Born to a music loving family in California's Bay Area, Emily Nenni has always had the honky tonk spirit running through her veins. During her formative years she picked up on Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam and others from her home state's blossoming country scene.
After moving to Chicago to attend Columbia College she began recording songs in her dorm room and performing covers once a week at a local bar in exchange for a free Potbelly sandwich. Eventually she settled down in Nashville, where she fell even further for classic country by frequenting local haunts like Robert's Western World, Bobby's Idle Hour and Santa's Pub.
It was at Santa's where Nenni first connected with the group that would later become her backing band and tour mates, Teddy & The Rough Riders. The like-minded group of young country up-and-comers who released a dynamite record of their own earlier in 2022 have also been mainstays on the artist's studio work including On The Ranch, Nenni's Normaltown/New West Records debut out Nov. 4.
"I remember walking into Santa's and hearing Ryan Jennings from the Rough Riders singing 'Somebody Else You've Known' by Merle Haggard one night and walking up to him afterward to tell him how much I enjoyed it," Nenni tells Wide Open Country. "We've been playing together ever since. Those guys have been my favorite part of making music for the past six years. I've had a blast recording and touring with them and am lucky to have them in my corner."
Another regular fixture in Nenni's corner — and on the new record — is Mike Eli. The Chris Stapleton guitarist and co-producer of On The Ranch first met Nenni on a foggy Friday night years ago at Robert's on Broadway and has since worked with her on countless other projects including home recordings of her Hell Of A Woman and I Owe You Nothin' EPs.
The two began work together on On The Ranch prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but opted to pack up and head out west to a ranch in Colorado where Eli's wife was working as a wrangler to finish it. Having worked full-time in the hectic environment of a James Beard award winning restaurant prior to the move, the excursion provided a much different experience than what Nenni was dealing with in Nashville, in turn yielding her most vibrant music to date.
"[Being outside is] the best way to clear my head and tap into anything that I want to write about," says Nenni. "I often pull from my own experiences and typically need hours of reflection to get what I need, but being outside and, in this case, observing a working ranch from the porch of a wrangler house, helped to expedite the process. It was a long way from the restaurant job I had at the start of the pandemic and a change of pace that I desperately needed."
Nenni further taps into the feeling embodied by the ranch throughout the album's ten tracks, most notably on opening track "Can Chaser" — a song about female barrel racers, or can chasers, illustrating just how badass and empowering they are — and "On The Ranch" — a song about easygoing rural life that's not always as easy as it seems.
She eventually goes on to combine farm life with other personal experiences on "The Rooster And the Hen," an autobiographical tune about an ex of Nenni's who was penning a song about an overconfident rooster. With Roger Miller in mind, Nenni's rebuttal takes on the perspective of a hen mistreated and left behind by the overconfident rooster only to meet "a better rooster with longer legs" shortly thereafter. The story of karmic, farm-fueled redemption paints a beautiful picture of the complexities of love and how some endings only happen to set you up for something, or someone, better as Nenni sings:
"The long legged rooster caught eyes with the hen
She shook her head and said I won't give a cluck again
The long forgotten feelings how they started to stir
Some lovin' is a sickness and some can be the cure"
Love later pops up on the album in tracks like "Matches," about a relationship on fire with temptation and then turmoil inspired by '80s cheating songs.
"Useless," which was written after Nenni briefly returned to her restaurant job in the early stages of the pandemic, channels Nenni's feelings of anxiety and anguish at the time. The uncertainty over when live music would return left her feeling uninspired. Ever since moving to Nashville, Nenni had been working hard to get by, independently releasing her music on her own dime — a livelihood she thought may be gone for good. This is captured in the song's chorus, in which Nenni sings:
"Oh I'm workin to make a living and that feels good you see
Oh I'm worthy and I'm willin', I'll bark and bite for free
Oh I'll try, try, try, you can bleed me dry
Oh I'm useless if you ain't got no use for me"
"I thought I would have all the time I needed and more to do the things I wanted to do but couldn't previously with a full-time job, but I ended up lacking motivation to do much of anything," Nenni says.
From feeling useless to putting yourself to good use, Nenni embodies the latter on "Get On With It." Inspired predominantly by The Staple Singers and Charley Pride's "Get Up Off Your Good Intentions," the anthem pulls from recent social justice protests while emphasizing the importance of not just having good intentions, but following through with action. This is most directly addressed when Nenni sings:
"If you see it's wrong, then you say it's wrong
See somebody treated like they don't belong
If you can finagle and are willing and able
Get in a bit of trouble, set a seat at the table"
"No matter what you're after, it all begins with you following through with being the change you want to see," Nenni says. "Anyone can say they're going to do something, but very few actually back up their words with action."
In addition to getting listeners up and off of their good intentions, On The Ranch embodies the spirit of unabashed outlaw women like Nenni, the ranch wranglers she met in Colorado and in some cases both, all who live their lives doing what they want on their own terms. It's also a reminder that with hard work, confidence and patience anything is possible.
"The record does have some sad songs, but for the most part I tried to keep the record positive and on the upbeat side because life, especially these past few years, have been very hard," Nenni says. "I hope these songs cheer people up and keep them going like writing them did for me."
