Name: Hailey Whitters with special guest Aaron Raitiere
Start: 2022-03-25T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Eddie's Attic

Hailey Whitters with special guest Aaron Raitiere

Eddie's Attic

Hailey Whitters at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, GA!

Hailey Whitters

Hailey Whitters at Eddie's Attic - TWO SHOWS!

Aaron Raitiere

Hailey WhittersHailey Whitters was closing in on her first decade in Nashville, that mythologized milestone when artists are supposed to finally start reaping the fruits of their labor. But despite 10 years of hard work, the singer-songwriter still hadn't had her breakout moment and, fed up with pushing the boulder uphill, she took a step back to reassess."I hit my 'fuck it' point," says Hailey. I felt like I was watering myself down to try and fit in with what this town was doing, and I was looking for Nashville to define my happiness. When I quit doing that I was able to dig into why I am on this journey in the first place: to create music that I love on my own terms. And that's when I wrote 'Ten Year Town.'"At that moment, the native of Shueyville, Iowa, matured into the artist she was supposed to be: a probing, fearless songwriter who is more concerned with the busted and broken way things are than the pretty and polished way things are painted to be."Everything is so glossy and so perfect in society," she says, "especially for women, who are getting fillers and changing our face shape. Every single thing is so tweaked to perfection that it's boring. I'm craving something that is raw, real and imperfect."She addresses all of that in "Ten Year Town," the song that at long last identified Hailey as one of Nashville's elite songwriters and artists. Written with Grammy nominee Brandy Clark, the ballad takes a stark look at what happens when life doesn't work out as planned and how rejection can ultimately lead to empowerment. "I didn't come this far, to only go this far," sings Hailey.While it's a song of frustration laid bare, Hailey isn't bitter or jaded. Rather, she's encouraged and inspired — "This next song could turn it all around" goes the final verse of "Ten Year Town" — looking ahead to the release of her new album The Dream, a project that she's splitting up into two acts. The first half, titled "The Days," looks at where she came from, while the second part, also called "The Dream," explores where she's going."This is the first record that feels 100 percent me. It's a time capsule of my time in Nashville and coming to terms with dreams and what they mean to you," says Hailey, who fully funded the project herself. Along with waiting tables, she sold a guitar and dipped into her savings, money that she had made from touring and stashed away. She also leaned heavily on royalties she received from writing songs for other artists, like Alan Jackson, Martina McBride and Little Big Town, who cut her "Happy People." (Hailey's ebullient version appears on "The Dream.") With money secured, she turned to BMG's Jake Gear to produce the album and Logan Matheny to engineer and mix.Taken as a whole, The Dream is a collection of 12 tracks, all but two — renditions of Chris Stapleton's "The Devil Always Made Me Think Twice" and Brent Cobb's "Loose Strings" — written by Hailey and a roster of A-list women collaborators including Lori McKenna, Hillary Lindsey, Nicolle Galyon and Brandy Clark. She sings of getting day drunk to medicate a heartbreak in "Red, Wine &amp; Blue"; taps into an Eighties Jackson Browne vibe on the marvelous "Dream, Girl"; and romanticizes her Midwest upbringing in the swooning "Heartland." Elsewhere, she inhabits a tough but secretly vulnerable character in "All the Cool Girls"; laments the worst kind of person to date in "The Faker"; and shares second-hand life lessons in the stunning "Janice at the Hotel Bar," written with McKenna."Janice at the Hotel Bar" ties the entire album together, mixing bits of Hailey's family wisdom (her grandmother was a font of advice, like "Have a glass of red a day") with the nuggets of the titular Janice ("Vodka over dessert because sugar goes straight to your hips"), a real-life 80-something woman who preached her worldview to a friend of McKenna's."I said to Lori, 'Let's write a song about the things that a mother would tell her daughter as she went through life,'" says Hailey. "I've been dying to have a story song and I love that ours is about a woman speaking to another woman."Growing up, Hailey often found herself paying attention to influential women — not just in her family, but also on the radio. The Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, Pink and Gillian Welch all helped shape her songwriting. Instead of superficial party songs, Hailey was compelled to dig deeper, writing about personal yet relatable topics on the guitar she received when she was just 14.Back then, she too was dreaming of being on the radio, riding around on a tour bus and performing for thousands of fans. But after hitting that "fuck it" point, Hailey's dream changed. Today, she's fulfilled simply by writing songs and lyrics in which everyone can find themselves. She's committed to making country music in the 21st century accessible to all listeners."Everyone should have a place in a country song," she says. "I'd like to bring open-mindedness and inclusion to the genre."Hailey is also committed to restoring a sense of perspective with The Dream, the follow-up to 2015's Black Sheep. "I feel like there's a very shallow amount of life experience right now in country songs. But country music has always been about real life and transparency, and inviting listeners to come in and share these experiences." In "Living the Dream," the album's last song, she poses a powerful rhetorical question: "Aren't we all down here living the dream?" "We get so consumed with the next achievement and accomplishment that sometimes you forget that you're living right now. And that's what I want listeners to take away from this album and its two parts," Hailey says. "Be happy where you are in the present moment — because your dreams have to be worth it."For Hailey Whitters, The Dream is right now.

