BobbyCast Recap: Bobby Bones Chats With Rising Star Lainey Wilson
Wilson is one of Sounds Like Nashville's Ones to Watch for 2020!
On episode #222 of his podcast, the BobbyCast, Bobby Bones brought rising star Lainey Wilson on as a guest to chat about her journey to Nashville, her former job as a Hannah Montana impersonator, and more.
Early in the interview, Lainey told Bobby about her upbringing in Baskin, Louisiana, a town of 300 people. She said she had always wanted to live in Nashville though, and it all started when she first set eyes on the Music City skyline.
“My parents took us on a family vacation to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and on our way home to Louisiana, we drove through Nashville,” she says. “I remember being in the back seat and I think I was staring at the batman building, and I said, ‘This is home.’”
Lainey did end up making Nashville her home later in her life, moving there in a bumper-pull camper and living in the parking lot of a studio owned by a friend. She has since been in Nashville for nine years, and has been honing her craft by playing shows and writing with fellow musicians. Lainey revealed to Bobby that she actually wrote with Luke Combs before he landed his record deal.
“I’m not the kind of person to walk up to people, especially back then, and be like, ‘Hey, I want to write with you,’” she says. “Normally, it would have to be somebody introduces us or whatever, but I had this weird feeling and I walked straight up to him and tapped him and I said, ‘I want to write with you.’”
While Lainey certainly garnered experience by playing and writing in Nashville, working in music wasn’t new to her. Back in high school, Lainey worked as a Hannah Montana impersonator, and she would often open the shows as herself.
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“I had a little portable sound system and a little piece-of-junk karaoke machine style thing,” says Lainey. “I had the wig, I had the outfits. It was birthday parties, fairs, festivals. The last one I did was at St. Jude. A lot of the time, they didn’t want Lainey Wilson there, they just wanted Hannah Montana to come to the party, but I would be sure to ask them.”
Now, after nine years in Nashville, Lainey has a record deal with Broken Bow Records and is currently on tour with Justin Moore and Tracy Lawrence on the Late Nights And Longnecks Tour.
“I’ve been a big fan of both of them for years,” says Lainey. “I’ve seen their shows, I actually opened up for Tracy when I was 18 years old at some bar in Monroe. I can’t believe I’m going to actually go on a real tour with them.”
To hear more from Bobby’s interview with Lainey, including her Mount Rushmore of artists, listen to episode #222 of the BobbyCast.
