It’s Thursday, that – ‘not quite the weekend yet’ day of the week, yet named after Thor, the Norse God with a hammer. In Old Norse, the day was called Þórsdagr, literally “Thor’s day,” and perhaps it is a day for some old-style rock – but I have instead picked up the tail of a storytelling country rock artist from Mississippi – the entrepreneur, storyteller and country singer Cadie Calhoun.
I’m going to pass over to the press bio for a moment and then have the interview (a good one!) and close with reviewing some of her material.
Press Bio: Cadie Calhoun is a Mississippi born country singer, songwriter, and bandleader known for powerhouse vocals, honest storytelling, and a Southern rock spirit. After nearly fifteen years in Nashville, she came home to build a creative life rooted in music, faith, family, and community.
Produced by Peter Keys of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cadie has opened for Scotty McCreery and performed with Ritchie Owens’ star studded band at the grand opening of Dolly Parton’s Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tennessee.
I will begin with a sad note on losing the amazing Dolly Parton this year – what a sad moment for the country world. She also brought her region as a storyteller of the Appalachians – you describe yourself as a “singer, songwriter, storyteller” – is that the correct order of importance?
Cadie: think you may have just made me realize I have that in the wrong order! 😂 Storyteller probably comes first.
I grew up in Mississippi in a family FULL of storytellers. We can turn a five minute story into thirty minutes and somehow everybody is still listening. So I think it’s just in me. Sometimes my stories turn into songs, and now apparently sometimes they turn into children’s books! That’s also one of the things I’ve always loved so much about Dolly. She never lost where she came from. You could hear Appalachia in her music and in the way she told a story. She could make you laugh, break your heart and make you feel like you knew the people she was singing about.
Her passing has really gotten to me. I had the opportunity to perform at the opening of her Tennessean Travel Stop just two months ago, so it’s strange to think about how special that day is to me now. I spent about 15 years in Nashville chasing music, but I moved home to Mississippi in 2020, and I think coming home brought the storyteller in me back out. So maybe the new order is storyteller, songwriter, singer. Although I’m probably going to keep changing my mind!
Which brings me to an investigation of your website and your book “The Dandelion Dragon” – tell us about your book please – where did the ideas come for that (funnily enough if people investigate the extras in our website they find poetry and stories or witches, trolls and gnomes too!)?
Cadie: First of all, I read Ferdinand the Troll and it is TOO CUTE! I immediately thought, “Okay, these are my people.” 😂 I love that Mark has these little stories hidden inside a music magazine. We are hand in hand with the storytelling thing!
“The Dandelion Dragon” is the first book in a children’s collection I’m creating called CadieLand Storybooks, and honestly, this whole thing has kind of taken on a life of its own. The main little dragon is Wishkin, and he has allergies. Dandelions are a trigger for him and when he sneezes, he accidentally grants the closest wish. Which sounds wonderful until somebody makes the wrong wish! 😂 The story becomes this big adventure, but underneath all the magic, it’s really about family, forgiveness, faith and realizing just how powerful our words can be. What we speak into the world matters.
There’s also a little fox named Winklow hidden throughout the world of CadieLand for children to find. I wanted to create books that parents and grandparents would actually enjoy reading over and over too. The kind of stories where a child notices something different the tenth time than they did the first.
I don’t really know where all these characters in my head have been hiding for the last 20+ years, but apparently they had a meeting and decided it was time to come out. 😂
The funny thing is, I used to think music and writing stories were two completely different sides of me. Now I realize they really aren’t. Whether it’s a country song or a dragon sneezing wishes, I’m basically just making up stories and hoping somebody wants to hear them.
You will want to talk music now! “Mississippi Rivers” manages to pack a net punch I thought as the chorus and vocals have more than a touch of a rock sound infused with country. Tell us about the new single – a festival track I thought – big trucks and boots!
Cadie: “Mississippi Rivers” is really the beginning of the story I want this whole album to tell.
I grew up in Mississippi, but funny enough, I didn’t grow up as a river girl. I was a lake girl! Ski boats, tubing, laying out on the pier with friends and pools. Many, MANY pools. 😂 If there were chlorinated water and a lounge chair nearby, I was perfectly happy.
Then I met James Riley.
