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10 Questions with ... The Shady Ladies Of Music City
September 7, 2021
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BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
Former music industry executives Susan Nadler and Evelyn Shriver are now two seasons into co-hosting their hilarious and insightful podcast, “Shady Ladies of Music City,” for Nashville-based Monument Records. Launched in 2019 with the goal of “infiltrating the good ole boys club of Music Row,” the outspoken hosts have offered their views on the past and current music business from their shared perspective as 40-year veterans in a show they call “equal parts music, comedy and female empowerment.” Both arrived in Nashville in the 1980s and, after working in various roles, became the co-chiefs of Asylum Records in 1998.
On the first season of their podcast, the ladies had almost no guests, with the exception of that season’s final episode, where they welcomed Monument co-Presidents Shane McAnally and Jason Owen live from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. In the second season, however, they opened their microphones up to a wide variety of guests with whom they have enjoyed long relationships. Those guests ranged from artists Martina McBride, Lorrie Morgan and the Mavericks’ Raul Malo, to music industry attorney Joel Katz, and artist managers Tony Conway and Clint Higham. Their interview with former ASCAP SVP Connie Bradley was her last, as it was taped shortly before her death in March.
While they await word on renewal for a third season, Nadler and Shriver chatted with All Access via Zoom about the first two.
1. Monument is enjoying big success right now with Walker Hayes’ “Fancy Like.” Does that bode well for you getting a third season renewal?
Nadler: That’s what I think. Katie McCartney, the GM at Monument Records, is very much an advocate of the podcast and of mine and Evelyn’s. And [label co-President] Jason Owen came up with the idea of the podcast in the first place. It’s going to be what [Monument parent] Sony wants to do. Who can believe that Evelyn and I are signed to a label [laughs], but if Sony feels there’s enough heat and activity, they’ll renew it.
2. You mentioned that the podcast was Jason’s idea. How did it all come together from there?
Nadler: I’ve known Jason for a long time. I met him through [former Universal executives] Luke and Lauren Lewis and … he’s always loved my stories. Three years ago he came to me and said, “You know what would be really cool is if you and Evelyn did a podcast.” I had never thought about doing a podcast in my life. I’d never even listened to one. He’s been very, very supportive of the whole thing, as has [Monument co-President] Shane [McAnally].
3. Why the shift between seasons one and two from doing a topic-based podcast to one that was guest-based?
Shriver: In the first season we went through a lot of our personal stories, and since so many of our stories involved these other people, it seemed sort of natural to bring them into it. You have to kind of develop more ideas in terms of actually doing these shows, and we have to knock out 12 of them. We have the freedom to basically do anything we want, and as we think of [new ideas], I don’t think there will ever be a consistent format.
4. Other than people who were part of the first season’s narrative, how did you decide on guests to book for the second? It seems like the commonality is a strong personal connection, which really makes a difference in terms of being able to talk about certain things.
Shriver: When we decided to do interviews, we wanted people that we actually had a real connection with, that we were very comfortable with. Quite frankly, we don’t want to be journalists. I don’t want to have to research anybody. I want to know them well enough. I don’t want to have to listen to their albums and try to figure things out. We weren’t doing celebrity interviews or industry interviews, we were just sort of laughing with friends, and I think that’s important because, again, we don’t want to be researchers and explore people that we don’t know.
5. You had to record the second season episodes during the thick of the pandemic lockdown. How did that work logistically?
Shriver: We just talked on the phone from our homes with our iPads on voice memo so we would have separate vocal tracks to work with. But it was weird. We didn’t do any kind of video, any kind of Zoom or FaceTime or anything. We just did strictly audio, but God knows we’ve been talking on the phone for years, so that wasn’t too bad. It was just that the quality wasn’t that good. We always sounded like we were shouting.
Nadler: Martina [McBride] sounded so wonderful. Of course she had a $100,000 mic. She had [husband and Blackbird Studios owner] John McBride and all of his brilliant technology. She sounded like Julie Andrews, and I felt like an old Russian refugee yelling.
6. Do you each have a favorite or couple of favorite episodes so far?
Nadler: I liked our first season the best, [especially] the final episode where Evelyn and I, and Jason and Shane, did a live presentation at the Country Music Hall of Fame. That was a spectacular event for us.
