Interview: Caylee Hammack Tends to Her Heart on ‘Bed of Roses’

Country artist Caylee Hammack surrenders to sadness and embraces growth on her brand-new album and novel of the same name, ‘Bed of Roses,’ a deeply personal exploration of heartbreak, healing, and the wisdom gained along the way.

Stream: ‘Bed of Roses’ – Caylee Hammack

Caylee Hammack has never been one to rush the process, and her long-awaited sophomore album proves that good things take time.

With Bed of Roses (out March 7^th via Capitol Records), the Georgia-born country artist leans into the traditional country sounds that first shaped her, crafting a record that feels both deeply personal and timeless.

It’s a marked shift from her glossier debut, whose R&B and pop elements gave it a more ‘modern country’ feel. Bed of Roses, on the other hand, recalls the sounds of Bobby Gentry, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Hammack even reimagines The Highwaymen’s song, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” with her “Mamas.” Hammack’s songwriting has also grown, something she attributes to her writing an accompanying book of the same name, where each chapter is about a song on the album.

Bed of Roses - Caylee Hammack — Bed of Roses – Caylee Hammack

Hammack’s debut album If It Wasn’t For You came out as COVID hit in 2020, and like many artists, she felt like all that potential and possibility had been extinguished in an instant.

Born and raised in the small town of Ellaville, Georgia, Hammack taught herself to sing and play guitar as a teenager. At age 18, she received a scholarship to go to Nashville-based Belmont University, but turned it down for a boy she was in love with, and whom the song “Small Town Hypocrite” is about:

And that scholarship was a ship that sailed
When I chose you and daddy gave me hell
I made myself into someone else
just to love you, damn I loved you
Took all my plans and I put ’em in a box
Phantom pains for the wings I lost
Had me circling rings in the catalogs
For seven years and you never got the hint

If you haven’t heard the song, we suggest you sit down with a box of tissues. Hammack tells the story of that kind of naïve love you can only experience as a young person. “Small Town Hypocrite” showed Hammack’s prowess as a songwriter and vocalist, and in my opinion, it’s the stand-out track on her debut.

They say it takes your whole life to write your first record, and only a year to write your second. In Hammack’s case, she took five years, and in her mind, that was the best decision.

Co-produced by Hammack alongside Dann Huff and John Osborne of The Brothers Osborne, Bed of Roses has been a long time coming for her fans, but Hammack has been working on it one way or another in those intervening years. Whereas her debut was angry, passionate, and had a sadness that was like fresh like a wound, Bed of Roses is the older sister: Calmer, accepting, and sad, yet with a melancholic twinge that comes to life on songs like “No I Ain’t,” “Oh Kara,” and “Tumbleweed Men.”

Atwood Magazine met Caylee Hammack one afternoon in New York. She was sporting a beautifully knitted cardigan covered in handstitched yellow roses, her fiery red hair tucked behind her ears.

Hammack joked, “I spent too much money on it to not wear it!” We talked about her sophomore record, the accompanying book of the same name, and the importance of learning to love yourself before trying to love anyone else.

— —

:: stream/purchase Bed of Roses here ::

:: connect with Caylee Hammack here ::

— —

A CONVERSATION WITH CAYLEE HAMMACK

Atwood Magazine: Thank you for agreeing to speak with us! I've been wanting to interview you for a while. I loved your debut album, If It Wasn’t for You. It was so different to a lot of country music coming out at that time. Your new album is very different to your previous record. You’ve said you wanted to return a traditional country sound, as you felt like the first record was maybe slightly too pop, a bit too polished. I’ve listened to both records side-by-side – If It Wasn’t For You feels like a young sadness, whereas Bed of Roses is more about accepting of the sadness, rather than fighting against it.

Caylee Hammack: I’m getting better at finding the blessings within the things that I may see as heartbreak loss, you know, the cursed moment of my life, wondering why it’s happening. It’s nice to be kind of be on the other side of it.

I’ve had five years to really come to terms with some of the heartbreaks I’ve experienced and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Being able to look back and find the silver linings or see that some of hurricanes I’ve through have helped me dramatically, so I tried to translate that into the record because I think that at least when I’m hurting, it’s being able to sing along to a sad song that is somehow similar to the situation I’m in. The record has some type of melancholy with optimism just twisted into the sad. That’s the stuff that gets me through. I’m a I’m a little bit of a melodrama addict, I guess.

I can’t believe it’s been five years since your last album. Wow!

Caylee Hammack: I had a Wile E. Coyote moment just because we were on cloud nine, you know, I was touring every single weekend, two to three nights; I was doing radio, press and media, and it just felt like we were on this roller coaster and then we went off the tracks. I kind of insulated and isolated in 2020, whether by choice or forced to during that time and I wrote a lot, I learned a lot about myself.

I learned a lot about my garden too. It kept me truly. I know this sounds silly, but gardening and the birds in my yard that came every time I whistled and filled the bird feeder, that kept me going. I was obsessed with nature at that time because it was the only place I felt comfort. We could only go on one walk a day, so it would mean something.

