, the third time’s a charm.”
For the album, the second time may be just as charming. With a commanding voice that adds a touch of Dolly’s warble while versatile enough to pull off various genres from rock (listen to the album’s mighty “Cleopatra”) to pop (“Breaking Dishes” has Morris’ crossover appeal) to R&B (check out her Bill Withers cover below), Hammack seems destined to go beyond the country community.
While the Southern bellflower admits she’s still not used to the Nashville chill, Hammack likes how her garden grows, yet hints at leaving the door open to branch out for greener pastures.
“I think that my roots will always be in country. I don’t see myself as ever really leaving and never coming home,” she concluded. “I’m a homebody, especially in my music genre. But I do love creating with other people. I think that in a world where genres are really expanding and the boundaries are starting to crumble and merge with one another, I think that there’s like a tectonic force that’s making all genres blend better.
“Because of that I feel like there’s more liberty as an artist to get to go make different sounds and try different things. As long as I get to make music, I’m happy. But I’m definitely country. I’m about as country as cornbread, so there will definitely be a little twang in everything.”
Even if every bed of roses has a thorn or two, that should sound peachy keen to fans waiting to see what handywoman Caylee Hammack creates next — with loving care, of course.