Tara Thompson is a self-proclaimed “hillbilly from Tennessee.” CMT declared her one of the Next Women of Country. In December, the NECM staff named her one of our 15 Artists to Watch in 2016. After chatting with her last week, I’d double down on all of those and add “real” to her growing list of accolades. Tara, and her music, are as genuine as it comes. Despite being both gorgeous and related to one of country’s biggest stars ever, Tara cut no corners to get to where she is today. Instead of relying on nepotism or looks she instead relied on hard work and talent, which allowed her to stay true to her tom-boy, East Tennessee self.
Thompson moved to Nashville when she turned 18 to go to college. She explained to us in her very straight-forward, unashamed, manner that “Basically I majored in beer pong.” She soon found her way downtown and began playing at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and the other honky tonks. “I just thought, well this is how you do it, you go sing at the bars and Scott Borchetta walks in and offers you a record deal but 6 years doing that, that is definitely not how it happened. I did 4 hour shifts and I would do double, sometimes triple, shifts on the weekends. I worked every single day. I think I even worked Christmas Day one year.” All her hard work was not for nothing as she began to meet more and more people and began to find her way not just as a singer, but as a songwriter.
When Tara first moved to Nashville being a songwriter never really crossed her mind, but the more people that got to know her the more she and they realized she had so many stories to tell. Tara has tremendous pride in the fact that she can be different by being herself. It was actually Loretta Lynn, who considers Tara a niece (technically they are first cousins twice removed), who gave her this advice. Tara remembers being on a bus with Loretta long before Tara ever got her record deal “I was like I’m trying to keep it as country as I can and she was like don’t worry about trying to keep it country, just be different. I was like hmmm that makes sense…. Be different; don’t try to be what everyone else is doing. I’m not trying to be different; it’s just one of those things. I don’t man bash so I guess that keeps me different.”
Tara says finding that perfect writing team “Took a while because people would be like, what do we write about. We can’t man bash, we can’t write love songs. So I was like well, let me just tell you this story. All my stuff is real stuff… once the people I was writing with daily they finally got it, it was like ‘Ding Ding.’” Once everything clicked and was rolling Tara held fundraisers and KickStarters to get demos recorded. It wasn’t the near instant gratification she naively expected when she first moved to town but after “10 years I finally, finally got the music to Scott Borchetta and thank God he liked it, loved it!”
Tara wrote 10 of the 12 songs on her upcoming album. She explained that “All of my music is based on true stories. And I do have to tell people I say my songs are a hair bit exaggerated because my family gets mad at me because it’s their experience too.” However, being the straight up woman that she is she had to add with a chuckle “They’re really not that exaggerated, you know how it is.”
One line that is not exaggerated is in her single ‘Someone to Take Your Place’. The song opens with “I don’t even own a pair of high heels” Tara was writing with her producer and Leslie Satcher (who’s written many hits including as George Strait’s ‘Troubadour’) and they had this concept where a guy packed up his trailer and left the girl. “She (Satcher) was like how about in this song you’re trying to get mobile home guy back, but you’re kinda like being sassy about it. You’re all dressed up and you got your heels on. And I was like ‘Well I don’t even own a pair of high heels’ and that is the first line of the song. That’s totally true. I don’t own a pair of high heels. I might have an old scruffy pair from Payless in my closet somewhere, but not that I wear. And I don’t even think they’re mine, they’re my sisters that I borrowed for something.” Tara credits her producer, Berklee Alumni Alex Kline with taking the song over the top. “She puts these work tapes together and it’s like holy cow. I remember when I heard it I was like ‘That is the song we wrote, whaaat.’ When we went into the studio to record that song we basically copied the work tape because the work tape, the demo, was so good.”
Tara recently wrapped up a radio tour promoting the new single and told us the music video will be out shortly. The super fun lyric video, can be seen below. The laundromat where it was filmed at was open for business that day. One customer even got to make a cameo in the video. “If you notice in the lyric video there’s an older lady in there who does the “Yeah” line. She was actually just sitting beside me reading a book and I was like hey wanna be in the video and she was like ‘Oh my God’ she got really nervous.” but Tara coached her through her nerves and she now has one heck of a story to tell.
As a young girl, Tara would interview herself in the mirror pretending she was a country star on the red carpet. Now this goal she’s imagined and worked so hard for so long is becoming a reality. “I’ve been dreaming about this for a loooong time, it’s almost like it doesn’t seem real to me, but at the same time it’s like, not to be cliché or anything but, I’m totally living the dream in my head. It doesn’t feel real, but at the same time it just feels like it was always meant to be and it’s just happening.”
Tara is currently on the road for the CMT Next Women of Country Tour alongside Jennifer Nettles, Brandy Clark, and Lindsay Ell. As far as future plans, her album is all recorded so hopefully that will be out very soon. She also hopes to one day do a prison tour, something that got brought up while we were talking about Making a Murderer, which she’s really into at the moment.
The CMT Next Women of Country Tour went through the House of Blues Boston this past Saturday and will head to Concord, NH later this spring. I would make it a point to go check out Tara along with the other amazing artists she’s on tour with. Also, be sure to follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and her official website.