James introduced me to this whole other side of my own hometown that I had somehow missed my entire life. Rivers, creeks, rushing water, rocks, dirt, getting out in the middle of nowhere and just exploring. I remember thinking, “Y’all just…walk in the river and sit in a lounge chair against the current? What?!…Oh this feels GOOD!” 😂
I was nervous at first! There are rocks on the bottom, the water is moving, and I quickly learned that flip flops were a TERRIBLE choice. I have since invested in proper water shoes. Growth! James also has a blue heeler who jumps into that water without even blinking, rolls around in the dirt and has the absolute time of her life. And somehow, by the time we get back to the truck, this dog is completely dry and smells like NOTHING. Not wet dog. Not dirt. Not even an earth smell. Nothing. It blows my mind every single time.
But somewhere in all of those adventures, I fell in love with a side of Mississippi I had never really known. And, of course, I was falling in love with the man showing it to me at the same time.
That’s where “Mississippi Rivers” lives.
It’s a love song, but it’s also a home song. It’s about seeing a place you’ve known your whole life through somebody else’s eyes and realizing there was still so much of it left for you to discover. Musically, I love that you heard the rock in it because that’s intentional. I want big guitars, big drums, country storytelling and that Southern rock energy that makes you want to hear it outside with a crowd. So when you called it a festival track with “big trucks and boots,” I thought, YES! She gets it! 😂
And really, that’s the heart of this next chapter of music for me. I came home to Mississippi thinking I already knew where I came from. Turns out, I still had a lot left to discover. And “Mississippi Rivers” is where that story begins.
“Taste my Perfume” (Guns Version) was one that jumped out at me when I had a browse through your music – a track with attitude and it was quite sensual – a sexy track! Do you like this one too? When did it come out? – is it still one that gets played live?
Cadie: Okay, the fact that you found “Taste My Perfume” made me laugh! 😂 You really DID go digging through the catalog.
Yes, I love that song. It definitely has an attitude. And yes, Lorraine, we can call it sexy! 😂
So, that girl and I have some history.
It came out in July 2021, and contrary to what people might think when they hear it, it wasn’t inspired by some wild night or an actual event. It was really more of a daydream, a fantasy pitch of this confident, sexy woman I was trying to figure out how to become at the time.
I was single, coming out of a failed marriage and a nasty drug addiction, and honestly just trying to rediscover who “Cadie” was. I had to build my self-esteem back up from the ground floor. Apparently, at some point I confused building my self-esteem up with building my hair up. Literally! My bouffant got BIG. I mean, the higher the hair, the closer to Jesus, right?
Then I got COVID and lost about 40% of my hair. Very traumatic. There went my fabulous bouffant creations and my identity! Ugh! So, I started wearing a cowboy hat, partly because I liked it and partly because it did an excellent job hiding the sweaty rat’s nest happening underneath it after a show. 😂 Somehow the hat stuck, and now it feels like part of me for a lot more reasons than just hiding bad hair.
When I listen to “Taste My Perfume” now, I’m not necessarily in love with “that girl” anymore, but I respect her. She was trying to find her confidence again. She was figuring herself out, probably trying a little too hard sometimes, but she was moving forward.
So yes, I still have a soft spot for that song. Maybe not because it perfectly represents who I am today, but because it represents exactly where I was then. And I think there’s something special about having your music document the different women you’ve been along the way.
The instrumentalization on “Taste my Perfume” and the new single both show slick guitar work and “Close” I would point to the drum and rhythm section being tight and on point for the track – do you work with a regular set of musicians? How do you see your sound developing from the earlier releases to now?
Cadie: I ’ve been really blessed with musicians. I LOVE a band. There’s just something that happens when you get great players in a room together that you cannot fake.
My sound has grown up with me. When I listen back to some of my earlier records, I can hear myself trying to figure out exactly where I fit. Now I’m much less worried about fitting anywhere.
Country is always going to be the foundation, but there’s Southern rock in me, there’s blues in there, there’s a little soul, and sometimes there’s just a big ole guitar because I like a big ole guitar. 😂
The biggest change is probably confidence and preparation. I know what I want to hear now, and I’ve learned that the more prepared I am going into the studio, the more freedom we have to create once we get there.
I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to work with Peter Keys of Lynyrd Skynyrd as my producer on this new music. Peter understands that Southern rock edge, obviously, but he also understands me as an artist. He doesn’t try to turn me into something I’m not. He takes whatever crazy thing is in my head and somehow helps turn it into a record.
And live, I have musicians I trust. When you have that, you can quit worrying about every little note and perform the song. That’s when it gets fun.
If someone was reading this as a casual reader and hadn’t really come across your music yet – which song would you be telling them to listen to first- and why that one?
Cadie: Right now? “Mississippi Rivers.” Hands down.