Aaron RaitiereWhen a few friends offered to make a debut record on him, Nashville songwriter Aaron Raitiere simply agreed to go along with it. In the four years since that first session for what would become Single Wide Dreamer, the auspicious project has retained its casual charm even as its guest list gradually expanded. Anderson East and Miranda Lambert, who co-produced the album, now appear alongside Nashville musicians like Dave Cobb, Natalie Hemby, Ashley Monroe, and Waylon Payne, as well as Robert Randolph, Foy Vance, and Bob Weir. “I think the record kind of made itself, and that was the vibe I was going with,” Raitiere says. “It was just a bunch of friends getting together trying to help me create something, because they thought I needed a record.” The first sessions took place in East Nashville, where Lambert had just completed work on her album, The Weight of These Wings. Raitiere gave his producers complete creative control, from curating the songs to suggesting arrangements to adding guest vocals. He even rode into the studio with them every day. Two years later, to round out the project, East and Raitiere reunited in RCA Studio A, ultimately ending up with 18 tracks in all and narrowing them down to 10. With a laid-back, speak-singing delivery, “Single Wide Dreamer” immediately conveys Raitiere’s contentment in living a low-key life. And although every song on the album could be considered a love song in its own way, what really ties them together is his observant writing, which is sometimes reflective, sometimes irreverent, but always inspired by his own experiences. For example, “Your Daddy Hates Me” invokes a girlfriend from when he was 18, while “Dear Darlin’” is a searing (and sort of funny) letter to an ex. By focusing on everyday pleasures like sleepy old dogs and ice cold beer, an optimistic tone elevates &quot;For the Birds,&quot; a feel-good tune he wrote with Lambert (who has also recorded a version of it). And even when he&#x27;s ruminating on life&#x27;s inevitable conclusion in &quot;Time Will Fly,&quot; a listener can gather from &quot;Everybody Else&quot; that Raitiere is going to have the most fun he possibly can in the meantime. “These are stories about me. It’s all true,” he says. “It sounds a little different, and I’m shooting more for the storyteller thing than the singer thing, because that’s more what I am.” Raitiere and East first met in a songwriting class at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro about 15 years ago, and East held firm to his promise to record him someday. When East was discovered by esteemed producer Dave Cobb at a writer’s night in Nashville, Raitiere was enlisted to co-write some new material for East’s next album. Consistently satisfied with the results, Cobb then signed Raitiere, who was 30 at the time, to his first publishing deal. The two fledgling musicians forged an even deeper bond in 2015 when Raitiere lost everything in a house fire. East came over a few hours later with an empty tour trailer and saved what they could. Almost immediately they headed out on tour with Sturgill Simpson – with East opening the show and Raitiere selling T-shirts in the lobby. “That was my first taste of the road,” he says. “But it was work. We were in the Northeast in the winter. It also made me realize that he was an artist and a performer, and I was a writer. That was where I really realized that I could sit there and see my songs working. Because it was just my best friend with a guitar, singing to a serious crowd.”Raitiere’s songs have been working ever since. He shared a 2019 Grammy for co-writing “I’ll Never Love Again” with Lady Gaga, Hillary Lindsay, and Natalie Hemby for A Star Is Born. (He co-wrote it in about 30 minutes on his first-ever trip to Los Angeles.) He’s also placed cuts with Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Lori McKenna, the Oak Ridge Boys, Lone Bellow, Randy Rogers Band, Chris Shiflett, Midland, Brent Cobb, Shooter Jennings and more. An avid reader, Raitiere names Edward Abbey, John McPhee, and Delia Owens as among his favorite authors, while musically he cites artists ranging from Raffi to Dave Van Ronk to Too $hort. Among his greatest influences is Shel Silverstein, a master of wordplay and storytelling who established himself as a Nashville songwriter, author, and visual artist. A talented illustrator himself, Raitiere often posts his original sketches to Instagram and hopes to mount an exhibit in Nashville sometime in the future. “I’ve never been great at anything but I’ve always pretty good at everything, I think,” he says. “I’m lucky as hell, too. Once you have some luck in anything, then you start taking it a little more seriously.” Raitiere grew up in Danville, Kentucky, and started learning to play guitar around 12 years old as a way to kill time at his dad’s house after his parents’ divorce. While he was earning a degree in history at Cornell University, a professor who learned of Raitiere’s songwriting told him about MTSU, although it would take a while before Raitiere would enroll in its master’s program for recording. After a dismal six months in Austin, Texas, he languished in North Florida for two years, living with his girlfriend in her sister’s basement and spending his days fishing for catfish under a bridge. Finally he was persuaded to give MTSU a shot. Upon his subsequent move to Nashville he slept in his van, by choice, and struggled for years to get Music Row’s attention until placing multiple songs on East’s major label debut. In 2020, with his own album complete, Raitiere had been anticipating another tour with East -- opening the show instead of selling shirts -- but the pandemic changed that plan. However, the timing now feels right to step out as a solo artist. “I’ve got so many friends that are artists that are doing well, where my music is like theirs, or they’re already singing my song,” he says. “If you want something to work out, you show up for it. I know I’ve got it in me and I think it’s got a shot.”

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Hailey Whitters with special guest Aaron Raitiere

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