It’s one of those things that I’m grateful for it because I think I needed to grow something. I got to grow these songs organically. I wasn’t really rushed. I’ve always heard that you have your entire life to write your first album, then you’ve got a year to write the next, and I got five years.

I always foolheartedly believe that an artist is not supposed to break or make it big until they have the right songs and enough songs to look back on. I always joke that I love finding artist on the second or third album because then I don’t have like a four-song EP that I’m gonna wear out within the a few months or something. I can go back and dive through their discography and I get to know them better.

I’m hoping that by getting to do a second album, thankfully not in a pandemic, I can get to know my fans better and they can get to know me because they can see where I’ve been and where I am now.

That's a good perspective to have on it. I know from your social media gardening is a big passion for you. You've called this album Bed of Roses; did nature inspire this album?

Caylee Hammack: Very much so. I always say, life is a bed you make, you can decide who you let in it, and you can decide who you kick out of it, but you can make it up or you can leave it messy. You get to make every day either heaven or hell for yourself by your choices, even when life throws things at you, you have the choice to try and look on the positive side.

I’m just obsessed with nature. I love growing things. I love learning how to grow things and I love organic farming and I’m someone that loves permaculture. I have all of my roses in between my peas and my corn and my squash. I have everything kind of growing together. A lot of plants actually complement one another that we don’t know about, and I think being able to grow something, to put a seed in the ground and pour your time, patience and love and care into it, and then see something grow and prosper.

For those five years, the only music I made was co-writing on friends’ records or singing vocals behind the scenes, and as much as I loved that, it didn’t fully complete me the way a full album did, so I loved that I could retreat to my garden during that time.

When did you start writing for this record?

Caylee Hammack: Before 2018, and I returned to it in 2020. We revised some things, and I realised there was something special there. There are songs that sometimes get stuck in a folder of, ‘it doesn’t fit this project or that project’, but the song is truly me and I need to put it out.

“Breaking Dishes” came around like that. There is another one on the record, “The Pot and The Kettle,” which was written in 2020-21. Some of them are more recent. “Bed of Roses” came to be one of the last ones I wrote for the album.

I went in looking at the songs I wanted to create. I knew I wanted the feeling of the record to be a bed of roses, and as someone who has waited – I’m 30 now and I’ve waited my whole life for a man to bring me roses, not just on a holiday, but because he solely he thought of me, and the whole time I could have just grown my own!

And now that’s what I’m doing. I wanted to try and create something that had a little silver lining. I had to learn the hard way of how to love myself more than I give love to someone I met a few months ago. You know?

I had to learn how to live with me and tending my garden tended me. I’m restoring my house by hand myself, building, woodworking, building shelves and putting in stair railings. It heals me because I feel as if I’m working on the inside of me. I’m working on my heart and my soul when I invest in myself.

I think I’m finally at a point, you know, as someone who, right now I’m in a relationship that is the sturdiest and best man I’ve ever met in entire life.

It’s beautiful to get to go back and share these songs and go, ‘hey, there’s a positive side of it, you can feel that way and one day you’re going to be happy and you’re gonna be able to laugh about that heartbreak that you went into the foetal position when you played it for your best friend after writing it.’

What made you decide to write a book alongside the album?

Caylee Hammack: I was 13, and long before I ever thought I could be a musician, I started writing a book. I think I got to page either 73 or 65, and then at 15, I started the next book and that was the same. I just remember that this folder was kept of these two books I started at this young age, and I gave up at some point because something in me told me, ‘You won’t never be able to write this book’, you know? Like ‘why are you doing this? You’re wasting your time on this.’ I hate that.

They’re somewhere on a laptop that I can’t turn on anymore, but I keep it in case maybe I can save them one day and look back and laugh.

It was so cool to get to write a book for me. I try to put a silver lining into my songs, even the sad ones, and I finally got to write a happily ever after, and it felt wonderful.

I wanted to write something that when women or girls read it, they realise that she needs to listen to her gut, because when she listens to her gut, she makes the right decisions and when she doesn’t, she walks down the wrong paths. I think that’s the one thing I really wanted to push forward, is listen to yourself, especially in moments of love and trying to figure out love.

Every single chapter is one of the songs and that was a really cool thing, because as someone who loves Easter Eggs, oh man, it opened up a whole other world. I have a song on the record called “Cleopatra” and Chapter 6 is also called Cleopatra. In the Cleopatra chapter, I tell the story behind the song through the character talking to one of her friends and that was a cool little tie-in I got to do. I’m so excited for people to listen to the album and read the book and put together the little pieces that I’ve laid out in there for them to find and enjoy.

Did you find it easier to write a book, or was it just a different?

Caylee Hammack: It’s funny, it was a significant difference but at the same time it was… I get three minutes and 30 seconds normally to tell my story, that’s what they always tell you as a staff writer to aim for, or less, that would be even better, you know? But instead, I have up to 300 pages, and it just allowed me to really dive into narrative and dialogue.

