The trio releases its sophomore album
Gold-selling country trio Runaway June has released their long-awaited sophomore album, New Kind of Emotion, on Quartz Hill Records.
Gleaming with country-pop sheen yet anchored by traditional down-home fiddle, mandolin and pedal steel, the album is a modern country celebration of good times and girl power, friendship and independence, and romantic love that’s wanted but not needed. The result is an uplifting and empowering album, of which Runaway June founding member Jennifer Wayne says, “Even the sad songs are fun!”
Runaway June band members – Jennifer Wayne (vocals, rhythm guitar), Natalie Stovall
(vocals, fiddle, mandolin) and Stevie Woodward (lead vocals and guitar, harmonica) – co-wrote 11 of the 13 tracks on New Kind of Emotion. The musically adventurous trio pooled the talents of five separate Nashville producers – multiple-Grammy winners Kristian Bush (Sugarland) and Ron Fair (Christina Aguilera) as well as Mickey Jack Cones (Joe Nichols), Stone Aielli and Austin Moody.
The Music Universe had the chance to chat with Runaway June about the new album, and that conversation can be read below.
THE MUSIC UNIVERSE: The new album feels partly influenced by ’90s pop country. What inspired the sounds on this record?
JENNIFER WAYNE: Well, that’s a great compliment, because I feel like we all love Shania and ’90s pop country.
NATALIE STOVALL: Yes, it’s a nice compliment, but I don’t know that was necessarily intentional on our part. We’ve just been writing what we love, you know? I mean, it’s just we’ve been searching for what our sound is. And somehow, when you throw it all in a pot and mix it up, that’s what it sounds like.
JENNIFER: I’m a huge ’90s pop country fan. I’m an ’80s country music fan. I mean, I love all the decades.
STEVIE WOODWARD: My favorite decade is the ’70s, and I think I pull a lot of melodic inspiration from that time. But what’s really cool about being in a trio is that we all pull from different experiences and different decades of music that we love. So that’s probably why this album, sonically, is kind of pulling from different decades and different genres, because we all love different things, but somehow it works together when we put it together.
TMU: Runaway June’s first album was released in 2019. Besides the obvious lineup change, why the long wait between albums?
JENNIFER: Oh, I just think that when Stevie came into the mix, we started playing a lot of live shows, and we didn’t really have the chance to figure out who the three of us were in the writing room – we just went straight into touring. So I feel like it took, you know, a couple years for us to really figure out who the three of us were together. And a lot of it came from just the three of us writing with no other outside co-writers. I feel like that’s kind of where we really defined our sound and who Runaway June is.
TMU: There are two outside cuts on the album – “Miss Me” and “Make Me Wanna Smoke” – the latter co-written by Ella Langley. What inspired you to record those songs?
JENNIFER: The best songwriters in the world are in Nashville, and, you know, it would be silly not to listen to outside songs. When we heard “Make Me Wanna Smoke,” I remember Stevie’s initial action. She was like, “Wow, that is really cool!” The head of our label played it for us, and, of course, when we found out Ella Langley was a writer, she’s so amazing, but we all kind of just thought that song was really cool, and it was one of the first songs that we recorded together.
STEVIE: Yeah, I remember sitting with Benny Brown, who’s the head of our label. He was playing us some songs, and when he played that, we were just sitting on the couch, and we kind of looked at each other and it was an unspoken thing. We’re like, “Oh, we have to cut this.” It just had a cool rock element to it. It had a cool, like, edginess to it. So yeah, I think it definitely fits in with the rest of the album, sonically.
NATALIE: Sure, and it was also right at the beginning, when we got signed to our new deal, and it was kind of “go time.” It was one of those things where they wanted to record really quickly, and we happened to hear those songs while we were also writing other music. And it was just the music that we were the most enthusiastic about, and I think it’s a blessing sometimes when you don’t have time to overthink things, and it’s like, “Okay, we gotta go. We gotta do this now, and these are our favorite songs at the moment.”
