Country star Ashley Monroe says Miranda Lambert didn't like her at first
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ashley Monroe (left) claims Miranda Lambert (right) didn't like her when they first met. (Getty Images)
Ashley Monroe has had a winding road to country music success over the years, both as a solo artist and with trio the Pistol Annies (with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley). Monroe detailed a variety of career tidbits during a new episode of podcast "Walking The Floor," hosted by Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett—including the fact that her Annies bandmate Lambert had a petty grudge against her in the very beginning.
“At first, she didn’t like me because I was another blond girl singer,” Monroe, who shared a record label home with Lambert in the early 2000s, relates. “But then she liked my songs, so we became friends.”
The pair hung out "all the time," according to Monroe, and one night, at Lambert's home in Oklahoma following a camping trip, "I just started thinking about Angaleena Presley out of the blue," notes Monroe. Deciding that Lambert needed to hear her, she pulled up Presley's MySpace ("at the time it was MySpace," Monroe laughs) and the two listened to Presley's material.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Miranda goes, 'it's a band. It's a band,'" remembers Monroe. They decided to call Presley on the spot—who, as the mother of a toddler son at the time, wasn't impressed by the late hour she was being contacted at.
“She was like, ‘Why are y’all calling me up at midnight?'” Monroe says. “Miranda was like, ‘Do you wanna be in a band with us?’ And [Angaleena]’s like, ‘Y’all high?’ And we were like, ‘Yes, but we still want to be a band.'”
“This [upcoming Annies] record more than ever, we are just in constant communication about the music,” explains Monroe. “All three of us have very distinctive sounds, but we’re all fans of each other. I like it when Angaleena is like, ‘I have a production idea,’ because I’m gonna like it and it’s gonna be different. We all really do equally contribute. If there's anything that comes up that we're 'I don't know,' we really talk it out.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We respect each other so much as artists, that we really listen to each other."
In a recent interview with Time, Lambert revealed that the Annies are looking at a fall release for their new album.