Current Single: “Fight Like A Girl”
Current EP: The Y2K Mixtape
Hometown: Portland, Maine
Age: 22
Influences: Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Dolly Parton
Twitter: @kalieshorr
Inside Scoop
Growing up in Maine, the youngest of seven kids with a single mom, Kalie Shorr wrote her first song at the age of 6 and started a Nirvana cover band in middle school. Admittedly, Kalie had many different musical influences early on, but she knew Nashville was where she needed to be. After high school, Kalie arrived in Nashville, where she now takes the stage performing on the weekly live show Song Suffragettes held a the Listening Room. Kalie released her debut EP, The Y2K Mixtape, in March, which includes her current single, “Fight Like a Girl.”
In the Beginning
“I grew up in Portland Maine and lived there my entire life. I was raised by a single mom, she’s a total badass. She’s part of what inspired ‘Fight Like a Girl.’ There is a lot of country music up there, and I think people don’t necessarily think Maine and country music. But I’ve ridden a tractor down the main street of my hometown. It’s pretty country.”
Family Affair
“Seven [kids] all-together. Technically eight, but one passed away when she was a baby. There are seven of us but I’m the youngest. My mom and dad were both married before they had me. My mom had me at 40 so she could not hide the fact that I was an ‘Oops.’ She said I was the ‘best oops that ever happened to her.’ It was definitely an oops, nobody tries to have a kid at 40. My siblings are so great and I love all my siblings. I think my music taste is a little bit older than it should be because I’m the youngest of seven. When I was 6-years-old my sister was giving me TLC CDs even though I was technically 1 or 2 when [TLC’s] Crazy Sexy Cool [album] came out.”
The Road to Nashville
“My schedule was so crazy, I would go to school at 7:30 in the morning. I had two classes that would go until 10:30. Then I’d get into work at the pizza shop at 11 a.m. I would work at the pizza shop from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then from 5 p.m to 9 p.m I’d go and work at a clothing store. That’s pretty much what every day looked like for me. The weekends I would work 10 a.m to 8 p.m. just to save up. I didn’t get to see much of my friends. I went to a really great high school that is super supportive of kids in the arts. They worked with me so my schedule could just be two classes in the morning. Then I finished school in December of my senior year. I ended up staying in Maine so I could work full-time and just make as much money as possible because I had no idea what it would look like when I got to Nashville—if I would be able to find a job or not. It was a long road to get to Nashville and it was not easy, but I think it definitely made me realize how much I really do want to do this.”
The Truth
“I thought that women and country music went hand in hand and by the time I got to Nashville I was like ‘oh no, we done goofed along the way guys.’ It’s crazy because historically when females do break through, they soar. There is no brand like Shania Twain. That was kind of the first thing to turn me on to country music. I was a huge fan of Alannis Morissette. I was probably 13 or 14, breaking up with the rhythm guitar player in my first band, and I heard her song ‘You Oughta Know.’ There’s that line ‘When I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it.’ I was like ‘Oh sh*t’ I didn’t even know, we had only made out, I mean God bless it. But I was like if she could say that in a song, then I can say anything. You don’t have to hold back. I think that was the moment I was like ‘I just want my songs to be honest.’ I don’t have any lines like that in my song but it kind of empowered me to realize that you can tell the story any way you feel like it.”
Fighting Like a Girl
“‘Fight Like a Girl’ is about the times in your life you don’t have the option to run away from it. You either want to get to that finish line so bad or life just hands it to you. If you get diagnosed with cancer you don’t get to run away from that. The only option you have is to fight. My mom’s a breast cancer survivor and she loves the song. She identifies with it. I wrote it about continuing to push on in the music industry and fight for that record deal when I was in town at the time that nobody wanted to give me one. It just got a life of its own through the way people interpreted it. It really taught me a lesson about what the song is about because I thought I knew what the song was about. It’s so much more than that. It’s about not running and if you get knocked down five times you get up six. I could not think of a better song to introduce my music.”
