Angaleena Presley was the last of the three Pistol Annies to release a solo album, and that record, American Middle Class, was impressive enough to win her Best New Artist in the Scene's 2014 Country Music Critics' Poll. It also got her voted the No. 4 Best Female Vocalist, the No. 4 Best Songwriter, the No. 9 Best Artist and No. 5 Best Album. With its rare courage for talking bluntly about class and its uncanny fusion of East Tennessee hillbilly banjos and West Tennessee R&B organs, it was one of the most creative country albums of the year.
Meanwhile, Presley's Annie-mate Miranda Lambert was voted Best Artist, a year after the third Annie, Ashley Monroe, was the runner-up to Kacey Musgraves in that category. In the 15 years of the Country Music Critics' Poll, female artists have won Best Album 10 times and Best Artist 10 times. On the creative side, women have dominated 21st century country music, while at the same time men have dominated the commercial side of things. Rather than narrowing, this gap seems to be growing.
"I don't know what's going on," Presley tells the Scene. "If I had to venture a guess, in country music right now the men have a multimillion-dollar formula, so why not follow it? Even Miranda and Carrie Underwood don't sell as much as the men do. It seems like women are blatantly discriminated against. There are hardly any women on the country music charts, because they aren't getting played on the radio. I'm not sure who to blame. Is it the radio? Is it the labels? Is it the fans? I'll be the first to burn my bra if it'll do any good.
"The women may be making more interesting records, but that's not sustainable if we don't start getting paid. The climate in the music industry has changed so much that you almost have to decide: Do you want to be an artist or do you want to be famous? If you don't compromise and don't follow the formula, you don't get paid. But it's worth it; I'd rather make history than make money. It'd be nice to do both, and Miranda has figured it out. Kacey has figured it out."
The formula that Presley's referring to is the musical fantasy that life is nothing but a weekend party with the pickup parked by a swimming hole with a keg of beer on the truck bed and pretty women in skimpy clothes sprawled on the hood. By contrast, American Middle Class offers songs about a coal miner getting turned down for a disability, college graduates working as grocery-store cashiers, a preacher's wife hooked on pain pills, a young girl shocked by a pregnancy test and an unemployed husband drunk on the couch. And it does so with music that's full of surprises rather than glossy production values.
"Some people sing about the party," Presley says, "and some people sing about throwing up the day after the party. I think there's room for both; I gravitate to the dark side. I just wish there were more money on the dark side. It's not really a choice. I grew up in a hard-knocks way, and there wasn't anything glamorous about my childhood. I had a good mom and dad, but as far as having nice things, that's not what it was. I'm from the mountains, and if you know about folk songs and bluegrass, it's all about murder and suicide. Maybe it's just my Scotch-Irish blood; maybe I'm genetically from the dark side of the mountain."
Presley describes her hometown of Beauty as "eastern East Kentucky," in an Appalachian "holler" right near the West Virginia line. That's why her name in the Pistol Annies was Holler Annie. Her daddy Jimmy Presley was a coal miner for more than 30 years, and there wasn't a lot to do in that small town but go into the mines, go to church, get into trouble or pick up a guitar. Angaleena did it all but the mines, and she found her role model in Loretta Lynn, who grew up in nearby Butcher Hollow. Lynn, who won Best Album and Best Artist in the 2004 poll, was also fearlessly frank about the struggles that go on in rural towns and rural marriages.
"The first time I ever met Loretta Lynn," Presley recalls, "she liked this T-shirt I had on, and I told her I bought it at the Bull Creek Flea Market. She said, 'You did not. I love that place. They have the best deals.' This was a couple of years ago when the Pistol Annies sang at her anniversary show at the Grand Ole Opry. Another time I was backstage at the Americana Festival, and she looked at me and just said out the blue, 'There just wasn't nothing else for us to do in West Virginia and Kentucky but dig coal, was there, honey?' And I said, 'There sure wasn't.'
"Loretta is definitely my first love in music. We had a little record player in the kitchen, and my mom would put Loretta on and we would sing along. I didn't know what the songs were about, but I think they were therapy for my mom getting through life as a working-class wife. It's like Loretta was her cane. You realize you're not alone, and if someone else is going through and got through it, it gives you hope. I love watching Dr. Phil, because I think, 'Man, I don't have as many problems as that person. That's what it could be like.' "
The Pistol Annies are on hiatus now — it's been too difficult to coordinate schedules. It was easier when Lambert was the only one with a thriving solo career, but now that Monroe and Presley have their own busy solo schedules, it has become impossible. The door hasn't been closed on a future reunion, but for now the three women have to be satisfied with what they accomplished with just two albums.
"My reaction to the Kacey and Brandy Clark records was, 'Thank God, someone is getting some recognition doing what I want to do,' " Presley says. "The Pistol Annies opened the door, and now a lot of people are coming through it. There's a community of strong-minded women in country music who are telling it like it is."
