Country Stars Central

 

(CSC) 1. Thanks for the visit! You’ve been pretty busy touring all over the country this past year, so what’s the latest with The Lynns?

(The Lynns)

Patsy: The latest with the both of us? Well, we’re working up new songs, which are really fun. When you do the same songs over and over every night; it’s always exciting when you get to do new material. Other than that, we’ve been raising babies; we have little kids at home. We open up the shows for our mom; we’ve been doing that for the past five or six years now. We have been touring a lot with her, but it is so much fun to go out every single night with our mom, open up the show, warm up the crowd, and be able to watch her perform and learn from her amazing talent!

 

Peggy: I think the most fun about that is you actually get to know your mom as an adult, which is always fun, but it’s the “girl time” that means the most to us. My mother makes the best popcorn that you have ever eaten!!  

 

Patsy: It is definitely a slumber party!! (Laughs)  

 

 

(CSC) 2. It has been awhile since your last record was released; do you have plans to release a follow-up, and if so what style can listeners expect to hear?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: We actually have been starting to sort through material for a new CD right now. It’s not really going towards a particular style or a sound. Our music has always consistently been the same, and we’re just going to keep doing what we do. We call our music “Honk-a-Billy” music because it’s a cross between Elvis meets Loretta.

 

Peggy: It’s Honky-tonk and Rockabilly.

 

Patsy: All the new stuff has that same “Lynn” sound to it. It’s funny because literally with sibling harmony, you find what fits, and that’s really all you can do. We’re not one of those people who can just harmonize with anybody. As a matter of fact, when people ask us individually to come in and sing on their records or sing backup, it’s really difficult for us to come in there and do that because we only hear each other.    

 

 

(CSC) 3. When you initially began your careers in country music as a duo, did you feel that you were taken seriously being the daughters of a Country Music legend, Loretta Lynn?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: When were first signed to Warner Brothers in 1998, they didn’t know that we were Loretta’s daughters. They were signing us as the group, “The Honkabillies.” It wasn’t until our final board meeting that I said to them, “Well you know with Warner Brothers, our Aunt was on this label for many years,” and they looked at me and said, “Your aunt?..” I said, “Well yes, Crystal Gayle.” So that was how they discovered the Loretta Lynn background. One of the things that we wanted to do was to get our music and recording deal on our own merit. As many doors as the Lynn name will open, the expectation is set so high on you at that point that it’s almost a bar you can’t reach. You have to get in there, make people a fan of what you do, and then the Loretta Lynn is the icing on the cake, and that’s a great thing!!

 

Peggy: I think a lot of what we found for that too, is when people discover that you’re Loretta Lynn’s daughter, in that situation which is what happened with us, it changes things because instead of it being about what you’re doing artistically, it always comes down to people saying… “I am the biggest fan of your mothers,” and all of that. It’s a blessing and a curse all in one, because when you’re younger, you immediately get on the defensive, but as you get older you really appreciate that because I am her biggest fan. I think that that was something we had to really overcome with that, and it was hard. I remember picking up an interview that they did on us years ago, and they insinuated that we were raised on a “Silver Spoon.” I thought to myself “Silver Spoon?...” you try playing every Thursday night for tips at Tootsie’s (Laughs) for a couple of years and see how Silver Spoon that is!

 

Patsy: I think you do have kind of a leg up if you will because you’re learning from the very best in the business, which is not with just our mom being Loretta, but our Aunt being Crystal Gayle. Their entire family was musical, there was four of them at one time on MCA records. So there’s a musical family and a musical background, and now our niece Tayla is starting in the music business, and my sister Peggy’s daughter Jasy has started launching herself in the music business as well. There are so many people, like our brother Ernest Ray, who also sings, so for us we’re not doing anything that everybody else doesn’t do, there’s nothing that stands out; it seems like everybody is musical here in our family.     

