Carly Pearce isn't afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve. She's been called the "Queen of Feels" (aptly named by her gal pal Kailey Dickerson) as she's been writing deeply personal songs since 2017's debut studio album, Every Little Thing. This time around is no different as Pearce continues to reveal her heart with five added tracks to 2024's hummingbird, an album critics praised for its lyrical honesty. So Hummingbird: no rain, no flowers was born. The deluxe album features three never-before-heard songs – “if looks could kill,” “heart first,” and “no rain” – as well as two new acoustic Vevo takes on fan favorites “oklahoma” and “things i don’t chase.”
"I felt like there was a little bit more left to the story and these particular songs," says Pearce of the new tracks. " I wrote "no rain" a couple of months ago and it was actually meant for my new record that I'm working on, but it just kind of felt like it was a song that needed to be put out now. It felt very timely to what hummingbird has meant to me, just going through hard things and coming out on the other side. And the other two songs were just two songs that I've loved for a few years that I wrote for a different album that just hadn't had their moment yet. So it all just kind of felt like the right moment."
Pearce is wrapping up her "hummingbird world tour" this month, after 40+ dates, with a final show at Nashville's mother church, The Ryman. "The Ryman is my favorite place to play, so I'm very excited to be there," says Pearce. "I feel like we have worked really hard on this set from the visuals to the set list, and I think that fans, if they haven't been to one of my shows, they'll get to see just how intimate the vibe is. The Ryman allows me to tell the stories behind the songs. My shows are really about the songwriting and the musicality of these records, and just this music that I wrote to get through different seasons in my life and songs that connect with me. And if you've been to my shows, you can just expect a really fun night because we're very excited to play The Ryman."
While her "hummingbird world tour" might be coming to an end, Pearce will continue touring throughout the summer, doing a few shows with Cody Johnson and a few with Little Big Town. Asked if touring is a grind, she says she mostly loves it. "I love getting to see the payoff of my songs, connecting with people," says Pearce. "I write these songs and hope that people will care. And I think just getting to play live, the shows are just absolutely the best part. The worst part is probably being away from home living in a bus. So just the travel aspect of not having a lot of space, not having your own kitchen, having a really small shower, just all those kind of things that we take for granted."
Pearce finds the inspiration for her songs and storytelling everywhere. "I feel like songs come in all different ways," she says. "They can come to me just in an idea. They can come to me in a melody. They can kind of come out of nowhere, if you will. I think that's the joy of songwriting - you never know how a song is going to come to life and if it's going to be difficult or if it's going to be easy, and all of those things. But I think that if I've lived something or I feel a personal connection to it, it's much easier for me to put my identity on it and to believe it."
When asked what advice she'd give to young girls who want to break into the country music business, Pearce says, "I would say you have to have an identity and a point of view, and you have to work harder than the boys. I think right now you're seeing the pendulum swing back in our favor in country music as far as there's a lot of really amazing women making a lot of noise. And it wasn't that way when I moved here 16 years ago. Women just weren't where they are right now. And so we've kind of swung back the way that the '90s were for females where females are just ruling."
"But I would say something that is an advantage to females or just to any artist right now is with social media and TikTok and the grassroots ability to get your music out there," Pearce adds. "You can reach so many people just from your own home and recording videos and recording your music in a very grassroots way that could really change your life. And I think that's a really empowering and exciting thing for young artists that I would encourage them to just get your music out there in any way that you can."
Pearce recently partnered with Conundrum Wine for her own limited edition label. "I've always been a wine drinker," she says. I had a song years ago at the beginning of my career called "Hide the Wine," and it kind of became a part of my brand. And I had always wanted to find the right company where I actually loved drinking their wine to maybe do something with, in some capacity. And Conundrum is literally a wine that I have been drinking since I could drink wine and I felt like it was the perfect opportunity for me. First of all, to align with a brand that I know the wine is very good, and that I knew that my fans would really be able to afford and enjoy. And so getting to make these custom Carly Pearce edition labels was one of those just very surreal moments for me of, "Oh, my God, I would have never thought in one million years that this wine that I've been drinking for all these years, I would have my own version of that."
So when Pearce isn't writing songs, performing on tour around the world, or drinking wine, she says, "I'm a pretty simple person. I like to run, I like to hang out at my house. I'm a very big homebody, which is ironic because of what I do for a living. I live in a little cul-de-sac with a lot of different young moms that are my really close friends, and that's very fun, even though we have very different lives to find a common theme. I'm just a very normal person. I like to do very normal things."
She also does the very normal thing of stopping into Franklin. "I know this is the most cliche thing ever, but I love in the summer coming down to the little square and walking around the little shops and going to dinner," she says. "I love it down there. It's so quaint." CarlyPearce.com
"My shows are really about the songwriting and the musicality of these records, and just this music that I wrote to get through different seasons in my life and songs that connect with me."
"I love getting to see the payoff of my songs, connecting with people. I write these songs and hope that people will care."
"I think right now you're seeing the pendulum swing back in our favor in country music as there's a lot of really amazing women making a lot of noise."