Not because I don’t love the older music, because I do. Those songs are little snapshots of who I was at different points in my life. But if somebody said, “Okay Cadie, you get one song to tell me who you are TODAY,” I’d play them “Mississippi Rivers.”
It has Mississippi in it. It has country. It has rock. It has love. It has a little bit of sass. It has a big chorus. That pretty much covers me. 😂
But then I’d probably immediately say, “Okay, now you have to listen to the next one…”
I have several new songs coming, and they show some very different sides of me. “Hey Jesus” is next, and that one comes from a completely different place emotionally. I think when people hear these songs together, they’re going to understand this chapter of my music a lot better.
So yes, start with “Mississippi Rivers”…but I’m cheating and asking for a second song afterward!
Fun Question: It’s a freezing winter’s night and the tour bus has broken down miles from anywhere. Luckily, you stumble across what appears to be an abandoned house. There’s a roaring fire, a table full of food and the electricity still works. While you wait for morning, you can only choose one book and one film to keep you company. What are you picking?
Cadie: First, I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that if the tour bus breaks down and we stumble across an “abandoned” house with a roaring fire, electricity AND a table full of food waiting for us, WE SHOULD NOT GO IN THAT HOUSE.
But apparently, we’re making bad decisions tonight, so if I’m going in, I might as well lean all the way into it and bring The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. I’ve gotten hooked on her psychological thrillers, so why not read something completely unsettling while sitting in a mysterious abandoned house? What could possibly go wrong?
For my movie, I’m picking New in Town with Renée Zellweger. It’s a family favorite, I’ve seen it a million times, and it’s one of those movies I can watch over-and-over.
But more importantly, I know that movie well enough that if I hear anything weird in that house, I’ll know it ain’t coming from the TV! And that’s when I’m grabbing Freida and boogying right back to that broken down bus!
Lastly, do you have a hidden talent that fans might be surprised to discover? It could be anything—from juggling to baking the perfect cake!
Cadie: I think at this point I must count sleepwalking as a hidden talent. And I’m not talking about quietly wandering into the kitchen and eating stuff or cooking stuff.
I have swung from a chandelier in my sleep and pulled it OUT OF THE CEILING. I’ve turned on all the lights, stood on top of the bed and directed traffic. I sing opera in my sleep. And the funny thing is, I remember a lot of my dreams!
One night I woke James up laughing and told him, completely seriously, “I’m holding a million-pound man up with ONE HAND!” Then I just busted out laughing all creepy like. Apparently sleeping Cadie was very impressed with her own strength!
So, while awake Cadie sings country music, sleeping Cadie sings opera, directs traffic, performs gymnastics on the ceiling and occasionally discovers superhuman strength.
At this point, I refuse to call it sleepwalking. It’s a hidden talent with a night shift!
Wow! A great fun interview – and now on to a review of the music!
My review (s)
“Mississippi Rivers” was released August 28, 2026, so is out on all platforms now. It is the single that ignited the interview and delivers a country rock number with a bite of grit in the chorus. It is a song of Mississippi rivers and muddy waters, a song of hope with love and is a festival track I thought – big trucks and boots! It took me to that late evening feeling, setting sun after a warm day, a sense of community and affection for place and people.
“Hey Jesus” is the upcoming single, not out yet at the time of writing this. It is more dreamy but with this gritty chorus and “Hey Jesus, don’t let me fall…I like him too much.” It is a Mississippi song, a track that you can sway along to with someone special in your arm and a drink to hand. At 2.30 it is a nippy little number, it includes some neat instrumentalization and is a more traditional country vocal performance.
“Taste My Perfume” (Guns Version) – is a sexy song! It encourages the listener to come and taste that perfume, “where did you get those tattoos? I could colour you in” – the guitar sits more in the rock lane, and the track has a mean kick – you can tell I liked it! This is a late-night bedroom track, maybe an outlier compared to her recent releases, but she may well have captured how she felt at the time. There is also a “Roses” version of this that has a sort of Spanish feel, but the Guns version fires a harder bullet!
There is a thread running through all of this that ties the music, the books and the stories together: Cadie Calhoun is, above everything else, a storyteller. Whether she is singing about Mississippi rivers, looking back at an earlier version of herself, writing about a dragon with allergies or apparently directing traffic while asleep, there is always a story waiting to come out. The new music sounds like another chapter in that story – one rooted in Mississippi, country, Southern rock and a considerable amount of personality. And if “Mississippi Rivers” is the beginning, it will be interesting to see where Cadie takes us next.
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Artist website here
Stream music by Cadie Calhoun here
By Lorraine Foley
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