 

 

(CSC) 4. Being that your mother is more of a traditionalist, what style of Country Music do you feel most comfortable singing/performing?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: We’re definitely fans of Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard. We grew up with traditional Country Music, but we also grew up with Fleetwood Mac, and a lot of other different styles of music. I think that when we’re around the house there’s no telling what we’ll be singing. We can sing a Loretta Lynn song, we can sing a Buck Owen song, or we may be singing a song off the “Rumours” album. You never know with Fleetwood Mac. (Laughs) It was really hard for Peggy and I when we started talking about doing covers as to what would fit our style, and our harmony, because the way that we sing together is the main thing for us. We don’t like songs that both of us aren’t singing at least all the way through, or somewhat all the way through. It doesn’t feel so much like a duo that way; there is a lead singer with a background any other way, and we both wanted to really participate in every song. We write most of our material, and we always have.

 

Peggy: I think even when we were working up covers at Tootsie’s, the song found us, we don’t find it usually. When something works for us, and we start to sing it, and it fits into that where we can really sing it together, then it stays. There are so many times where the song happened to us, we didn’t just go out and look for it, we just started singing something… like “Tulsa Time.” When we worked up “Tulsa Time” for our live show, it was because somebody did it at one of the shows, and we heard it while we were getting ready in the dressing room. Patsy and I thought, “Hey we can really play around with the harmony on that song; this is going to be fun!” So that was how that happened with that particular song for us.

 

(Country Stars Central)

Speaking of Fleetwood Mac, they’re getting back together for a tour this spring and summer (2009)!

 

Patsy: I love Stevie Nicks!! I loved her last record; I thought that it was just great. She is definitely one of our favorites. For Christmas, back in 1972 or 1973, a friend of ours bought Peggy and I, for a Christmas present, an album…They bought Peggy a Bread album, and mine was “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac. When we hear about those groups, it brings back a bunch of memories for us.

 

Peggy: It’s funny because in our house we never had Rock & Roll music. It was either Loretta or George Jones. To introduce any sort of rock music into the house was a big deal for us, and of course you know our dad wasn’t going to do that. (Laughs)

 

Patsy: You know our mom knows music so well, and she knows every form of music. It doesn’t matter what genre… whether it’s Jazz, or Rock & Roll, she can tell you who Lenny Kravitz is, and she can talk about the songs that he sings. She loves all forms of music, and I think that it has transcended with Peggy and I because we sit back there with her and its amazing, because in every form of music there is something great! It doesn’t matter if it’s Reggae, or whatnot, we love all of it!            

 

(CSC) 5. Growing up as young girls, what can you recall about witnessing your mother’s enormous success firsthand in the music business, and how did it affect you personally with her being gone constantly?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: Well first of all we grew up an hour and a half west of Nashville, Tennessee in a town called Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

 

Peggy: We always say its population, The Lynn Family. You come down there you were marrying material back then…nobody would venture back there. (Laughs)

 

Patsy: You know, quite honestly, I don’t remember until I was a teenager understanding that my mom was famous, or that we were different because we went to public school systems.

 

Peggy: I think it was almost the opposite, they really focused on us being as normal, and when you start out in a little town, our High School had three hundred people in it, and you grow up with these people from first grade you’re just Peggy and Patsy. Nobody treats you any different there.

 

Patsy: Well when the tourist attraction started at the ranch in 1976, then you start realizing that there are people coming there, and what they are coming there for. We went out on the road with our mom quite a bit as young girls, and we really started understanding it better. I’ll tell you what really made it become more evident as far as me that something was different, and that she, (Loretta) was special, is when the movie “Coal Miners Daughter” came along. All of a sudden when these movie stars converge on Hurricane Mills, and it’s “Carrie” (Sissy Spacek), she was Carrie at the time, so to all of our girlfriends and schoolmates, Carrie was at our house so it was great. I don’t think that we really knew any different until maybe that had happened.

