I will never forget the night that this record started to take shape. Jill was playing a round a the Bluebird Cafe here in Nashville, and she played a song I hadn’t heard before. It was called “The Party” and it made me cry big tears picturing her, sitting alone with her newborn, while life was passing her by with no help, no end in sight. After the show, she grabbed my arm and said “I am ready to make a new record, I have a lot to say.” It had been four years since her last record, and my heart was overjoyed.
In the months that followed, we got to work. Jill whittled down the list of album contenders and even came by the office one day to sing all 18 potential songs for me, my staff, and my interns. We ranked them and voted on the ones that should be on the album (I recently found my ranking sheet, and I gave all of them, every single song, a 9 or 10 so I was not much help).
She recorded at the Smoakstack, and brought in the most talented people in Nashville to play. I spent the week sitting on a big leather couch watching the magic happen. I had heard these songs thousands of times but with Todd, Ian, Peter, and Daniel in the room, they took on new life. Thankfully, I had the foresight to ask Jacqueline Justice to take some photos and videos of the sessions, see below.
After they were done recording, Jill brought the record home to her basement studio to start sorting through what they had captured. She decided to bring in friend and brilliant producer, Lucas Morton to help her get the record finished (sidenote: he was so lovely and is so good at what he does, we now manage him! I just needed to keep working with him when this record was done!). The two worked tirelessly to perfect the songs. Each time they sent a rough mix my way I stopped what I was doing, found a decent pair of headphones, and was transported.
With most of these stories for my #10yearsofgoodmusic series, the story stops at the record being finished. But not with Jill Andrews, no. She called me one morning and said “There is more to the story here. I want to do a photoshoot for every single song. Is that crazy?” And I got so excited at the idea of having that much content, I said “No, bring it on.” So I enlisted the help of Fairlight Hubbard (who also did all of the photos and art for Hush Kids and Jill’s 2015 record The War Inside). Over the course of a few months, we did thirteen, yes, thirteen separate photoshoots. It was like a fun scavenger hunt all the time: “Can someone find me a white horse?” “Does anyone have all of the fixings for a Thanksgiving Dinner?” “Can we find 6 children of increasing ages that kind of look like Jill?” “Do we know any tall men that own a tux?” “Will you all come over and make it look like there’s a big party happening?”
And the story doesn’t stop here either (this is why I love working with Jill Andrews). At some point when Jill was about halfway done with photo shoots, she called me and said “I have more to say. I have started writing stories, I think I am going to write a book to go with this album.” She dug in and got to writing, and I dug in and got to figuring out how to publish a book. I spent a few months talking to different publishers, comparing pricing for self-publish options, and found a publisher that was the perfect fit. After Jill was finished writing the publisher started editing and laying out the book. This part I can take no credit for and I need to give a lot of credit to Stephanie Edwards, who at the time was running the record marketing side of my company. Steph spent countless hours working with Jill and the publisher approving layouts and book drafts.
While all of this was taking place, we also built, promoted, and funded a Kickstarter campaign to help with the record marketing. We threw an album and book pre-view party at Eastside Manor for some special donors. I worked with Jill’s agents to plan a 60 city tour around the US and we were starting work on a book tour to coincide*. We rolled out singles with our friends at Tone Tree Music, and the press started rolling in about the songs. I couldn’t have done ANY of it without my fantastic team at the time: Maggie Adams, Madeline Heiskell, and Stephanie Edwards plus some incredible interns. It was a powerhouse team of women that I miss daily! I am getting tired just writing this but… I’m not done yet. There’s a LOT more.
L-R: Maggie Adams, Madeline (Heiskell) DeLuca, Steven Metrejean, Erin Anderson, Jill Andrews, Stephanie Edwards, Kailey Prall, Kennady Newsome at Eastside Manor.
I know that everyone has a story of their plans that were dashed when the pandemic hit in March 2020. After almost two full years of work, Jill’s record and book were slated to come out March 27th, 2020. And by the time we went into lockdown, it was just too late to move the release date. We scrambled and tried to make the best of a crappy situation. Our first big idea: each night the week of release, Jill played through the entirety of one of her previous solo albums, culminating in the release of Thirties on that Friday where she wore the dress from the cover of the album, sang the songs in her living room to her computer, and brought the audience outside for a champagne toast at the end. While we were all working from home, we still needed a place to store a thousand books and a thousand records and we still needed to fulfill the Kickstarter orders. The delivery guys left pallets of merch in the back parking lot of my office, and I went by myself to count them in and put them inside. Jill decided she would play Santa and she drove around town dropping off books and vinyls to all of the in-town orders.
My interns and staff and I created a package shipping schedule. One of us would go to the office by ourselves, start packaging orders, check them off on a list, and then wipe everything down with Clorox, leave the wipes by the back door, and call the next in line to come to the office for the next shift. I am proud to say we got 99% of the Kickstarter orders out the week of release. It was nice to have a goal and something to work towards in all of the confusion. And it was nice to leave the house, if only to go to an empty office.
Despite the setbacks, Thirties did quite well for release week!
We had to cancel the tour dates. In fact, Jill’s sweet agents moved that venue tour a total of 4 times. Jill decided that she still wanted to try to get out and bring some joy to the world and play these songs live, so we spent time coming up with a safe way for her to tour. She got an RV, we found house show hosts with large back yards, and we put Jill on the road for about 30 shows through the summer of 2020. So that there was no confusion, Jill named the tour “Outdoor Spaces and Covered Faces.” Masks were required, folks sat spread out oustide, and boy was that the joy we needed that summer.
This is in my backyard! We had the first one at my house in Nashville to test it out. It was GREAT.
I learned a LOT through the process of putting out Thirties. I learned how to get a book published, I learned the value of a really resilient team, I was reminded of the joy that music can bring when things aren’t looking good. But most of all, I learned that Jill Andrews is a really great business partner because she never stops dreaming about how to make things bigger and better.
* Really fun asterisk here to say: the person at Jill’s publisher that was putting together her book tour was our future employee, Grace! So the whole current team was involved in this one too! I hired her away, she was so good. Whoops.