I’m treading in El Somnambulo territory here, as the LP by the country supergroup The Highwomen — formed as a sort of “answer group” to the ’80s supergroup the Highwaymen — dropped just last week. I don’t know modern country music tastes well enough to forecast whether an album by Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires will prove popular, but this live performance of the Fleetwood Mac classic in Howard Stern’s radio studio demonstrates they have the chops to sound like a latter-day Dixie Chicks. Personally, I think their harmonies make them sound more like Crosby, Still & Nash than the original Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings).
The driving force in the group’s formation was Shires, who listened to a lot of country radio in her tour van. She noticed how few female artists were getting airplay, and came up with the idea of an all-female band in the spirit of the Highwaymen. A mutual friend told her to call Carlile, the best-known of the quartet, who thought it sounded like fun.
Most of the LP’s tracks are more country-radio oriented. All 12 were co-written by at least one member of the band with some outside co-writing contributions from Jason Isbell, who is Shires’ husband, and Jimmy Webb, who helped rework his song “The Highwaymen” into the “The Highwomen.” The verses are sung in turn by Carlile, Shires, guest vocalist Yola and Hemby; Yola steals the song with her verse as a murdered Freedom Rider.