 

Peggy: For everybody and I think everybody has at least once seen the movie, “Coal Miners Daughter,” or read the book, “Coal Miners Daughter.” There’s an insight in that book, and in that movie what you see with Loretta is what you get, and Loretta Lynn to mom is the same. She’s very down to earth, when she came home she was mom, dinner was at six, and there was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for us growing up.

 

Patsy: Well I think one of the things that may have been out of the ordinary was not everybody’s mother wore those big gowns. (Laughs)

 

Peggy: But she didn’t wear those big gowns at home, and when she came home she was very much mom. We were raised in a real structured house, we got up at 6:30 for school, and on Sundays you’d go to church. It was very average for us, and thank goodness for that!

 

Patsy: But very much unlike for a lot of the children that we know that have famous parents that grew up in Nashville, our raising was completely different, so I don’t know that we’re the right ones to ask about that. (Laughs)              

 

 

(CSC) 6. I know that both of you were very close to your father, Mooney, at this point in your life, what are some special memories that you cherish about him?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: Our father is what kept everything grounded in our entire lives. He was a hard working man, they were from Kentucky, and he taught us never to forget what’s really important in life and in family. My mother and father were married for forty-eight years. Family is my favorite memory of my father; I think that he kept everybody together all the time. My dad was my mom’s career, and I think it was so wonderful that she always gave him the credit for that.

 

Peggy: I think mom and dad had a very unconventional sort of relationship, because it was one that was based on this very passionate couple who just adored one another, but I think a lot of mom just really wanted to make dad proud of her. That was her goal every time that she went into the studio to cut a song, it was really for dad to make him proud. Dad was her anchor, she always knew she had a safe place, and she always knew that dad was always there to save the day if anything ever went funny, he would be out there in full force, and protect her with everything that he had. There’s one saying that I’ll never forget, “In every good relationship there’s an anchor and a kite,” and my parents are an absolute perfect example of that because my dad kept my mother grounded, and let her be who she needed to be and loved her for it. You couldn’t have asked for a bigger fan than Mooney Lynn for Loretta Lynn.

 

Patsy: Even when our dad got sick, we felt he was always very, very strong. When he was sick, my mom stopped working, stayed at home, and she cared for him. When my dad passed away I think all of us kids really believed that our mom was going to fall apart. It was the most amazing thing for me to watch my mom, during my fathers illness, come into her own, and become this amazingly strong woman that at the end when everything should have been falling apart, my mother was gathering up all the pieces and the children. She’s the one who led us on from that time period in our life to go forward, and she has been the one that has kept the family completely together since then.

 

Peggy: Then our dad noticed mom was the strong one during that time. (Laughs)

 

(Country Stars Central)

You just don’t see too many careers similar to your mothers nowadays.

 

Patsy: Well they lived the American dream, but in defense, you grow up now with three hundred television stations, multiple radio stations, the internet, and all of those things have opened a whole new world to people. As far as growing up and doing the things that my parents knew, I think the newer artists that are out there now have so much to offer, and they have their own stories to tell.

 

Peggy: I think Carrie Underwood has a really remarkable story to tell, and of course it’s different because economically we’re in a different time, but I think that Carrie’s story is wonderful. Look at Tim and Faith, Alan Jackson and Denise, everybody has their own story but I think the difference is that mom can’t keep a secret, so she tells you everything about her; she has nothing to hide to where I think nowadays people may be a little more reserved about what they talk about with each other. And with the paparazzi today for people, they don’t want that in their lives, and I understand that.

 

Patsy: When you really think about how Country Music fans used to be like when my mom was singing, or Tammy Wynette, or Dolly, and all of those others who were performing then, the fans were different because in order to see the artist they actually had to drive, and would drive for hundreds of miles, and that would be their vacation….going to a Loretta Lynn concert. Her fans have been around since the beginning of her career, and they’re still here coming to these shows. Nowadays with television and the internet being so accessible, I think the fans are a little bit different now because there’s really not an invested interest of actually getting to know the artist like they did. I don’t see that the Country Music format is really more artist driven than it is single driven. When it’s artist driven you wait for a Loretta Lynn record, or you really get involved in the artists career to where nowadays it’s really single driven; here today gone tomorrow, so it doesn’t lend itself to them.    

