Sara Evans just dropped a brand-new album, Copy That. The record, 13 of Sara’s favorite cover songs, each with her own unique spin, was released on Friday, May 15. From the pure-country “She’s Got You” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” to the soulful “It’s Too Late” and the light-hearted “My Sharona,” what ties all of the songs together is Sara’s love of music, regardless of the genre.
“I grew up in a cover band because I started singing when I was four years old with my brother,” Sara told Everything Nash. “I spent my whole life on stage, playing in the bars on weekends and having to come up with cover tunes that people would love, but I was also wanting to express my artistic ideas by the songs that I chose. So I’ve always had to pick cover tunes, and I love choosing cover tunes.
“I grew up singing everything from Heart to the Eagles to Fleetwood Macs, Patsy Cline to Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, the Judds, Reba you name it,” she continued. “I’ve covered them all. And so all of my albums typically have at least one cover song, or most all of them do. And all of my encores and the live shows are cover tunes.”
Sara always enjoyed doing the covers, but the time was never right to do an album of them, until now. The Missouri native was ready to work on a new album, her first since Words was released in 2017, while moving from Alabama to Tennessee, and found solace in not having to both write and record for the new project.
“I was getting ready to move back up to Nashville,” Sara explained. “It was time for me to get back in the studio cause it’s been about three years since Words. My manager and I were like, ‘Why don’t we do the covers record that, so that way you won’t have to go through the whole process of writing the album while you’re in transition. You can just start gathering song ideas.”
Sara had another producer lined up to produce Copy That, but when he fell through due to time constraints, she went to Jarrad K., a not as well known producer as some others, but whose work she loved, especially on Ruston Kelly’s 2018 Dying Star record.
“That was such a blessing in disguise,” Sara maintained. “[Jarrad K.] and I just hit it off. He’s brilliant, and he’s not so big and famous yet that he didn’t have time for me. He was available 24/7, and he was super involved in song choices. So we just started making this list of song ideas. Some of the songs mean something to me, and then some of them were just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that one.'”
Even from her early days, Sara has never been one to play it safe, in any aspect of her career, but perhaps that has never been more evident than with Copy That. The album runs the spectrum of songs and sounds, in a way that –– for both Sara and the listener –– makes complete sense.
“I wanted to surprise people, and I wanted to do songs that were not necessarily obvious choices,” Sara reflected. “We took some major chances. Like ‘Come on Eileen.’ If you had told me years ago that I would be putting ‘Come on Eileen’ on a record … but it just worked, not that it was easy. I mean, some of those songs were really, really hard to get right, because we knew that we wanted to copy them. That’s why I named the album Copy That, because I was like, ‘Let’s not try to make it all weird and obscure and change everything. Let’s just do them the way that they were done, but make it current sounding.'”
Sara, like many other female artists, has been disillusioned with the current state of country music, which for years favored the so-called “bro-country” songs over anything else. But instead of retreating, which might have been easier, the 49-year-old decided to unashamedly make the record she has always wanted to make, without regard for what the industry deemed commercial.
“Everyone’s afraid to do anything out of the box, or to do anything that’s not politically correct or socially acceptable or musically acceptable. It’s just crazy. All of our individualism has just gone out the door. And if you are an individualist and you do make a record, like what I felt like Words was, or this covers album or a Kacey [Musgraves] ecord or a new Lee Ann Womack record, they’ree just like, ‘It’s just too different, and people aren’t going to understand that,’ but that’s just not the case.”
Copy That is available today, via Amazon
Photo Credit: Monarch Publicity / LOWFIELD