Ashley Monroe: ‘It’s Hard for Me to Write a Happy Song’

Jessi Alexander is a co-writer on four cuts from The Blade. Why do you think the two of you work so well together?
We are really, really, really close friends. She’s from west Tennessee and she just has this soul. She’s been through things in her life and you can hear it in her songs. She has so many hits, but every one of her hits means something. Even [Blake Shelton’s] “Drink on It” is a fun song but it’s got meat to it. I love writing with Jessi because she can deliver these beautiful melodies that have meat to them. I’m a big fan of writing like that.

We wrote “If the Devil Don’t Want Me” and “Winning Streak” with Chris Stapleton, and we wrote those two back to back. He’s another one I’ve known for years. I listen to him sing and I just melt. [His wife] Morgane Stapleton and I were on a developmental deal at RCA at the same time before I was signed to Sony. I forgot I even had that deal until the other day. I can’t keep up with the chapters. [Laughs] But Jessi, Chris and I have written a few times. There’s the line, “If the devil don’t want me, where the hell do I go,” and in “Winning Streak” there’s a line, “Damned old devil won’t buy my soul.” One of those led to the other song, but I can’t remember which one was first.

One of the most beautiful songs on the album is “From Time to Time,” which you wrote with Striking Matches. What inspired it?
I got married in October 2013, and it was right around that time I was on tour with Hunter Hayes and planning the wedding. There was a lot of high stress, a lot of activity going on. I was missing my dad so much. I always do, but I was about to get married and I was missing him like crazy. I kept having these memories and I would just cry. So I was making this deal with God, “Please just send me a sign of some sort. Send me a dream. Dad, come to me in a dream, tell me you love me and you’re proud of me. . . something.” But there was nothing.

I had dozed off on the couch one evening. The melody was what woke me up. I sat up straight and it was almost like someone was playing the melody in my head and the words: “Hush little darling, celebrate, today’s going to be your birthday even if it’s not the 10th of September.” Well, the 10th of September is my birthday. All of that was there. I couldn’t write it down fast enough. I heard the melody but I was trying to figure out the chords. I think my dad was trying to challenge me or teach me new chords. It was so clear; it was something from my dad which I love: that it’s all right to remember from time to time. You can relate that to someone who’s lost or to just a memory, someone who’s no longer around.

Another one written with Striking Matches is “Dixie,” although it’s not exactly a loving portrait of your birthplace, with the line, “I’ll be damned if I go down to Dixie when I die.”
Justin Davis from Striking Matches, that was his idea. He had started that and I said, “Please let me record that!” It’s so funny, when I sing “Dixie,” I have a little angst in my voice. Maybe I’m thinking of country radio a little bit. When I sing, “When I cross that line, I’ll get what I deserve.” It’s something about getting rewarded for something that you’re not appreciated for. It can be twisted like that. But I used to write those old-fashioned melodies when I was 15 and I would tell my manager I think I was a 90-year-old man working on trains in my previous life. I would write about this really old content and people were like, “How do you even know what you’re saying?” So there’s a little of that mixed in that song, too. Every time I sing that song I envision somebody working on a train and thinking, “I’m gettin’ outta here.”

The only song you didn’t write on the album is the title track. What was it about “The Blade” that made you want to record it?
I think it will go down in history as being one of the best-written songs. I’m just shocked at how good it is every time I sing it. When I first heard it, I knew Allen Shamblin was on it and I knew Marc Beeson, but I didn’t even know there was a girl on it. I started YouTube-ing clips of her singing it and I was like, “Man, she can sing her ever-lovin’ butt off!” I love those two writers, obviously, but I love that a woman was in the room because she nailed the feeling. I get completely lost in it. My heart is breaking when I sing that song. It’s hard for me to get lost in songs I didn’t write. I’m just as attached to it as if I had written it. I’ve been in that position of having my heart broken and the other person being OK. We all have. Every detail of that feeling is described in that song. The timing of me even finding that song – there were some hard times in my life and my manager even waited a month before he played it for me because my heart was still too fragile.

The sweetest moment of your album release show was the hug you shared with Miranda after the two of you sang together. What was it like for you to have her there?
I didn’t even remember that until I saw the video. I kissed her on the head! [Laughs] I’m always happy to sing with her. Of course, I knew she’d be there for me but I didn’t know whether she’d get up and sing. She hadn’t planned on singing just because she didn’t have glam and all that stuff. But when Jessi got up on stage she whispered in my ear, “Miranda’s going to come up and do the ‘Heart Like Mine’ for the encore.” It was just kind of a spontaneous thing. I love singing that song with her. I was like, “What a perfect ending.” Music is healing.