Before Bailey Hefley left Nashville in March for her family home near Little Rock, Arkansas, she spent two or three weeks recording a music video of “We Are the World” with a host of her contemporaries. Originally, the song by Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson became a major event in 1985, bringing together a host of recording icons called USA for Africa. And while Hefley, Levi Hummon, and the friends that came together for the project had to been born then, they reimagined the song as a message for Spring 2020: Save Lives. Stay at Home:
The lyrics seem particularly relevant now: “It’s a choice we’re making. We’re saving our own lives” as they point to that “brighter day.”
After editing the video footage recorded from the different performers’ homes, Bailey says, she “zipped on home to Arkansas.” Her strongest supporters are there, her parents and her two brothers. One brother lives on the family property full time and the other, who plays football for the University of Michigan, is home trying to gain weight for the upcoming season and practicing throws on Zoom with his coach.
Both her brothers are music fans too, so they’ve been introducing Bailey to music they love—most recently, The Band. She says her younger brother has also taught himself piano, banjo, mandolin, and guitar and is brushing up during COVID-19 and picking with Bailey while she sings.
Hefley says she grew up singing, announcing to her mother when she was three that she wanted to be a singer.
“She took me seriously for whatever reason—isn’t that great? The second she took me seriously, I took myself seriously as a singer. Every time I stepped on stage, I thought that was where I was supposed to be,” says Hefley.
With her parents’ support, Bailey entered talent shows, local church events, wherever she could perform. She says, “I even convinced my dad to take me to a dive bar when I was eleven, and that became a regular thing we’d do sometimes twice a month. Whenever my brother had a baseball game over at the field a mile from the bar, it was the perfect set up for me. I’d get up and do one or two songs and then go home and go to school the next day.”
Before Hefley turned thirteen, she traveled to Nashville where she recorded a demo in a basement studio in East Nashville, what she calls “a classic Nashville situation.” In addition to the producer on the project, she met the musician who played most of the instruments on the EP. Hefley says, “He just happened to have these songs that were perfect for a 13-year-old girl. I recorded them and sent them in with my application to Little Rock’s Riverfest. Sure enough, they liked it, and asked me to play.” At the festival, she opened for Hank Williams, Jr. and got to know members of the other bands in the lineup, which she considered a great confidence builder.
Nashville was always in her sights. “I told my mom that as soon as I could, I was going to go to Nashville permanently and live there.” Bailey enrolled in Belmont University’s commercial voice program at the advice of her high school choir director. She says that while she loved Belmont, she wanted the big college experience—football and all. She transferred to the University of Arkansas for her second year of college before moving to Nashville to pursue music full time, and she says, “I haven’t looked back.”
Hefley began to take songwriting seriously at sixteen, although she remembers making up her first song when she was a preschooler. “My first official lead song was a co-write in true Nashville style. I met Bobby Pinson who took me under his wing and showed me how to write a song. “He told me I needed to stand out in Nashville. He said, ‘A lot of people can sing and a lot of people in this town can play the guitar, but not a lot everybody writes their own music—and I believe in you.’
“It took those words from him for me to realize that not only was songwriting something I could be doing and should be doing, but hearing that he thought I would be great at it gave me some confidence. As soon as I wrote that first song with him, I couldn’t stop.” Wherever she goes, even at the grocery store, she says, she finds herself jotting down ideas for lyrics in the notes on her phone or humming a tune into her voice recorder.
Some of her best ideas come to her at local songwriters rounds. Earlier in the year, she heard a songwriter on stage mention one word that caught her attention. She turned to one of her co-writers beside her and mentioned her idea, and the two later were able to complete the song on Zoom.
A lot of her songs, she says, “start like that with a basic beginning and I’ll think of melodies and they really come to me in an effervescent free-flowing way. Then I always hit ‘start’ on my voice memo. . . . Sometimes it happens in real time when I’m in the room with people or I may bring in a melody that has half-baked words and then we all just build on it.”
Bailey Hefley is not waiting around for the quarantine period to end before moving her career along. She is listening to music that inspires her—everything from The Band to Toby Keith or her hero Shania Twain. And while she is comfortable in the country music genre, she also listens to a lot of pop music.
“I get a lot of inspiration from that sound, and I like to merge that into country.”
While she had her debut CD Forever 20 Something originally set for a 2020 release date, Hefley has begun releasing singles from the project, including the title track released June 12, her favorite song on the album. Co-written with Robert Counts and Chuck Jones, Bailey says this song was fun to write.
Due to unanticipated events of 2020, says Bailey, “I actually contemplated whether or not to release my single “Forever Twenty Something” in June, but I went ahead and did it. I thought maybe the world needs some positivity right now.”
The single celebrates that time in life when all the options are open, with its upbeat pop country beat, and showcases the clever wordplay of Hefley’s songwriting as well as her strong vocal skills.
When asked when the rest of the album will come out, she said, “Stay tuned,” noting that she plans on rolling them out as singles, promising at least two or three more singles from the project. “I don’t think that’s the typical route, to release each one as a single, but I decided to do it that way.” Hefley says that as a newer artist, she “wanted each song to have its time in the sun,” saying her songs feel “like little diary entries.”
Hefley says she is still considering how the songs will be ordered on the full-length project but recognizes that many music fans today discover music one single at a time via streaming platforms. For many people, the physical CD is “more like a trophy piece,” she says, “It used to be so utilitarian, the only way to listen to the song, and now its more ‘Are you a superfan?’” She has also recently began to add more vinyl records to her personal music collection and has a record player in her Nashville condo.
While she’s waiting out the pandemic in Arkansas, her work ethic is still apparent. She manages to schedule regular runs or workouts, while continuing voice and guitar lessons and co-writes on Zoom. In a way, she pointed out, this has been more efficient, with less time in the car going to and from appointments and lessons.
Now that Nashville is phasing in the reopening process,Bailey looks forward to returning and hopes to be back on stage or on tour soon. She had planned to head back already, but has a project that is keeping her in Arkansas for a couple of weeks that she will reveal soon.
Hefley also looks forward to playing again at some of her favorite Nashville venues, particularly those along Demonbreum. “The Listening Room is by far my favorite because I love the vibe in there. As the name suggests, people are actually listening,” she says.
Until she is back on stage in Music City, country music fans can enjoy Bailey Hefley’s music one single at a time from “So That Girl” and “Doing Time with You” to what could be her perfect theme song, “Forever 20 Something.”
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