  

 

(CSC) 7. You both were married at a very young age, how do you balance motherhood and your careers?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: It’s a hard thing… When Peggy and I were signed to Warner Brothers, she had one child, and I had three children. It’s a very difficult thing, but I look at it no different than if I had a job working 8 to 4 or from 9 to 5. You do travel, and you are away from your family, but the time that you spend with your family you really make it quality time. Our children always know where we’re at, what we’re doing, and we talk to them on the phone everyday. When you come home you’re washing clothes, you’re cooking dinner, and you become a mom again.

 

Peggy: I think it’s really important for me because I have a young child at home right now, so my husband (Mark) is there with him while I’m on the road. It’s really funny how you repeat some of what your parents used to say, and you recreate that life. Mark is home with Lucca, and I know that Lucca is fine. I call him every day and I’m involved, but when I come home we don’t talk about music, or any of that like my mom would do with us…We talk about homework, we talk about toys, and when I walk in the door the first thing my little son asks me is, “Did you get me anything?” (Laughs) This to him is like, “You just went to the store right?”

 

Patsy: I think you just really have to stay grounded with your family, and the time that you spend with them like any other family.

 

Peggy: It’s not easy… it’s not an easy life by any means.

 

Patsy: It doesn’t always make for fun, especially when you’re gone over the Holidays, you just have to go!         

 

 

(CSC) 8. What’s one important thing that you’ve been taught by your mother and father, and how do you apply that to your own lives today?

 

(The Lynns)

Peggy: I think the most important thing that my mom and dad have taught is to stay in the moment, and enjoy this while you can. I think that’s one thing that I’ve witnessed with both my parents, I don’t think they ever took this for granted, not for one minute, as a matter of fact, I think that all of their good fortune and everything that they had they really enjoyed that particular moment of it. They never looked for the future because growing up as children in the depression; they never really thought about tomorrow, they thought about today. Basically to enjoy the moment, and stay in that moment is what meant the most to me.

 

Patsy: More than anything what they taught me is to keep your life simple and have integrity too; integrity was very much important to them. Be who you are, and do what you say you’re going to do.      

 

(CSC) 9. Your family grew up in a historic plantation home west of Nashville in the small town of Hurricane Mills. It’s rumored that there was more inside that home than just your family, what paranormal events have you encountered there?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: Well when Peggy and I were young, and we moved to Hurricane Mills, within the first three to four years there was always ghosts; whether people believe in ghosts or not, we’re here to tell you it’s absolutely true. We had several visits from ghosts actually. The visits seemed to not be as often for Peggy as she got older, but we would be in a room at night together and experience strange events.

 

Peggy: The weirdest thing that happened to me is there was a woman that came to me, and I woke up in the middle of the night, I turned on my light, and I look out, and there is this woman standing in our hallway. She was dressed in a period dress, but the weird thing is I can’t really describe to you what it was like. You saw her, but it wasn’t like she was solid or transparent; you just knew that that something wasn’t right. You could see her but it wasn’t like an actual person standing there. She stood there for a very, very long time, and Gloria, the lady that stayed with Patsy and I all of our lives came running out, and I yelled, “Did you see her!!” (Laughs) Gloria is a devout member of the Church Of Christ, they don’t believe in ghosts, you’re going to Heaven, there is no in between, and you’re not coming back type of person. She replied to me and said, “I saw something, I don’t know what it is.” (Laughs) That was the only time that I ever actually psychically saw something like that in that house and I’ll tell you it really affects you when you see something like that. There are a couple of rooms in that house, and the brown room is one of them. It has all the Indian curtains in that room, and when you walk in, you can literally feel something’s not right in that room; it’s not a good feeling that’s for sure. That room was the one that we’d always fight to not be in. Nobody wanted to sleep in it, and if you had a couple of girlfriends over and you don’t particularly like one, that’s the room you put her in. (Laughs)

