Taking a Walk Nashville. Hi everyone, this is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville. And here with me today is Georgia native, Kaley Hammack. She has built a reputation for bold songwriting and powerhouse vocals, earning nearly 275 million global streams and winning an ACM award for musical event of the year for fold arounds and fell in love with Miranda Lambert. Her sophomore album, Better Roses, has been praised by Rolling Stone and Billboard as one of the best country releases of 2025, and she's taken the story telling even further with a romance novel inspired by the album co-written with bestselling author, Caroline Brown. She shared stages with legends like Stevie Nicks, Reba, Eric Church. In this fall, she'll be joining Brooks and Dunn on their neon moon tour. We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Nashville podcast. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your host, singer, songwriter, Sarah Harrelson. Kaley, thank you so much for being here today with me. So many exciting things are happening with you. Yeah, and also I'm excited to be here because we kind of have a full circle of, we met each other, I feel like when neither of us had much going on, you know, and now look at us, we're here at CRS, we're doing the thang. I know, yeah, it's probably been about like 10 years ago when I met you during CMA Fest through another promoter here in town, and I remember you were singing on Broadway, and it's just so much fun to see your career journey over the past 10 years. Now I go down there and I just drink and listen to the bands. I don't have to work anymore. Right, yeah. Oh yeah, it's been so fun to see that now. And you know, you went from Broadway to now sharing stages with artists like Stevie Nicks and Reba. Is there a moment from one of these shows that have really stuck with you? Oh yeah. I got a call on a Tuesday that they needed me to open up for Stevie Nicks in Atlantic City on a Thursday night, and so it was a quick turnaround, but when Stevie Nicks, when her manager calls and says, Stevie needs you to open for her, you show up, you know. And so we came in there and we played a sold out show, and it was just one of those situations where I didn't know that she had come out to watch my soundcheck until afterwards, and that really shocked me, that stunned me, but it was a moment as she was performing, she was singing landslide, and I just bawled side stage with my band. We all cried together because it's just a full circle kind of situation, I feel like, especially as a young female artist, when you get to open up for someone that you never even knew you would ever get to meet or even see in concert, you know, from the nosebleeds one night, that's all I would hope for with Stevie Nicks, but she was kind enough to remember my name and make sure to make time to talk to me after the show and encourage me, and you just, it's just some moments like that that you think back to what would a 13 year old me say if I told her this and she would think I'd be a big fat liar, so I'm just still kind of in awe of the Stevie Nicks shows we did. Yeah, what a beautiful and humbling moment, and you know, you've also won ACM musical event of the year with Miranda Lambert, who pulled around and fell in love. What do you remember about being part of that collaboration with Miranda? Oh, it was so cool. It was the first time I'd ever got to hang out with some of those girls, and I owe Miranda so much credit because she didn't have to do that, you know, she didn't have to bring all of us together and rally us together to sing, and then pay to produce it and put it out, you know, under her name. She really did a lot for us because in that time, I really got to get close with Ashley McGride. I got close to Miranda, I got close to Toneal, and the other women that sang on it, and it just, I remember there was a moment that day that, I'm a huge Miranda Lambert fan just because of what she stands for and how kind she is to all the young female artists that I know, but she, I had went to pick up my purse, I was about to walk out, her and Ashley were playing songs with Jay Joyce there in his studio, Jay had produced both of their records, and so, you know, as the young artist, I see two older artists that, you know, they never have free time, they never can just hang out with their friends, they're always on the road nonstop, and I thought, I'll just excuse myself and leave so that they can have more one-on-one time without some young artists they don't know kind of hanging about, and as I'm picking up my purse, Miranda looked at me and she goes, well, where are you going? And I said, I'm just going home, and she goes, well, why are you going then? And I said, I was just going to give y'all time to hang out. She goes, no, you're one of us, put your purse down, we're listening to music. And I just, I think that moments like that are really important when you're kind of new in this industry, and I don't know, I think Miranda Lambert is a huge champion for women in this industry, and Ashley McGride is too, and all the women that I met through that song, it's just been, it's just crazy to even be able to call them by their first names. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm very grateful for them. It's so wonderful to have that community too. Very much so. The community in country music, and especially around the artists, the female artists that I have in my realm, I feel like those are some of the most valuable friendships I've ever had, and I'm just so grateful. They're the ones that keep me sane and keep me from shaving my head, moving to another country. Right. And your sophomore album, Better Roses, that was named one of the best albums of 2025 by both Rolling Stone and Billboard. What does it mean to see that level of recognition for this record? Unreal. And it really, it was a really cool situation because I had just left my label. I had tried to get out a few years before, and they wouldn't allow me out, which, you know, I get it, it's business. But a few years after that, finally, Mike Harris came into play at the label, and I just, I finally was able to get my wish and my want of being out because I had noticed a lot of my friends, their careers were doing better once they left the label that they were a small fish at. When they were finally able to own their own masters and own their own merch and really have true control versus having to go through, you know, when you have 11 chefs in the kitchen, it takes a long time to sometimes get approval on things, and by the time you get approval, the magic is gone, the moment is gone. And so being able to finally walk away and be able to do it indie has just made such a difference in my life. Also, creatively, it's been really spectacular. So being able to walk away from that, turn around and wake up one morning and see articles where Billboard and Rolling Stone are saying it's one of the best ones of the year. It was such a validating moment and a comforting moment of, yes, like when I put my mind to it and I put out the music that I love and I think is important, other people are hearing it too. And yeah, it really did a lot for my heart and kind of gave me even more option going into this new kind of realm where I have full creative control, not just mostly creative control. Yeah, and that could be a scary thing stepping out onto your own, but I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, everyone sees the glam of signing with a big label, but for newer artists, that can be tough to break out and have creative control. So I know it's scary, but it must be beautiful being able to do that at the same time and a big relief. And I think if there was an artist before me that were texting me, encouraging me and saying, hey, my life got better when I left, those moments were really like what helped me. I think sometimes, I mean, for anyone listening, say you're not in the industry, I hope that you take something from this. Sometimes when you are able to take off that security blanket, that safety that you blanketed yourself with, you realize it was almost suffocating you in certain instances. And a lot of, I think, creativity comes from stepping out into the unknown. So if you're listening to this and this made you think of something in your life, I hope this is the push to get you to make that big jump and make that big leap. Yeah, I love that so much. And alongside your latest album, Better Roses, you decided to release a romance novel type to the songs with Caroline Brown. How did your idea to create a book that mirrors the album come about? Yeah, well, mirror the album, that's exactly the right phrase for it, the right term for it. I decided the track listing and I'd already sent in the approval for it when the idea and the concept for the book came to be. And I realized I could not change around the track listing, which was perfect because it gave me a certain set of parameters in which to create in. And where, you know, when you go to write a book, well, what are you going to write it about? And so what I did as the concept of the book is this album, Better Roses, is more of a sad song, centric album. If you listen from top to bottom, the way that that album plays, you get my story, you get my experiences in the past, say, 10 years of my life. But if you take every single song on that record in the track listing, you reverse it, every single song is a chapter. And it tells the story of Sam the protagonist. So if you need something that ventures into the heartfelt, more sad, melancholy side, then you can go and listen to just the record from top to bottom. If you want to be able to end the day with a little sweet treat of a happily ever after where things work out and things are going to be okay, then you can read the book. I think that in a world where we don't get control over anything, you know, and anything we think we have control over, a lot of that is a mirage. I think that being able to write a book that, for me, that's what romance is, is it's not Nicholas Sparks. I ain't killing anyone's grandma in one of my books. I'm not going to make you weep too hard at the end. I love a book where you know everything's going to work out okay for that person. And I just wanted to be able to kind of give that sweet treat assurance, I guess, beside the album. And also, I don't know if you grew up doing this, but I was a fan fiction girlie. I was the Wattpad kid. And anytime my favorite character