Last month, Arkansas Roots Music Festival in Dyess celebrated Sister Rosetta Tharpe with a concert headlined by Nashville recording artist Erin Enderlin. Hosted by Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, the event might have been merely entertaining, but no one who was there would ever capture the moment in such frail praise. It was, in fact, a channeling of two of the state’s most interesting artists, one long gone from us, the other far, far beyond.
Tharpe, a musical tour de force who rattled the gospel through an electric guitar amp, showed the founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll how it was done. Enderlin, heiress to the Tharpe throne as reigning Arkansas badass, cuts even deeper by telling stories raw and unflinching in their honesty. Laying one over the other — performed at the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, no less — was palpable in its energy, a pulsing musical artery that extended from the billowing fields of the Delta to the foothills of the Ouachitas.
Forget what you have heard about bro-country and hillbilly hip-hop; the heart of the genre still exists in all of its gut-wrenching, sawdust-covered, bloody mary morning best. Our heroes of the genre have always been cowboys, but they sure as hell ain’t right now. These days, the truth can be found floating above a cadre of unapologetically uppity women, artists sharing tales and insights the rest of us either have not figured out yet or wish we had learned sooner.
Enderlin is right in the thick of this new awakening. The central Arkansas native has become a celebrated figure from Music Row to Hollywood, particularly for her writing artistry. More than 50 of her songs have been recorded by artists, including Lee Ann Womack, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Luke Bryan, and The War And Treaty on the strength of, as Rolling Stone put it, “the stuff of country classics — concise, tear-stained and all too relatable.”
Sir Elton John, another admirer, called her a “country artist I absolutely love,” and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum featured her in its American Currents exhibit as a breakthrough artist. Most recently, she kicked in “Blood in the River” and three more songs for The Gray House, an Amazon Prime series produced by Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner.
Photos by Ryan Nolan
AY About You sat down with Enderlin to talk about her craft, staying true to her roots and being one of the new breed of outlaw.
AY About You: You’ve been busy in the state lately, between the Arkansas Music Roots Festival and Arts & the Park in Hot Springs. Does it put a different spin on performing to be back home?
Erin Enderlin: I love playing back in Arkansas. First of all, it’s a beautiful state, so I’m usually somewhere very pretty when I’m playing. I love the people there, and the music from there. I think Arkansas’s a little bit of a best-kept secret in terms of the music scene. Arkansas’s been hugely influential on the music of the United States and beyond. I just find that I meet a lot of people that I really get along with and end up working with long term.
AY: How far back does your fascination with music go as far as being that thing that pays the bills?
Enderlin: Very early on. I’m really deeply obsessed with music, especially country and folk music. I started taking guitar lessons when I was 13 from a guy named Terry Holmes. He had played guitar with folks like Chet Atkins and Emmylou Harris for different things. He was the first person who was like, “You know, people do this for a living. Like, if you move to Nashville, you could do this.” That was when I first started having it click in my brain that, you know, maybe there was a pathway for that and the possibility for a career.
AY: Did you always express yourself through the context of your songs, or did you start off, for instance, being a writer and learned how to set that to music?
Enderlin: Emmylou Harris has this quote that I love that basically says the best way to study music is to turn it up really loud and listen. I just absorbed a lot from music I was listening to growing up from the people around me. I remember when I was 10 years old I got the idea to start writing songs, and I would bring them into my music class. Luckily the other students, they might have thought it was a little weird, but they were encouraging. They weren’t looking at me like I was a monster with two heads or something.
Sometimes I wonder if it had been later on when I started writing if I would’ve been more self-conscious about it because there’s something about that age, you know, around 8 to 10, 11 years old, where you still get to be really creative and really free to express yourself without that fear of the spotlight. I was lucky to get into it at an age where you’re still encouraged to express yourself and be creative and play around with things.
AY: I have a theory that the vast majority of women in country music automatically fall under the header of outlaw country because most of them were singing about something they’re not supposed to sing about.
Enderlin: I love you so much.
AY: Do you consider yourself a rebel or an outlaw sort of thing? Your art certainly fits under that header.
Enderlin: You know, I do in a way. It’s so interesting; the most important thing you can bring to music, I think, is to be yourself. That’s the easiest and the hardest thing to do, especially as we get older. A lot of times, people end up being really big only after being laughed at first because people don’t get it or it’s outside of the box. I’m not sure; maybe it was some of the people that I had in my life and the influences I had, folks like Loretta [Lynn] or Reba [McEntire] or Suzy Bogguss, different people that were so wonderfully themselves in music that helped me navigate that and drill more into who I am.
AY: Since you mentioned her already, I do pick up influences of Emmylou Harris in your music. Was she an influence, or is that just coincidental?
