Jenna Paulette's 'The Girl I Was' celebrates loving 'cattle and country music'

Lewisville, Texas native Jenna Paulette is being interviewed by The Tennessean while parked in a West Nashville Sonic parking lot, sitting in her grandfather's 13-year-old white Ford F-150 truck.

She's a divorced cowgirl in counseling, two weeks away from finally releasing her debut country album after a tumultuous decade-plus as an artist.

That means limitless refreshment is associated with the extra-large vanilla-flavored Coke she's sipping awhile later, driving down Interstate 40 as her album, "The Girl I Was," -- out on Mar. 31, 2023 -- fills the vehicle's speakers.

"Because I'm more in control of myself than ever, these songs directly speak to hitting the nail on the head of who I am," says Paulette.

"This music is for real people doing real work. Beyond the stereotypical commercial country music industry, I'm making music for people dedicated to spending their lives on the backs of horses or people who love that lifestyle and go to see Garth Brooks or George Strait at a stadium."

"For example, I have a song called 'Pretty Ugly' on the album. It's a raw record that arrives after some s**t hit the fan," she adds.

The writers on this album -- her mentor, Nashville Songwriters Association International "Songwriter of the Decade" Ashley Gorley, Rhett Akins, Will Bundy, Jessie Jo Dillion and Grammy-winner Ashley McBryde among them -- have 100 No. 1 singles between them in nearly 100 combined years of songwriting.

Thus, songs like "Bless Her Heart," "Slow Drawl" and "You Ain't No Cowboy" aren't as much caustic kiss-offs as bittersweet, lyric-driven testaments to lessons learned.

"Sounds more than a little like his old man / There's somethin' sexy bout the way he says yes ma'am / Even sweeter when you hear 'em sweet talk / You fall fast for a boy with a slow drawl," Paulette sings on "Slow Drawl."

Sonically, it's a yearning rocker. But Paulette's twang and unmistakable Texas stylings keep it country. More gripping clarity, emotion and feeling are more readily apparent in her work than ever before.

"'The girl I was isn't someone in a not-good relationship where the person you're with is testing your relationship with God and trying to change who you are by alienating you from the comfort of your family and hometown," Paulette continues.

"The girl I was is eight years old, smiling while drinking a Sunkist orange soda and helping my grandfather on the cattle farm on a dirty, gritty and sweaty day. That same girl was also on the back of a four wheeler singing The Chicks' 'Wide Open Spaces' or George Strait's 'The Fireman' at the top of her lungs. She was made to be a country music-singing cowgirl."

The album also emerges from a healing, tear-filled journey to her family's ranch in Thackerville, Oklahoma.

Jenna Paulette is many things. However, don't let dusty-filtered social media fashion photography and the red clay dirt traditions in her sounds fool you. Limiting her to comfortably being an anachronistic Gene Autry throwback is stylistically correct but also highlights uninspired thinking.

The sixty-mile long stretch Paulette drove from Lewisville to Thackerville is occupied by multiple hunting kennels, wild game preserves and the WinStar World Casino and Resort (billed as the "World's Biggest Casino").

Paulette's redemption being revealed to her during a journey down roads historically defined by impossible dreams and infinite desolation refines her statement that it restored her conviction to "honestly sing the things she wanted to sing."

Autry, the legendary "Singing Cowboy" of yesteryear, modernized the western ideal, inspired Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.

Paulette, meanwhile, is truly of that world. The 2022 CMT Next Women of Country class member who routinely champions fellow ranchers (she wore an outfit adorned with over a dozen of her family and friends' cattle brands to CMT's most recent Artists of the Year event) and numerous western-focused companies and organizations.

"The Girl I Was" also opens with an instrumental cover of Autry's "Home On The Range."

"I had to go through a lot to feel like I could be honest and make art out of the valleys and hilltops," writes Paulette via an Instagram post. "We all lose ourselves in relationships, life, stress, careers, motherhood…sometimes we need to think back on the simpler times to remember who we are without all that pressure."

Diving deeper into how freedom and reconnection to her self-worth impact this release, she tells a story about being at a party featuring a fiddle and steel guitar-led cover band playing two-stepping music in Alpine, Texas.

It's an area that, for 150 years, has been supported by the cattle ranching industry.

"Out here, it's hard to make a living but its easy to make a life," said one of the ranchers to Paulette during the proceedings.

"We Know How to Friday Night," a Casey Beathard and Bobby Pinson co-write with Paulette on "The Girl I Was," results from that conversation.

"My body and soul are healing, but I'm still the real deal. Because of that, you can still trust my music. I love cattle and country music. I am who I am and I can't be anything else."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jenna Paulette's 'The Girl I Was' celebrates loving 'cattle and country music'