Country artist Lillie Mae follows her gut to produce standout new album ‘Other Girls’
Lillie Mae understands intuition.
That rumbling feeling buried deep in yourself, subtly itching — insisting — on which path to take? Yeah, she gets that.
“In my life I trust a lot of signs, I really do,” said the 28-year-old Nashville musician. “If it’s not the right thing, get out as soon as you can.
“Trust your gut, follow your gut.”
But when do you know it’s the right thing? What feeds intuition? For Mae, recording her new album at the historic RCA Studio A on Music Row came with internal reassurance from her country music hero.
“We were recording here, and I had been eyeballing these cars (that have) been parked outside all day. … This 1999 Cadillac, I believe, it was pristine,” she explained. “Come to find out, Dave Cobb was like, ‘Yeah, that’s Jamey Johnson’s car. That’s Waylon’s last car.’ ”
A sign from Jennings offered Mae exactly the comfort she needed.
“For me … that was it.”
The sophomore album
And her intuition paid off. In August, Mae (born Lillie Mae Rische) releases her standout sophomore solo album, “Other Girls.” The tenured session player and songwriter enlisted Americana gold miner Dave Cobb to create a sprawling musical landscape that ventures from traditional western swing to mystic 1960s dark rock.
The 11-track “Other Girls” debuts Aug. 16 on Nashville’s own Third Man Records.
“All the songs on the new album, they definitely … they presented themselves,” Mae jested, laughing. “I didn’t have anything to do with them.” The album opens with “You’ve Got Other Girls for That,” a haunting, eldritch proclamation that introduces Mae with the line “Well, I ain’t your baby, even though I thought I’d be/ I ain’t your only, maybe the only one who thinks that’s so.”
She initially considered calling her album “Backless” — a reaction to a “time in my life where I was really just alone,” she said — but “Other Girls” floated to the surface as a recurring theme in her writing.
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For an example, Mae points toward “At Least 3 in This Room,” where she continues to tackle non-commitment and infidelity by “How many dames do you leave wanting more? ‘Cause I know of at least three in this room.” And there’s “Terlingua Girl,” a cinematic entry into Americana longing that may be her best offering on the record.
“ ‘Other Girls’ just clicked,” she noted. “It made sense.”
At a tender age
Mae’s been honing her craft as a world-class fiddle player since age 3, playing alongside her siblings Frank, Scarlett and Amber-Dawn Rische in a family bluegrass band, Jypsi. (The group cracked the country charts with 2008 single "I Don't Love You Like That.”) She’s performed and recorded extensively with rock ‘n’ roll torchbearer Jack White and supports rock genre legend Robert Plant on the road this fall.
And, still, she’ll gig up to four nights a week — when she can — with her family at Layla’s, the downtown honky-tonk that captures a Lower Broadway from a time before bachelorette parties and pedal taverns.
“If I’m in town and there's no crazy schedule booked up, (expletive) yeah,” she said. “Damn right, I'm gonna be down there playing."
Why? Intuition tells her it’s a damn good place to keep a gig.
“You can be yourself there. You can be whatever you want. There’s no rules on stage.”
Back inside Studio A, Mae penned an album that gambles on genre-less exploration, existing in the space between Americana, country western and melodic psychedelia.
In following her 2017 Jack White-produced Third Man debut, “Forever and Then Some,” Mae offers spiritual, rock-tinged storytelling (“Crisp & Cold”), doubles down on her country roots (“I Came for the Band”) and showcases her expert string composition (“Didn’t I”).
She dips into western swing on “Blue Heart,” a traditional song with an unexpectedly modern origin.
“That song is inspired — it's written about a lonely person — but it’s from the blue heart emoji,” Mae said.
“Other Girls” comes to a crashing close with “Love Dilly Love,” a six-minute vaudevillian experiment that, with spinning, spoken-word vocal layers, pushed Mae into uncharted creativity.
“I was scared to death, and I almost didn’t do it,” she said. “I did all that in the microphone in a control room with the engineers and Dave (Cobb) in the same room. … I was like, ‘How the (expletive) am I gonna do this?’ ”
Working with Dave Cobb
Cobb — who’s produced standout work from Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and others — described the project as an “absolute blast.”
“There’s no walls on this record,” the Grammy Award-winning Cobb said at a listening party for “Other Girls" inside Studio A. “There’s no boundaries. The more we went into uncharted territory, the more everyone was into it.
“That’s such a rare thing to happen in record making.”
Accompanied by her siblings, Mae tracked “Other Girls” last year in nonconsecutive studio blocks. Mae said she would never compare working with White and Cobb (“it’s two completely different things,” she noted), instead offering that the latter created a laid-back atmosphere.
It’s the first Cobb-produced Third Man project in the label’s 10-year Nashville history.
“(He’s got) great ideas,” Mae said. “He’s super easy to work with, I would say.”
Mae supports the new release this summer on tour with White’s re-formed rock supergroup The Raconteurs and continues her campaign this fall with Plant, whom she first met on tour in South America and later gigged with for one show in St. Louis.
Plant’s overall kindness, not his Led Zeppelin legacy, first drew Mae to working with him, she said.
“Life’s too short,” she said. “Nobody needs to be walking around treating people like garbage.”
And, after Mae finished her time on the road, you might wander down Lower Broadway on a Sunday night and hear her kicking out a sharp set from the Layla’s stage. For a musician nearly two decades into a career that’s taken her from dive bars to major labels to Studio A and back again, it’s just what feels right.
“I reckon I’ll be playing there until they blow the place up,” Mae said, laughing.
Reach Tennessean music reporter Matthew Leimkuehler at mleimkuehler@tennessean.com, via phone at 615-259-8286 or on Twitter @mattleimkuehler.
‘Other Girls’ track list
"You've Got Other Girls for That"
"Crisp & Cold"
"I Came for the Band (for Show)"
"Whole Blue Heart"
"How?"
"A Golden Year"
"At Least Three in This Room"
"Some Gamble"
"Didn't I"
"Terlingua Girl"
"Love Dilly Love"
See Lillie Mae on tour
7/26 - Los Angeles - The Greek Theatre*
7/28 - Floyd, Va. - FloydFest
8/10 - Lexington, Ky. - Railbird Festival
8/15 - Brooklyn, N.Y. - Baby's All Right
9/13 – Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada - Harvest Jazz & Blues Fest^
9/17 – Philadelphia – The Mann Center^
9/20 - Indianapolis - Outlaw Music Festival^
9/21 - Louisville, Ky. - Bourbon & Beyond Festival^
9/23 – Clear Lake, Iowa – Surf Ballroom^
9/25 – Moorhead, Minn. – Bluestem Center for the Arts Amphitheatre^
9/27 – Missoula, Mont. – KettleHouse Amphitheater^
9/29 – Spokane, Wash. – First Interstate Center for the Arts^
10/1 – Salt Lake City, Utah – Eccles Theater^
10/3 – Bend, Ore. – Les Schwab Amphitheater^
10/12 - Livingston, Ky. - Moonshiner’s Ball
*with The Raconteurs
^with Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'All the songs on the new album … they presented themselves,' Mae says
