​Lexie Hayden has released her song “Pretty Damn Close”; you can check it out here. Lexie wrote the song back in 2019 with artist Gina Venier. “The song is about a two-year relationship that I was in. That one relationship where that person was almost the one for me, but it wasn’t. This person wasn’t “the one” but we were pretty damn close”. When Hayden wrote the song with Venier, they were actually supposed to have a third songwriter, but they canceled last minute. Venier and Hayden ended up still getting together that day and chatting at a table and ended up writing this song.
 
Hayden hails from Herndon, Virginia. Her mom grew up on a farm and always loved country music. Lexie knew she wanted to be in the country music industry since she was little and that this was the full-time career she had dreamed of. While Lexie looks up to Shania Twain and Kacey Musgraves, she really looks up to Miranda Lambert because “she’s been here since the start. She’s been around when I was learning music and guitar when I was younger all the way to now. She is a bad ass female who gets it done. I love all of the bad ass females in this industry and genre”. Hayden attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia where she graduated with a major in Communication with a Music Business minor. During her degree, Lexie ended up getting a job as an intern on the national radio show, The Bobby Bones Show in Nashville which she enjoyed, “it was a really fun job and experience”. 
 
Hayden wants aspiring artists to know that they should “Be really patient. Nothing happens over night or quickly. I’ve been doing this for 6 years.” Hayden goes on to reflect on how tough it is to really make it in Nashville. “it’s a tough town. The recent Walker Hayes Instagram post stuck out for me when he listed everything these been through in order to get a hit song. All the ups and all the downs that people don’t see.  People like Ashley McBryde went 13 years before she was discovered”.  
 
Recently, Hayden played the Carl Black Chevy Stage at a CMA After Party, an event she went two as a plus one a couple years ago.  In addition, you can see Lexie perform at every Tennessee Titans home game at Nissan Stadium! The organization reached out to her before the current football season started. She was also hired by the NFL team for events. “I play right outside one of the gates in one of the corners of the stadium. Each corner has a different performer”. Make sure you go see Lexie perform before cheering on the Tennessee Titans! 
 
You can follow Lexie on social media at @lexiehayden and find more information on her website here.

Amanda Shires has released her album “For Christmas” right on time for the holiday season! You can stream the album here. The project is her first solo album since 2018. Shires has been balancing a lot of emotions surrounding the holiday season as she didn’t get to see many of her family members due to COVID and there was a lot she liked about that. She was thinking how fun Christmas this year would be and then she thought about losing folks to the pandemic like John Prine, “I don’t know if I can go into this thing listening to the same Christmas tunes that we’ve heard a thousand times and I wanted to make an album that I’d like to hear”. Shires worked closely with the late John Prine over the course of her career. She toured with him in 2017 and 2018, contributed to his 2018 “Tree of Forgiveness” album, and was a close friend. “John loved Christmas. On tour he would buy ornaments or start humming Christmas tunes around June and was really into it”. The day before we spoke with Amanda, she held an album listening livestream over YouTube with John’s wife, Fiona Whelan Prine. “Fiona just texted me and said “would you like to play for me in John's office with his Christmas trees” because he left his trees up all year long and I said “hell yes” without realizing we both had so much to unpack. In the spirit of bringing john Prine’s [spirit] and Christmas into the world, it was wonderful getting Fiona’s blessing.” You can rewatch the livestream here.
 
The album is emotion filled, with both upbeat and slower songs, and even a chilling rendition of “Silent Night”. The album opens with “Magic Ooooooh” and says it’s Christmas Time in June.  it’s about that new love feeling or any happy feeling really, it feels like oh! It’s Christmas! “Magic Ooooooh” was written with Brittany Spencer who Shires praises as a “wonderful singer, musician, guitar player and songwriter”. Spencer is also a writer on another song on the album. On her weary “Silent Night” rendition, Shires reflects by saying “Sometimes you just feel dark and gloomy, but the plus side is when you sing them out loud it gives them much less power and then you find a community people who feel the same way and then you suddenly have a community of people who are happy that they all felt the same way. Naming the beast always helps”. Another song on the record “Blame It on The Mistletoe” sounds like it could be a Highwomen Christmas song. The Possibility of a Highwomen Christmas album? Shires thinks a Highwomen Christmas album in the future would be a great idea. She wants them to do a LIVE record since they didn’t get to play last year. “Let’s go play some shows and record them and put a live record out. That’d be awesome.”
 