would die in a book or in a movie, I would then go read fan fiction that someone wrote that they lived a good life and they went on to continue whatever. And every single time my favorite fan fictions would have one song at the top of every chapter and it'd be like, go listen to this song as you read this chapter. So I got to kind of accomplish what 13 year old me used to love in fan fiction is every single out or every single chapter has a song that goes with it. That's so cool. So it's a listening and reading experience with Michael. Yeah, I love how that's correlated and Dolly did the same thing with her run Rose Run. That was really where the idea came from. Well, not that the idea came from, but that was what assured me, oh wait, you can do this. Someone has done this already. And so having Carolyn Brown on it too, the first book that I wrote, I knew I was not going to be able to do it as quick as I needed to. We only had two and a half months and they told me going into it. They said, this is a year and a half project normally, but you have two and a half months for everything. So what's funny is as a perfectionist, I think it's humorous that there's typos, there's spelling errors and grammatical errors in that book. Younger me, that would drive me up the wall, but older me realizes that I accomplished something in such a small amount of time that I'm just immensely proud of. And I can only grow from here. You know, you got to put out your first book and maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but you keep continuing and your skill just grows as you grow. And so I'm already working on the next book and I'm really enjoying it. That's great. Yeah, and for your first book, you got to work with Carolyn Brown. What was it like working with her? Unreal. She heard what I was doing and she reached out, said she was willing to come in and help me figure it out. Cool. She's just, it's, I don't even know how to explain it. I'm stuttering because I'm in such awe of Carolyn Brown as a person. This woman writes, nonstop, all her brain is is a vessel for creativity and ideas and storytelling. And it just was so impressive to work with her. What I kind of had her as was this grandmotherly figure that echoed the grandmotherly figure in the book. The book is really centered around more so than the love story itself. It's initially figured around this one woman named Sam, this older woman, Kathleen, who takes her under her arm or her wing and helps her figure out who she is and how to be that person in this world. And that's exactly what Carolyn Brown started doing, you know. She agreed to come on and listen to my idea and read what I've been writing and she connected with it and she helped me bring it to what it is and gave me a lot of encouragement. She said this next book, I challenge you, write it by yourself because I truly believe you can. And now, now that I'm here, I can help you edit. I can help, you know, guide you, but I believe that you can do it slowly and I think you need to do it at least once. And then you're always going to want to write. And it's so true. I remember, Sarah, I remember the day after I finished writing it. I woke up and I made coffee and I went and put my reading glasses on to sit down and keep writing and I realized there was no more to write. And I remember crying because for the first time ever, I missed the characters I had written. Every day I'm writing a new song about some new character or person in my mind or someone I love, but that was months of getting to create these characters to the point I knew them so intimately. They felt like they were my friends and then I couldn't finish their story anymore. So that's the coolest thing of writing the next book is I'm just continuing their story a little bit further. Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited to hear about the next book and I've definitely listened to The Better Roses album. So now I got to do the do the book and see how it feels. Yeah, you can give me your address. I can send you a book. Yeah, yeah, I would love to read it. So in addition to being an author and your new music this fall, you are joining the Neon Moon Tour with Brooks and Dunn. Are you excited to be hitting the road with them? Unreal. For people listening right now, I have my Brooks and Dunn and I'm Jack it all. I love it. I had to wear it. I have been wearing it constantly, chronically, since the date's announced, but it's such a cool full circle. I've played so much Brooks and Dunn in my shows. Like one of my first big tours was opening up for Luke Bryan and I used to play something country. And so it's a really cool moment to get to go on the road with these guys and see them perform and see how they work and get to know their crew and stuff. One of my favorite things is just wandering around backstage and talking to people about their roles on the teams and how all the different roles are different, you know? But every single person is another limb, another organ in the anatomy of keeping the show going on the road. And it's just cool. It's fascinating. So I know I'm probably going to annoy a bunch of people on that crew because I ask a lot of Dunn questions, but you only learn by asking Dunn questions. Yeah. Well, especially