The cool thing was I noticed I was listening to people more. Instead of putting on my sound isolating headphones and trying to create silence.

When I have silence, my brain wants to make something. It is desperate. It is annoying and aggravating. If you just want to sit still, I have to have something constantly running in my mind to just keep my brain from making chatter.

So, I started taking my headphones off a lot more and listening to people talk and the smallest little things that people would say, the smallest colloquialism we would say, I would sit there and go ‘oh, that’s how you express that feeling’.

I told my boyfriend I was like, you know, this is not the last book I’m gonna write. I’m gonna write another book. We, Carolyn Brown and I, went into it knowing that it normally takes a year at least, and we only had two and a half months, as I wanted it to come out with the record.

Wow, that's amazing. Only two and a half months.

Caylee Hammack: I sat in my house in front of my fireplace, and I wrote for eight to ten hours a day, and it was it was great.

I looked around and I realised I had a hoarder house *laughs*. I would get a package, and I just sit it on the ground and go back, you know? I’d cook dinner, put the dish in the seat, go back because the deadline fast approaching. I was like, ‘I can’t overthink it and I can’t sleep too long, we gotta get this going.’ It feels so good it’s almost in people’s hands.

One of the tracks that I really love is “Tumbleweed Men.” Can you talk about a bit about that song?

Caylee Hammack: It’s so fun to sing. I was listening to Mama Cass and there was a little trill and please don’t let the good life pass you by, and it was so beautiful, and I had started kind of trying to pick something out.

I went into a therapy session, and I was talking about an extremely emotionally unavailable man. God bless him, you know? He just was emotionally unavailable for me, which was a godsend in the end, but at the time did not feel like it, and I had my claws in. I was, ‘please love me’, you know?

I was telling my therapist about it, and he cut me off as I’m saying, ‘oh, but he’s a good guy, he’s just a little confused, he just doesn’t know what he wants in life’. And, he said, “you gotta learn how to let go of the tumbeleweed men. They’re not gonna catch root, and you’re supposed to have someone that wants to take root, and if you keep chasing these, you’re just gonna keep running from when the right man comes along that wants to settle down and make those routes with you”, and it was true. I was I was running after it, and I realised that I have to realise that tumbleweeds are supposed to pass through the scenery of my life, and I’ll watch them fade into the sunset.

That’s beautiful. It’s a very visual song and the bit at the end where the screen door opens, and you say, “And years from now, you’ll hear the screen door slam, and wonder if it’s him, but it’ll only be the wind.” It’s so heartbreaking. It also has a very ‘70s sound to the song. When I was listening, I kept thinking of Carole King and Joan Baez, but of course, Bobby Gentry. The song “No I Ain’t” feels like a twin of “Tumbleweed Men.” It’s the song where you mention your therapist and say, “for once my therapist would be proud of me” for having boundaries.

Caylee Hammack: We were listening to a lot of Bobby Gentry. John Osborne and I were talking about Bobby Gentry and really before we had that conversation, I didn’t realise how many cool sounds she had. We definitely leaned into the ‘70s feeling. I’m really glad you pointed that out.

I had many reasons why I picked Bed of Roses as the title, but life is about learning how to appreciate the bloom of the flower and learn how to respect it enough to grab it in the right places and not cut yourself on the thorns.

I think that as a woman there is a skill and a divine gift that we can give ourselves when you are able to blossom and grow and allow yourself to bloom in the right garden, with the right gardener helping take care of your heart. Also knowing that you can have healthy boundaries and that’s the thorns that keep you safe from unwanted pests or the unwanted things coming into your life. There’s something beautiful about this savageness and the sensualness of roses.

Can you talk about how you recorded the album with John Osborne and Dan Huff? Did you record it in one session or was it in segments?

Caylee Hammack: When John (Osborne) and I got together it was a concentrated cluster of time. When Dan (Huff) and I got together it was the same. There was a space in the middle where I was starting up my Sirius XM show and I was really dedicated to that, and then I started diving into writing and a lot of the writing in that period were the songs I brought in to John.

It’s taken five years to get here, but I am grateful for every single year because I feel I needed it.

Getting in with Dan helped me become more of the artist I needed to be. Artists find themselves in every song they ever write, and they ever produce, and then you find yourself even more when you play them every single night. There’s a continual growth in the process of that change.

I can tell I learned so much. It’s more so before and after of myself as a writer, as a musician, as an artist, and also a producer on things. I got to learn so much from both of them. I was changed in between both of those segments, and I think getting those four songs in with Dan really helped me start homing in on where the album goes, and then I was able to write and really focus in on, ‘how else do I want to tell this story?’

I want to talk about the past ten years of finding myself because how many women and men are going through these same feelings and emotional processes of finding themselves and trying to find good love.

It it’s been a very transformational album for me. I’m so grateful for it. I hope someone else feels the feeling I had making it.

— —