 

Patsy: Well you know James Van Praagh, the ghost whisperer, had come down and it was so funny because I was on the tour with him, which by the way he’s absolutely amazing, had went into the brown room and at first he said, “I think its okay in here, I definitely feel that there’s some things going on,” then within ten minutes, he was talking to another psychic that was with him, and told him that the room was filling with blood. He was supposed to stay there for the segment, but he stayed in the brown room for about thirty minutes, before he said, “I’m not going to stay in this room, I’m getting out of this house.” James is actually the writer and the producer for the series “Ghost Whisperer,” which is based on his premonitions and it stars Jennifer Love-Hewitt. That movie that starred Bruce Willis, “Sixth Sense” was based on his life as a child actually. He’s amazing, but he didn’t want to stay in there, nobody will stay in there. (Laughs)                    

 

(CSC) 10. Your parents created a unique attraction, “Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch” in 1972 on the grounds of your home for tourists and loyal fans to visit, what was that like having your home opened up to a bunch of strangers?

 

(The Lynns)

Peggy: I think at the beginning it was very strange for Patsy and I because again you’re isolated, and then all of a sudden the fans are coming over. I will tell you this, when they brought in the Motor Cross sport, Patsy and I were just teenagers, so they brought in this Motor Cross where the Motor Bike riders were coming in and when they said that they were coming, we were a little bit awestruck at first, because they had about 10,000 boys on motorcycles coming to our house, and we thought it was just the greatest thing that ever happened to us. (Laughs) It has actually been really wonderful because you get to share that with people, it’s a really special place, and it is beautiful!   

 

Patsy: When they opened up the home that we were raised in, (The Haunted House) at first we didn’t quite know how to feel about that because it was our home, and there was going to be people there going through our home, not just our home, but with everything in it as if we lived there. After the first year, I went from having mixed feelings to this is the greatest thing in the world because how many people have that opportunity?... it was my parent’s house, it’s there, everything is still intact as if you could move back in, be fifteen all over again, and sleep in your own bed.

 

Peggy: That was the nice thing about it because your bedroom was still the same. It’s the greatest feeling in the world because every time I go there I think I’m just going home, and people are so respectful of the home when they’re touring through it… they just love to do that.    

 

 

(CSC) 11. What are the ups and downs about touring with your fellow siblings and mother on the road?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: Well Peggy and I keep Socker Boppers on the bus. (Laughs) On a serious note, we are so blessed; we are the luckiest people in the world.

 

Peggy: There is such a generation gap between all of us, even with Ernie, it’s just fun. We all have a great time together. There’s nobody that loves mom more than us. We’re very protective of her, so it’s actually very comforting.

 

Patsy: We all get along great and we get to spend so much time together unlike most big families. We all share the music together, and we have so much fun out here. We’re very close and it’s just one big family show!

 

Peggy: It’s funny because Patsy and I were in a room together recently for two days fixing to get ready for the show, and we’re very rarely anywhere for two days, so I went onto the bus and I said to my mom, “Listen mom we’re going to have to break this up because somebody’s fixing to get their head nuggied if you keep us in here together for too much longer.” (Laughs)

 

Patsy: The bottom line of that story is we ended up getting another room, and we didn’t even stay in it! (Laughs)

 

 

(CSC) 12. Finish the following sentence, “If I could change one thing about myself it would be....”

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: I like myself that way that I am; I wouldn’t change a damn thing really!

 

Peggy: I would really like to stop time right now! I think that would be great.   

 

 

(CSC) 13. In closing, what do you aspire to achieve this year with your careers?

 

(The Lynns)

Patsy: We’d like to get some new music out, and continue to do what we’re doing. Just to have everybody healthy, everybody happy, and still wanting to do this! That is the most important thing!!

 

 

Check out pictures from the interview below;