Meet the Canadians making waves in Nashville,
Canadian women are finding all kinds of success in Music City
“I looooovvvve Canadians — yes I do!” gushes Mickey Guyton, whose anthem “Black Like Me” made her the first Black female to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Country Solo Performance.
“I have an affinity for Canadians, man. I really, really do. We just get each other.”
She may be from Texas, but don’t be surprised if the country singer and songwriter ends up hanging a Maple Leaf flag outside her house: Canadians have been a big factor in her groundbreaking success.
There’s “Boys,” her current hit duet with Dean Brody on Canadian country radio, but more significantly, there’s “Bridges,” her breakout EP on which all six songs are written either entirely or in part by Canadians.
More importantly in a genre where “bro” country has been way too prominent for way too long: many of the writers joining Guyton are women — GTA expats Victoria Banks, Karen Kosowski and Emma-Lee, who co-wrote the title track and the other ballad that has been drawing a lot of attention lately, “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?”
The heartfelt plea depicting a daughter’s transition from innocence to reality was performed last fall by Guyton at the ACM Awards, another first for a solo Black female artist.
Much of “Bridges” was produced by Kosowski, one of the few female producers who are making an impact in the stuffy, male-dominated atmosphere known as Music City.
“I love her,” says Guyton, 37, speaking from her Los Angeles home. “Not only is she super, super talented, but she’s a woman and I think it’s so important for a woman to get these opportunities.”
Guyton knows a thing or two about opportunity. In 2015, after scoring a Top 40 hit with “Better Than You Left Me,” she felt her career had stalled, and took some time to assess the situation and launch a creative makeover.
“I was just so off everybody’s radar at the time that it gave me the space to figure my sound out,” she explains. “I felt there was a lot of Mickey-fatigue happening, so I wasn’t setting out to do anything crazy or spectacular with this music. It was fatigue of my own, of seeing how messed up this industry is.
“I’ve seen some of the most powerful women in Nashville be completely disregarded. I’ve seen it and it’s upsetting for me.
“At a certain point, it was, ‘What the hell is going on and how are people continuing to allow this?’ That’s where I kind of started.
“So I shifted my whole way of thinking and thought, ‘Look, if I never make it in this industry, ever, I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and watch this happen to people.’ I was tired of fighting for myself and so I started fighting for everybody else.
“Then, in turn, I got a career out of it. It’s the weirdest thing,”
she laughs.
One of the first decisions she made was to write and sing more authentically — and that’s where the Canadian trio of Banks, Kosowski and EmmaLee came in.
Banks remembers those early days working with Guyton.
“Mickey and I have been working together right from the very beginning of her time in Nashville, in 2008,” says Banks, a zoologist from Muskoka who found her professional heart more suited to music and songwriting.
“My publisher put me into a co-write with her and I was just blown away, right away, by her
voice. Anytime you get to write with anybody who has an instrument like that, it’s like borrowing somebody’s vocal cords for a little while; it’s so inspiring.”
Banks, a 2010 Canadian Country Female Artist of the Year who penned the 2001 Top 20 Sara Evans hit “Saints & Angels,” and co-wrote the Johnny Reid hit “Dance With Me,” says she was working with Guyton regularly when the artist experienced some career frustrations.
“Her label had so much paralysis by analysis about what to do with her — they weren’t really releasing her material,” Banks remembers. “She was writing so many songs, trying to give them what they wanted, trying to strategize all these different ways of what song would break through for her on radio.
“Eventually, it got to the point where people just wouldn’t write with her. The songwriters in town were just getting frustrated working with her and not
having anything to show for it.” But Banks stuck with Guyton. “I believed in her. As time moved on, the frustrations that she was experiencing really started to grow her songwriting. She’d come into our sessions with something really powerful to say.
“A lot of country artists, as a songwriter, are very self-limiting by what they believe radio will play,” Banks continues. “Mickey threw her hands up at that and said, ‘I don’t care, I’m just going to say what I need to say and whatever happens, happens.’ ”
Banks introduced her to Kosowski, who started out as a singer-songwriter in Winnipeg before moving to Toronto and honing her craft as a recording engineer and producer.
Guyton and Kosowski, who has worked with Brett Kissel, Tim Hicks and others, bonded immediately.
“Karen had just done a demo for one of the songs we had written and after I heard the first song, I said, ‘Wait a minute? I sound like that when I’m singing?’ ” Guyton recalls. “She just got my vocal. “We started writing so much and when it was time to start cutting some of these records, Karen was just the one (as producer). I just started fighting for her to be part of this.”
Emma-Lee (who does not use her last name publicly) is Kosowski’s best friend and they had worked together for over a decade before moving to Nashville in 2016.
“I was having luck with people who were cutting my songs who were in the country world,” says Emma-Lee, who has released three albums and is also a renowned music photographer. “It was an unplanned thing for me being that I came from a way more pop background. But I like real songs and Nashville still wants to write those kinds of songs.
“I’d invited Karen to come down and hang for three weeks, and I think that is when it sort of started solidifying for both of us in our minds that this made sense.”
For Kosowski, Nashville “felt like the right fit.”
“I think I just lucked out,” she says. “A few years ago, I got a call from Victoria Banks’ publisher at RareSpark (media group). He said he wanted to set me up on a writing date with Victoria and Mickey. I think it was my first year here, and I was still back and forth to Toronto a lot. I remember I changed my flight so I could come back and do it because I was a big fan of Mickey.”
The first time Guyton, Banks, Kosowski and Emma-Lee sat in a room together, it was magic.
“The first song all four of us wrote together was ‘What Are You Going to Tell Her?’ ” Banks recalls. “When you find a combination like that, that’s magical, you just kind of go with it and see where it takes you.”
The Guyton partnership has paid off for both Kosowski and Emma-Lee, as both recently signed Sony ATV Music publishing deals.
“I feel like I’ve just kind of got my head down here and Mickey and I are working on a bunch more stuff. I’m doing a lot of writing and the publishing deal has introduced me to more artists, more writers,” Kosowski said.
“It’s really easy to write songs with an artist when you feel inspired by the story that they want to tell,” Emma-Lee said. “I just signed my first publishing deal about two months ago and I know ‘What Are You Going to Tell Her?’ played a big part in me getting that deal. It’s been a bit of a calling card.”
Guyton is happy that they’re all moving forward together.
“I love that they’re women and that they’re Canadians,” Guyton said.
“There’s a strong Canadian contingent down here,” said Banks. “We all tend to find each other and work together,” she laughs.
“Hopefully, this will trigger a movement,” says Guyton.
“I have an affinity for Canadians, man. I really, really do.
We just get each other.” MICKEY GUYTON COUNTRY MUSIC SENSATION