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George Jones & Tammy Wynette. Loretta & Conway. Gram & Emmylou. Johnny & June. The power of classic country duets resides deep in the bloodstream of Nashville new-arrivals Megan and Shane Baskerville as they prepare to release their latest singles “Oh Hell” & “Put Me Down” (out 7/14). These songs are a couple of light-hearted romps set to follow up their more serious and critically adored LP Daughter of Country, which garnered them a nomination for best folk band at No Depression.
These singles represent a transitional period in Megan & Shane’s career as covid put a wrench in the married couple’s plans to open a fourth School of Rock location near their southwest Arizona home. Everything moved online and they found that they were able to spend more time together.
“We’ve been married for nine years, together for 12,” says Megan, “and we realized that we hardly saw each other while working at the music school. We never had days off together. All of a sudden we had all this time. We’d have drinks in the backyard every afternoon. One day I just looked at Shane and said ‘I love this human.’ How much time have we been wasting?”
The two took a trip to Nashville and fell in love with the city and its people, especially Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, a dive bar whose live stream performances they’d been watching throughout the quarantine, including a particularly memorable set by Margo Price.
“We were at Dee’s,” says Shane, “and a lightswitch just went off. I don’t fit in Arizona. I fit with these people. This is where we belong. When we got back, we put all our stuff into storage, moved out of our nice, bougie space and into a slum to save up to move to Nashville.”
The duo sold almost everything they owned, put what was left into a minivan, and hit the road towards Music City, USA. The trek across the country was a cathartic experience. They rode Arizona switchbacks at sundown. Wild horses watched them from the top of mesas, giving them permission to leave. They ate Texas BBQ. A cross the size of a skyscraper lit their way through a storm. They stopped in Memphis to revisit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music where they were married. They were practically chased out of what they call the “Murder Days Inn.” They eventually made it to their new Nashville home that they rented site-unseen, a charming 1920s house in the Old Hickory neighborhood that Megan describes as a “serial killer house with a creepy basement.”
Megan & Shane settled in and wasted no time getting back to work. They tapped Chris Mara (Jason Isbell, Old Crow Medicine Show, Molly Tuttle, Margo Price) of Welcome to 1979 studio in Nashville to produce and engineer their next set of singles. Mara is an analog phenom, and teaches classes on how to use his classic tape machines. Megan & Shane went into the studio and recorded live, straight to tape, with no overdubs with Third Man Records artist Lillie Mae (fiddle), Craig Smith (electric guitar), Brett Johnson (bass) who was a touring member of hip hop act Atmosphere, and Nick Larsen (drums).
“Oh Hell” is working class, three-chord, classic country magic. It has that fun and catchy quality of feeling like you’ve lived with this song your whole life, even on the first listen. It’s a collectivist take on when times get tough financially. “Working hard trying to pay the rent / Don’t make enough for the money we spend / Never ahead, always behind / Just want a piece of the pie that’s mine.” They originally wrote this song shortly after they started dating in Minnesota, but the hard times that covid brought made the song feel relevant again.
“We wrote this while I was going through my divorse,” says Shane, “and now after the move and getting reestablished… even with this next album, it’s like how are we going to pay for this? I was thinking about John Mellencamp’s ‘Pink Houses’ a lot while we were getting this song together.”
“We both grew up in working class homes,” says Megan. “Sometimes it was hard to provide. We bonded over having a strong work ethic and the belief that you can make anything happen. We still believe in the American dream. We’re dreamers.”
“Put Me Down” imagines Megan & Shane back in an older generation, where minor bickering was thought of as a love language in the same vein as Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty’s “You’re the Reason our Kids are Ugly.” It’s an adorable country ballad that’s equal parts twang and sass that demands that you get on the dance floor and start two-stepping, especially when the dueling solos of hard-pickin’ guitar and fiddle kick in.
“This song always reminds me of my grandma,” says Megan. “She was always so cute. She’d make ice cream for my grandpa and tease him by asking ‘do you want nuts on it Gabe?’ He didn’t like nuts. We’d go visit her with Shane’s guitar and we’d play and sing for her. She said ‘you’re getting married,’ and here we are.”
Megan & Shane have already begun recording their next full LP with Grammy-winning engineer Brandon Bell (Brandi Carlile, The Highwomen, Alison Krauss) and a whole new cast of all-star players.
“It was nice to make some lighthearted music with ‘Oh Hell’ and ‘Put Me Down,’” says Megan, “as Daughter of Country was a sad album that we bared our souls on, and this next record is also very introspective. We’re back dealing with our mommy/daddy issues.”
“We have lots of shows booked, and even more on the horizon,” says Shane. “Nashville has been very welcoming to us. We’re excited to build a real home here.”