The Band Perry burst onto the scene 14 years ago with some of the best country songs of all time.
Now, the talented Kimberly Perry brings her first solo tour to Rams Head in Annapolis, Maryland, on Sunday night.
“I was super excited to be invited up to Rams Head,” Perry told WTOP. “We’re kind of weaving this tour and this stop in Maryland as part of the CMT Next Women of Country tour for me, so I’m gonna be playing that set list. It’s a little bit of everything. I got to put out my first body of solo work last October called ‘Superbloom,’ so I’ll be playing songs off ‘Superbloom’ and of course, all the hits from The Band Perry. It would not be a set without those.”
Perry’s showcase is a fitting grand finale for the third annual Annapolis Songwriters Festival, which will welcome such prolific singer-songwriters as Marc Cohn, Lee Brice and Natalie Hemby throughout the entire weekend.
“Those are some of my very favorite songwriters,” Perry said. “In fact, Natalie Hemby was one of my first co-writes in Nashville when I started writing in the town. The amazing songwriters that come from Nashville, it’s just a special community and anytime we get to break it down on stage, the stories behind the songs and the atmosphere of how we wrote it in the room that day, getting to tell that and then play the song is such a cool experience.”
Born in the country-famous town of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1983, Kimberly grew up listening to the radio and singing around the house with her brothers and future Band Perry members Reid (bass) and Neil (mandolin).
“The very first foundation was we did listen to music a lot as a family,” Perry said. “Every Saturday night, our parents would listen to public radio and in Jackson, Mississippi, every Saturday night they had two hours of bluegrass, so our dad would grill some steaks, our mom would make potato salad and we would all sit around and listen to these two hours of bluegrass together, so that was my first love of country and Americana music.”
The siblings performed everywhere from shrimp boils to birthday parties before eventually moving to East Tennessee. Soon, they were discovered by Garth Brooks’ manager Bob Doyle to sign with Republic Nashville for their self-titled debut album “The Band Perry” (2010), produced by Paul Worley and Nathan Chapman.
The breakthrough album featured the smash No. 1 hit “If I Die Young,” an instant classic of visual storytelling, melancholic mood and turns of phrase as Kimberly belts the stinging chorus, “The sharp knife of a short life, well, I’ve had just enough time,” followed by the haunting coda, “Funny when you’re dead how people start listening.”
“It’s so true, right? So many artists have become massive post their death,” Perry said. “I wrote ‘If I Die Young’ at our home in East Tennessee. For whatever reason that day, I was daydreaming about life and all the things I wanted to come of it, but I also wanted to be content with where things were in that very moment. ‘If I Die Young’ is ironic in its title about making the most of every moment because you never know what’s gonna happen.”
The song won CMA Awards for Single of the Year and New Artist of the Year, while earning a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song (ultimately losing to Lady A’s “Need You Now”). They would return to the Grammys a year later nominated for Best New Artist in a 2012 class that included Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Skrillex and Bon Iver.
Their second album “Pioneer” (2013) delivered “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely,” “Chainsaw” and a pair of No. 1 hits with “Done” and “Better Dig Two.” The latter was a stomping romp written by Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally and Trevor Rosen with a sassy Old West chorus, “If you go before I do, I’m gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two.”
“‘Better Dig Two’ is so cool,” Perry said. “I’ll never forget the first time they played that song for us, inviting us to record it. I was like ‘100%.’ … When we recorded ‘Pioneer,’ we had advanced from playing smaller rooms and theaters to arenas and amphitheaters, so we knew we wanted a bigger-sounding project with more country-rock elements, so ‘Better Dig Two’ felt like the perfect thread between our first album and where we were headed.”
In 2015, The Band Perry won their first ever Grammy for Best Country Duo Performance for their cover of Glen Campbell’s classic “Gentle on My Mind” for the Oscar-nominated documentary “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.”
“That was such an amazing experience,” Perry said. “They invited us to record ‘Gentle on My Mind,’ which to this day is one of the most beautifully-written lyrics of any song of all time. … We had played it a year before at the Grammys when Glen Campbell got his Lifetime Achievement Award. … We looked out during rehearsal in the front row and Paul McCartney was sitting there recording our rehearsal because he’s a huge fan of Glen Campbell.”
Beyond the early career accolades, one of Perry’s defining experiences came when the band delivered a genre-bending performance on CMT’s “Crossroads” with Fall Out Boy, taking turns playing each other’s hits.
“Honestly, that’s one of my favorite things that we ever got to do,” Perry said. “Those guys are just sweethearts. Before you even see the taping, we got to do two days of rehearsal, just hanging out, learning each other’s music. They had a great love for the country songwriting format, so I love those ‘Crossroads.’ If in the future I ever get to do it again, I just can’t wait. I was such a blast and I think our appetite was wet by that with pop music.”
After that, The Band Perry began experimenting in crossover pop music, delivering singles like “Live Forever,” “Comeback Kid” and “Stay in the Dark” that would wind up on their digitally-released EP “Coordinates” (2018).
“Creatively we were in a season at that time that felt like, ‘Hey, let’s explore,'” Perry said. “It was never our intention to let go of country, but sometimes on the pop side, you have a lot people interested in growing your sound then sometimes it feels like you’re getting a little too far from home plate. It’s been really cool since 2020, Reid, Neil and I have been individually and collectively writing songs that brought us back home to country.”
In March 2023, The Band Perry announced that it would be taking a “creative break as a group” to “focus on our individual creative pursuits.” This allowed Kimberly to release her first solo EP “Bloom” (2023) that would eventually expand into “Superbloom” (2023), which released last fall with the single “If I Die Young Pt. 2.”
“With my project ‘Superbloom,’ it was really me with my solo voice getting to go like, ‘Hey, I’ve had such an amazing journey, I’ve gotten to explore a lot,'” Perry said. “I’m all for experimentation, there’s a lot of country artists doing it now and vice versa, a lot of pop artists experiencing country, but for me, it’s just always wonderful to know where the pillow is warm and where home is: that’s country music and being a country singer-songwriter.”
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