when you grew up listening to them, it's so iconic to be able to share a tour with them. I want to know everything. Yeah. So I'm very grateful for them having me out. Yeah. People can grab tickets for that upcoming tour. You've also performed internationally and we have a lot of listeners overseas on Taking a Walk Nashville. How do you think audiences overseas respond differently to country music or how they have embraced country music? So anyone listening from anywhere in the world outside of the U.S., I would love for you to come up to me next time I'm over there and tell me your thoughts on this. Because I feel like all of us artists, we have the same answer. It is they care more. They listen more adamantly. They listen more intently. They, in no disrespect to any of our U.S. listeners, but what I mean is it's in a way that I can't explain unless you've seen it. First time I went on stage in Berlin, it was my first time ever being on the stage outside of the U.S. And I started to my song and they're very, very quiet. And I finished my song and the last note rings out and they're still very, very quiet. And I thought, oh no, they hate me here. I'm not their cup of tea. And two or three seconds of silence rung out after the song had finished before they just erupted in applause. And what I've learned is, and tell me if I'm wrong, this is why I'm prompting this to any of you when I see you over the next year. We're coming to Norway. We're coming back to Germany. We're coming back to Scotland and many other different places. But that will be announced in a few months. I want to know how y'all see it different because I feel as if you have more of a focused belief and passion for country music, then maybe you get, say, in the U.S. where it's everywhere, you know? I think that there's a sacredness almost to country music over there and I feel it with you. I feel the magic that y'all create when you give space for the music to exist. And so it's one of my favorite things in the world. Last year I went over and I played two different little small headlining stuff. It was in Amsterdam and it was just me on a guitar for 90 minutes and 120 people showed up. And I didn't know if anyone would show up, but 120 people showed up. They stayed through the show and almost every single person bought merch. And I got to hug all these necks and get to know people and people brought me gifts and little things and trinkets that I still have. It almost sounds silly. I have almost a shine of all the different things that fans have brought me along the way. Little mementos that meant something to them and now mean something to me. And I just feel so overwhelmingly loved and accepted over there in a way that maybe as a foreigner you don't always feel. And I think it's the love for country music that does that. So shout out to anyone outside the U.S. that's listening and in the U.S. Come out and go on this U.K. and Europe tour with me. Let's have some fun. I love it. Yeah. We can look forward to your upcoming shows. Definitely something to be said for the listening experience in Europe. Kaylee, I have one last question for you. Since we are on Taking a Walk in Nashville, do you have a favorite place that you like to take a walk in Nashville? Oh, in Nashville. I have many places around the world. But in Nashville it would probably be Edwin Warner. I have a song called Forged in the Fire that came out, I guess, in 2020. But it was about a house fire in 2017 that I went through. And I had just recently signed as a staff writer in 2017. I was on a writer's retreat when what the fire chief said was potentially a squirrel got into the attic and shoot something and the house caught fire. This little tiny house that I had, it was in the middle of this nature park. Edwin and Percy Warner here in Nashville. And instead of paying for a gym membership, me and my dog would go hiking every day. And I say hiking because it is a lot of rolling hills and stuff. But me and my little 12-pound dog, we would go 4, 5, 6, 7 miles a day. And having that time outside is just a special, special thing. And that little area of Nashville, in West Nashville, if you've ever been, it is something special. You know, you really can be out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of town. And so if you want a good walk in Nashville, I had to Edwin and Percy Warner Park and have a good time. But make sure you put a location like a pin where your parking lot is. There's like 54 parking lots. Yeah, I would get lost out there without my husband's done those trails so many times. So I always rely on him, but that's definitely my favorite park in Nashville. It's so great. Great hiking out there. Yeah. Well, Kaylee, thank you so much for being on Tick and Walk Nashville today. I am looking forward to all of your upcoming projects and shows. Thank you, sir. You too. Good to see you. Thanks for listening to Taken a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. Please check out our other shows produced by Buzz Night Media Productions. Comedy Saved Me and Music Saved Me, hosted by Lynn Hoffman, and Taken a Walk, hosted by yours truly, Buzz Night. All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our part of the iHeart Podcast Network.
