Actress and singer/songwriter Lola Kirke made her Country 2 Country (C2C) Festival this year (2024) and made such an impact on the country music fans that she will undoubtedly return to the C2C Stages in the not too distant future! But fans of the genre and of Kirke won’t actually have to wait long for her return to the UK as she is back in August for a headline tour including an appearance at The Long Road Festival.

Kirke has been making country music for a fair few years now! More recently however, Lola Kirke released her EP titled Country Curious which features First Aid Kit, Roseanne Cash and is produced by Elle King! A wonderful combination of traditional and modern country, the EP is smart, witty and highly relatable!

We caught up with Lola just after her set on the Wayside Stage. Her set was met with great reception and she showcased a few new songs which made for great conversation. Lola Kirke was great company and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her. If it hadn’t been for my having another interview straight after, I could have honestly chatted for hours! A very laid back and cool country woman, Kirke speaks with such ease and passion about the country music genre and we are so excited to follow her journey from here on!

Enjoy!

How are you? How has your C2C Experience been so far?

It’s been good. I was born in England, my family is from England so I have had this incredible time seeing family and friends and places that I grew up in! Then randomly getting to come to the O2 Arena and play on small festivals stages. It’s been a real lovely trip and the weather’s been amazing!

Is it London that your family are from?

Yes!

Oh that makes it easy then!

Yeah it’s great, it’s been a homecoming and I think part of it is getting to play country music in London, it’s a lovely marriage of things I love and music has brought me back to England than anything has in my adult life.

I just saw your set on The Wayside Stage which was incredible! I have written down a new song that you performed and all I have is mum, Madonna, Malboro’s….

Yeah, ‘Malboro Lights and Madonna’. I just wrote that song with Natalie (Hemby) and Jason Nix. I had run into her at the Brandi Carlisle ‘Girls Just Wanna’ weekend in Cancún. For whatever reason, I told her this story of when I was a little girl about 5 years old and how Madonna had been at the same restaurant as us in Miami on a family vacation. My mum was like “go up to her and get her autograph” and I was like “what would she sign? We don’t have anything?” My mum said “oh take this” and gave me her empty Malboro pack and I went over to Madonna like a five year old girl and asked her to sign it for me and she did. I told that story to Natalie Hemby and we were writing together a couple of weeks ago and we were just about to get into it and she said “wait, remind me of that story, it was so funny”. Then I re-told her the story and she said “Malboro Lights and Madonna, that’s a great title”. When I think of my mum, I think of Malboro Lights and Madonna and yeah, we wrote that song. I love how songs fall out of anything if you’re looking at them the right way.”

I don’t think that there’s a better premise for a country song than that!

Thank you so much I really appreciate that!

It’s very Natalie Hemby too

It is, it is so her! I love Natalie!

I love that line in the song about your mum. “always on a diet as she thought she was fat” that’s a line so many women are going to relate to!

We had a bunch of other lines in there too and then I was like “well this is the truest one, that’s not weird right?” And Natalie was like “that’s every mother in the world”. It makes me sad, my mum is so beautiful and I think watching beautiful people think they are not beautiful is just the world we live in. It’s the fuel for every industry and age of capitalism that we live in, and what I love so much about writing, whether it’s songs or other forms of writing that I do, is the ability to bring light and humour to these things that are the subtle underbelly of everything that we do and make them relatable. I do know that’s everyone and that is something that country music has always done for me. I think that my kind of mission within country music is ( I’m not from places that a lot of people from country music are from, I am from New York City and I was born in London, ) to expand on that accessibility of another corner using the country form which is so fun and that was visible playing new songs for people today and by the end they are singing along because there is rhythm to the music that makes it able for people to enter into much easier. I just want to expand on what you can write a country music song about!

I love the honesty and it’s nice to have an honest lyric like that so that you don’t feel alone! It is every mum!

Another song that caught my attention during your set which is also not released is Tennessee Sober…

Yeah! Tennessee Sober I made up haha, it’s the opposite of California Sober. California Sober is a term for like “I don’t drink but I smoke weed”. Willie Nelson and Billy Strings just did a song called California Sober so you can refer to that one for the reference but Tennessee Sober was my play on that because I’m drunk all the time haha. I only drink, I drink all day long haha!

Really?

No haha I’m joking!

Haha good – I see that Pistol Annies are an influence of yours and I can hear that in your music, what is it about them that draws you in? Have you worked with any of them?

I have actually written with Ashley (Monroe) and Angaleena (Pressley) I love them so much! That has been one of my favourite things about Nashville, getting to write with my songwriting heroes and singing heroes. Their voices are voices of angels I just adore them. What I love about them is their ability to be tough and funny and heartbreaking. That’s to me what I love so much about country music, about women in country. You don’t see it all the time but for those that are drawn to do that in the genre, they really can. It’s really cool. I love Miranda Lambert for that reason, she is just who she is.

Tell us about ‘Country Curious’ because that is such a great EP!

So Country Curious, I have always been drawn to country music, it has always been an inspiration for my music and slowly over time it’s just got more and more country. I made a duets record back on 2019 (Loka Kirke and Friends and Foes and Friends Again) and that was more classic country influenced and then my record Lady For Sale that came out on Third Man Records on Jack White’s label was much more 80’s country with a lot of Judd references, a lot of synth, pedal steels stuff, it was really fun but it was pretty niche. I started challenging myself after that to write music that was much more in my mind what I was hearing on country radio. I live in Nashville now and listen to a lot of country radio because why not? I wrote all these songs that I wanted to be like bro-country for women. That felt really exciting to me. You just reflected that there was that line in Malboro Lights and Madonna that speaks to you. I wanted to expand on what we can talk about in a country song and I wanted to talk about women taking back their house (song My House) and hiring strippers and going on adventures. Elle King (produced Country Curious) felt like a really great and perfect partner on that, I have always loved how she has blended a rootsier, influenced with a more contemporary sensibility, we had a lot of fun!

You are coming back for The Long Road Festival which we can’t wait for!

Yes! I can’t wait!

Well you will love that festival too, it’s outdoors and really atmospheric, let’s pray for good weather!