It's now been just over two years since Highwomen album came out. To Shires, “it feels like a confluency of energies, not just ours but everybody that paid attention and wrote about it and noticed it and are aware. Folks like (writer) Marissa Moss. It just feels like all of us all together in this industry have made some headway (on gender representation in country music) and there will always be the Highwomen as long as those conversation need to happen, but I do feel like the intention of the group and the results of the group were what we wanted”. Amanda and The Highwomen have been a part of some of the coolest and most important moments in country music like being the first all female headliner at the Newport Folk Festival in 2019. One moment that stands out for Shires is when Mavis Staples was listening to one of the songs that they wrote “and she adjusted a line we wrote “I was freedom rider” and she changed it to “I was a freedom fighter” and even when I say it out loud, It’s huge”.
 
While the group is made up of the 4 most powerful women in country music (Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Shires) it is without a doubt, a supergroup. Shires, being the founder of the group, does not think of it as a supergroup. “I don’t think of it as a super group very much because I feel like the ideas of the art are observations. I just keep myself open and do my best. I realize how much of a small part I play in this and I realize how many more hands and parts it takes to make a difference. It takes more than an idea to get someone from a seed to a tree”. The Americana and Grammy award winning artist says that she does see more female engineers, and side persons in bands and sees that part changing. As far as producers, “I think we’re still working on that part. It’s all about making room and it comes from the top”. As what is next for The Highwomen, Shires hopes to get a live album out and then a full-length album sometime after that but “all the ladies have albums out and folks have to tour and it’s tough to play outside in winter”. Shires concludes by saying “I can’t believe I get to do this for my job – that was my dream as a youth – to be doing it doesn’t matter where I live or who I run into every morning it's like “I’m still doing this, I must not have woken up from the dream”. 
 
 For more information on Amanda Shires, check out her website.

With the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, breakout country sweetheart Molly Lovette just released her own version of a holiday classic "Silver Bells". This song is available on all digital streaming platforms. 

Putting her own spin on this popular release which was originally composed by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Molly’s soothing vocals and lively take on this timeless tune evokes a combination of holiday bliss along with that heartwarming seasonal spirit everyone loves this time of year. Produced by Leland Grant (Chris Young), this is her second holiday release. “I was so excited last year for the release of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, that I decided I had to release another one this holiday,” says Molly.  “I love all Christmas music and even though I was in the studio laying down vocals this summer when it was 90 degrees in Nashville, it was still a great way to get ready for Christmas.”
 
Jumping off the heels of her summer release Hey Hey, Molly is wrapping up this whirlwind year on a high note with this Christmas release. She was on the road this past summer and fall performing in Nashville, Illinois, Texas and many venues in her home state of Missouri. Now with over three quarters of a million combined streams just on Spotify, numerous TV appearances, press interviews, radio placements, music videos airing on The Country Network, a Forbes feature, and so much more, she is taking the world by storm and winning the hearts of country fans everywhere.

For more information on Molly Lovette, visit her website. 

​Breakout country music singer/songwriter, Callie Twisselman, is set to embark on a 45-date tour as part of the Cirque Musica Holiday Spectacular this fall. The tour kicked off on Wednesday, November 10 in Modesto, California and will continue on throughout the holiday season until its final stop on December 30 in Enid, Oklahoma. Serving as direct support for the all-new production, Callie’s set will kick off a night of family fun, music and celebration each night. 
 
Following up her massive cross-country tour, in March 2022, Twisselman will make her international debut at Europe's biggest country music festival, C2C: Country To Country. Taking place in London, Glasgow and Dublin, Callie will join the likes of Miranda Lambert, Luke Combs, Darius Rucker and many more on stage each night. The California native recently ventured into the family-friendly entertainment space as her original song, “Together,” was featured alongside Vanessa Hudgens, James Marsden, Sofia Carson, Johnny Orlando, among others, in the Netflix feature film My Little Pony: A New Generation and on the official soundtrack. She also released her debut EP Closure, which has amassed nearly 1 million global streams, and also features her current single “Cowboy.” 
 
Callie is represented by acclaimed artist manager Danny Nozell and Justis Mustaine of CTK Enterprises (Dolly Parton, Barry Gibb, Kenny G, KC and The Sunshine Band) and is signed to eOne for publishing via Vintern Songs and working closely with GRAMMY-award winning producer, Aaron Pearce, (Celine Dion, Brian McKnight, Lauren Alaina, Jennifer Lopez). 
 
Purchase Tickets for the Cirque Musica Holiday Spectacular HERE and keep up with Callie on her website.