TMU: You also co-wrote with some top Nashville songwriters. What was the reasoning behind that, as opposed to just writing all the tracks yourselves?
NATALIE: Well, I think, first of all, because it’s fun. As Jen said before, we are in a city that has the greatest writers in the world. And for the three of us, as we’ve been searching for what our sound is, it’s really helpful to have an outside perspective sometimes, especially another writer that we admire and respect, and we know we already like what they do. So why not bring that in and see what ingredient that adds to what we do? And it’s just really fun to be able to write with other people and to try to see what we can come up with.
TMU: Tell us about the focus track, “Drink Champagne.”
JENNIFER: Well, we were in a management meeting, and we had all talked about how we really wanted to write, like, a really fun, up-tempo song, and I think the label was actually asking for more up-tempos too. And we all had just started this little tradition together where we started drinking champagne before shows, and that’s something I don’t think any of us really did before we got together, and so it just kind of became our thing. And I don’t know where that melody came from, but it just kind of popped into my head, and I started singing it, and Stevie’s like, “Oh, what’s that?” And then she started playing guitar, and then Nat brings out the fiddle, and then Tina our manager had to leave the room. She’s like, “I guess we’ll have to finish this meeting another time.”
NATALIE: It’s definitely one of my favorites from the album. Anytime we play that song, it’s just, I don’t know, it’s just a good time. In three and a half minutes, it’s just awesome.
TMU: You worked with multiple producers for New Kind of Emotion, including Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, who also works with Megan Moroney. Tell us about that decision to use five different producers on the album.
STEVIE: So we definitely did not plan on having five producers on the album. It was more like we were almost using this time for ourselves to experiment and to find our sound, and we found it along the way, through different producers, and it just allowed us to look at songs differently, to write differently. And I think what’s really cool about this album is that while it is cohesive, it’s still eclectic, and it’s still got a lot of differentiation throughout musically. So the producers, they each were geniuses in their own right, and it was a different experience every single time working with them, but it was awesome every time.
NATALIE: I think that, having multiple producers on albums, people seem to be doing that a lot more. And with us, I think it’s like Stevie said – you don’t walk in knowing what your sound is. You’ve got to find it together, and you do that by writing and writing with different writers, but also working with different producers, because they all have something different to add, and they bring something different out of each of us, too. I think because the process is always different, it’s just fun to experiment.
TMU: What do you hope fans learn from this album?
STEVIE: I think I would want listeners to learn that they shouldn’t take themselves too seriously. And that we’ve got a lot of negative, nasty stuff in the world right now, so we hope that this album provides a little bit of relief from that – a little bit of fun, a little bit of sisterhood, and just, you know, not taking things too seriously.
JENNIFER: I think Stevie said it beautifully. And I think I would just add that, you know, we just wrote who we are and what we were going through and how we were feeling, and if you know someone else out there who’s going through the same thing, or has gone through the same thing, to know that they’re not alone. And, you know, we try not to take ourselves too seriously, and we all kind of went through some hard times and some good times, and music helps people heal.
NATALIE: I do think that knowing that you’re not alone is important, especially when it can be really difficult situations, you know? Whether you’re breaking up or you’re falling in love, we’ve got you covered on this album. We have all been through so many different versions of love and life in the past few years, and we’ve tried to capture that and write about it. And I love that you said that, Jen, you know, that we just want to make sure that people feel like they’re not alone.
TMU: Tonight, you’ll be doing an Instagram Stories takeover of iHeartCountry, live from the iHeart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas. What can fans expect?
STEVIE: Lots of chaos and lots of fun, lots of laughter, lots of behind-the-scenes moments, and we’re so excited about that. We don’t know what’s in store, who we’re going to see, who we’re going to run into, and, yeah, we’re just going to have a good time with it.”
NATALIE: And there’ll be some amazing artists there, so we’re probably going to be fan-girling a bunch too.
TMU: Can people tuning in to the takeover expect to see you “Drink Champagne”?
JENNIFER: Yeah, definitely. We’ll have to get a really nice bottle for that night. We’ll have to splurge!