Shriver: When you have a personal relationship with most of the people, it’s hard to say which one you like better. But I like the Joel Katz episode very much because I think for so many people that he’s just an elusive kind of figurehead. But when you think about that he started out with James Brown, and his history, I thought that was really interesting because most people don’t [get to] hear that.
I [also] liked a lot of the first season too, because Susan and I had so many laughs when we started, talking about the stories and the experiences that we had in the business. It also made me very nostalgic and missing those times when you think of some of these events that we were all a part of. We’re not really in the business anymore, so it hard to gauge who’s having more fun, but I look at it as the older days being the more fun days when everybody was more relaxed and it wasn’t so much a brand and a posse, it was sort of everybody in town being excited for each other.
Nadler: It was really a lot of fun back then. I don’t think the people are having as much fun [anymore] … I’ll tell you a funny story that I think I told on the podcast. When I first got here in 1976, [Music Row] still called Magnolia Boulevard. I remember driving down Magnolia Boulevard with my then husband, who was a songwriter … and we see this woman jogging down the street with this long ponytail, and she had a great ass. I remember my husband was mesmerized by her, and I remember watching her going by all of the old houses and seeing people coming out, and when she turned around it was Willie Nelson. Nothing like that happens anymore. I know that Luke Bryan is not running down 17th Avenue.
7. Other than the podcast, you’re not still working in the business? I remember you had a label with George Jones before he died.
Shriver: I think that maybe we made a mistake and stopped a little too early. But it’s a whole new business now, and it’s all based on technology, and I don’t want to relearn anything. We have friends in the business and we stay informed, but the podcast is pretty much the only thing that I do. We sold our publishing company, so we’re not even really that involved in publishing.
Nadler: We did have a publishing company with James House, whom I love and I still listen to some of his songs that we have the publishing on. I thought that every song that he wrote was brilliant.
8. How did the “Shady Ladies” name come about?
Nadler: Notorious Women was the name of our publishing company, and I wanted to call the podcast Notorious Women.
Shriver: Some people didn’t like that. We were actually on Willie [Nelson’s] bus and we were talking about how we were getting ready to do this podcast, and one of the guys said “Ah, the shady ladies,” and we thought that was kind of good … For a while, honestly, we were really unsure about the name. We didn’t really like it that much because it had a shady connotation, and we were just going to be frank and say whatever we wanted to say. We were kind of known for that anyhow, but we never considered ourselves shady. We weren’t looking for shady deals ever. We were more often the people who got screwed as opposed to the people screwing people in business deals.
9. Two seasons into this, what have you learned about being podcasters that you didn’t know when you started? Any advice for other podcasters that are just now getting into it?
Shriver: Everyone has a tendency to really ramble, [including] me and Susan, and when you actually have to listen to all of that rambling, some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So I say, “Tell your story and try to not go on and on about it, which we have a tendency to do.”
Nadler: I would say, get a great editor, and have your questions ready to go that you’re going to ask each other and the person. Evelyn and I talk about the podcast the day before, not too far in advance. I think podcasts are kind of the way of the future. I mean, look how many people are doing podcasts now.
10. Any tips you’ve picked up, especially in the second season about how to get a great interview out of someone, other than knowing them really well?
Nadler: Let them do all of the talking. Just ask some key questions and people are so happy to talk about themselves. They will tell you everything if you just shut up long enough to let them do it. Get out of everybody’s way. I have such a close relationship with Lorrie [Morgan] still, but she does the best when I don’t say much and just give her some cues. And the same thing with Shane. He really talked in the podcast more than I’ve ever heard him talk before because we didn’t interrupt him that much. It’s hard not to interrupt when you know somebody because you always want to add something.
Bonus Questions
Anyone still on your bucket list to interview?
Nadler: I would love to interview Loretta Lynn, but I doubt that’ll happen. She would be a bucket list person for me. I would love to interview Michelle Obama but I doubt that she would ever talk to us any more forthright than she did on her own podcast. I would like to interview Laura Bush, because when George [Jones] got the Kennedy Center honors, Laura Bush was the one that inducted him, and she said something so touching. She said, “I, too, had my own George, and he walked through this world with me.” Isn’t that touching? People that know Country music and know George’s song, “Walk Through This World With Me,” would know how meaningful it was that Laura Bush said that. I really like her. She’s just a really lovely woman. A lot of the first ladies are pretty lovely. You know, Jill Biden is a great, great woman. I really admire her enormously. I would love to interview her but, you know, why would she do a podcast with the Shady Ladies?
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