Enderlin: Well, first of all, that’s a huge compliment to me. She was really influential. I was just thinking about another quote of hers, “You can’t sell your soul to the devil and expect to get it back,” talking about when you’re making music, when you’re deciding who you are as an artist, what songs you want to record, what songs you want to sing maybe every night for the rest of your life, that that’s something you really need to think about.
I was on a major label for a while, and I’ve had different managers and booking agents and things over the years, and sometimes I tried to be a little bit more malleable I guess is the word. I found that wasn’t the best work that I did. I want to love the music I’m creating and not necessarily just like the image of what you see as an artist. I want to love that completely because at the end of the day, that’s what I have to offer the world. Where that fits in, if that’s the head of the Billboard chart or if that’s a coffee-house performance, it is what it is. I want to truly love it because I feel like if I love it, someone else will identify with it.
AY: Who else would you point to as foundational to you, male or female?
Enderlin: Willie Nelson was one of my first big influences. Johnny Cash — if you’re from Arkansas, you have to listen to Johnny Cash. It’s mandatory. A lot of my grandpa’s record collection: The Statler Brothers, Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers.
When I was 4 years old, I saw Reba McEntire singing on the Ralph Emery show, [Pop! Goes the Country], and I remember having the thought, “Girls do this too. This is what I want to do.” When I really started listening to records, I got into Reba, Emmylou, Dolly Parton, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Suzy Bogguss, Terri Clark, Trisha Yearwood — I could go on all day.
AY: It is a really fantastic period in some corners of country music, particularly when it comes to very strong, outspoken female artists having something to say and not being afraid to say it. Where do you think that’s coming from?
Enderlin: There’s so many incredible women out there making music right now, and I love it, but as far as mainstream radio goes, for a lot of the last 20 years, it’s been 10 percent or less of women on radio. That’s not just artists; that’s writers who are writing the songs too. I think in some ways, women are feeling a little more empowered now to say whatever they want because they aren’t trying to fit in that pigeonhole anymore. It’s opened up because people have these new opportunities, whether it be on YouTube or social media, for them to be heard outside of commercial music, so women especially are not playing that game. They’re saying what they want to say and be who they are, and they’re finding their audience that way.
Sometimes through social media, when you’re talking to people directly, you start really connecting with more of your people. Once you find them, the more drilled in you are on who you are, and the clearer you are about what you stand for and what your world is.
AY: Let’s talk a little bit about The Gray House. Tell me how you got involved with it.
Enderlin: I’d been writing with Jim “Moose” Brown, who produced a couple of my records, Faulkner County and Whiskeytown Crier, and he called me and was like, “Hey, I’ve been writing some with this actor who’s getting into songwriting. We’d love to write some old cowboy stuff for Western movies. Would you want to join us?’ and I was like, yes, any excuse to do that, please sign me up.
We got together, and we hit it off and within, like, six months of us working together, Jeff Fahey, the actor that we’d been writing with, got a call from a friend of his who’s one of the executive producers on The Gray House asking him for some music folks that Jeff knew because [the producer] was looking for songs for a soundtrack. Jeff said, “Well, actually, I’ve been writing songs with my friend Moose and Erin. Would you be OK with us trying to write one for the show?” so we sent one, and it went over really well, and then that grew from one song to four songs that ended up being in the show, including the main theme song and three of the end title songs that are on the soundtrack.
AY: Did you get to meet either of the celebrity producers, Morgan Freeman or Kevin Costner?
Enderlin: Actually I sang for Morgan Freeman years ago, and I got to go out to LA to watch a screening of the entire series with a lot of the actors from the show. Morgan and Kevin were there, and [producer] Lori McCreary. It was so cool.
AY: That is one moment among many, I would imagine, for this small-town kid, from getting a shoutout from Elton John to sharing the stage with or having your work recorded by your heroes out of your grandfather’s record collection to turning on a streaming series and hearing your music playing back to you. What is that like?
Enderlin: It’s really magical. Honestly, the longer I do this, the more I realize what a miracle it is to be able to do this for a living, and the miracle of every time all of those moments come together just right. Like, Willie Nelson singing “The Heart of America” in The Gray House; we started off, they wanted a song that encapsulated all the emotions and kind of summed up the TV series. We tried four or five different approaches to the song. Then trying to connect with Willie’s team and for him to get on board and be willing to do it and all of those steps remind you how magical the process is.
AY: What’s next for Erin Enderlin?
Enderlin: I still have so many dreams — places I want to play, records I want to make and just continuing to grow as an artist and a performer. I am a lot more confident now, and part of that, to be honest with you, is the older I get, the more I know that if I want to do this for my job, I don’t have the luxury of having too much pride, of getting embarrassed. You do it because if you don’t do it, you miss the moment, and there’s just so much that I still want to do.
There’s a lot of gratitude in that, too, you know? I mean, I don’t know how many people who at 3, 4, 5 years old had these dreams and grow up and get to experience exactly what they were dreaming about.
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