CATHY: Hey, do you guys have nicknames for each other?

 

EMILY: We call Martie booger. (Laughter)

 

CATHY: Need I ask why?

 

EMILY: Just kidding.

 

NATALIE: No we don't. We call Martie 'Mart' and Emily 'Em' and Natalie 'Nat'.

 

MARTIE: Nat the brat.

 

CATHY: Nat the brat? Is she starting to act bratty now?

 

NATALIE: No, my sister called me that from childhood.

 

CATHY: Really? Were you the baby in the family?

 

NATALIE: I was the youngest but she acted like more of a baby than I did.

 

CATHY: Ooooh!

 

EMILY: (catfight sounds)

 

MARTIE: That's her take. (Laughter)

 

NATALIE: It was never a truthful name. It just rhymed.

 

MARTIE: Yeah, like Martie and fartie did.

 

CATHY: I like that one better. Can I call you fartie?

 

MARTIE: (Laughing) No. Very few people can call me that without getting slapped. (Laughter)

 

CATHY: You've sold a couple records since I last saw you. Been on kind of a self imposed hiatus. So what did it do for you guys?

 

NATALIE: Well, we got rested.

 

CATHY: Got pregnant.

 

NATALIE: Yeah.

 

MARTIE: It did wonders. I think country artists are some of the hardest working artists in the industry. They're just constantly touring or making a record or doing promotion or visiting radio stations and I think for us, we were really working so hard for four years in a row without a break and we felt like we needed to get reinspired and also pay attention to our personal lives, which I think in turn makes your music better when you can take a breath and get grounded and realize what just happened and let it sink in because it's also -- it's a hard job to have but it's also a very rewarding job to have and I liked. I haven't started my family yet so on my year off I really got to appreciate what had just happened to me and start to put my family first. It's my second marriage and I knew I made mistakes in my first marriage and that following this career was a very personal endeavor and a very selfish one in many ways and I don't mean that in a bad way but I just honed my skills and wanted to have this dream come true for so long, I had neglected, I think, people that were really close to me. So it was a way for me to go visit all my family and pay attention to my husband and things like that.

 

CATHY: Does this mean you're next now to have a family?

 

MARTIE: Yeah, I'm trying. Definitely trying.

 

CATHY: What would have happened if you guys would have kept up the pace without coming up for air?

 

NATALIE: I don't know. I don't think we could do that. I mean, we've never made a record that we weren't ready to make or that we weren't happy with so we just weren't there. We had no idea what we'd wanna do or what songs we would wanna do or what sound. We weren't inspired to write so I think that would have been an impossibility.

 

 

CATHY: Well, Emily is pregnant. Congratulations

 

EMILY: Thank you very much.

 

CATHY: November...

 

EMILY: November 14th

 

CATHY: Oh wow! So has it been a smooth pregnancy for you or kind of a rollercoaster of emotions? How have you been taking it?

 

EMILY: It's been a rollercoaster. The last few months have been fairly smooth and so I'm really enjoying it at this point of the game. Actually, I'm 7 months today and he started to move a couple months ago so that's kind of nice when they start to move around.

 

CATHY: Do you talk to him?

 

EMILY: Yeah, of course I talk to him. that daily reminder is pretty neat.

 

CATHY: Let's hope he doesn't come out with a banjo on his knee.

 

EMILY: Ouch! (Laughter)

 

CATHY: But I understand you got a specially made banjo to play around your tummy. Is that right?

 

EMILY: Well, I had been talking about a dobro stand possibly but I don't know if I'm going to need the dobro stand. I think I might need more of a banjo thing. We do have a show October 19th in Dallas at the Texas State Fair at the Cotton Bowl and that's 3 weeks before my due date so those fans are gonna get quite a spectacle. Let's just say that.

 

CATHY: Are they throwing baby presents at you? Like booties.

 

EMILY: They give them not so much to me. they give them more to my husband.

 

NATALIE: We haven't been on the road so we haven't seen fans really.

 

EMILY: Yeah, they give them to my husband and he brings them home.

 

CATHY: Long Time Gone. I don't know who's been tapping my phone conversations but somebody's been listening in. Tell us about that.

 

EMILY: That's a song written by Darrell Scott who wrote Heartbreak Town on the Fly album. We always tend to go back to him when we're looking for material just because we love the way he writes, first of all, but also just 'cause he has such an interesting bent on things and, you know what -- if we really had -- if people had brought to our attention the last verse, about kinda poking fun at the industry, I don't know that it would have been the first single but we didn't really think about it that much. We always thought of it as more of his story than our story. We love the groove of the song and the beat of the song and we pick songs for a number of different reasons. It's just one of those ones that definitely fit our instrumentation and what we were looking for as far as harmony and we also felt it kind of was a nice bridge from the sound of the last album to this album. So a lot of different things go into picking a song but it's a fun one.

 

CATHY: I bet you really didn't think that when you recorded that that they would be dancing to it in Thailand but I understand they started some street dancing.

 

NATALIE: Are they?

 

CATHY: Yeah!

 

NATALIE: That's news to us.

 

CATHY: There was some columnist who was in Thailand and she was playing the thing on her boombox while she was eating lunch and started a street dance.

 

EMILY: I just love on the pop singles chart something so country is up there because I've just learned that they include single sales as far as where your chart position sits. I missed it so far but I wanted to hear Casey Kasem sandwich that between Busta Rymes or whoever is out there. (Laughter)

 

MARTIE: P Diddy.

 

 

CATHY: What did y'all ever do to prepare for this thing? Surely you practiced your autograph.

 

NATALIE: Important stuff

 

EMILY: Thats' what I see a lot of younger people -- they do ask us that question all the time. 'What do I do to become famous?' Well, if you just want to be famous, there's a lot of different ways to do that. If you wanna be a musician...

 

NATALIE: Anna Nicole Smith

 

EMILY: That's right.

 

CATHY: Have you seen that show?

 

DIXIE CHICKS: Oh yeah! (laughing)

 

MARTIE: We watched it together last night.

 

EMILY: You know I think in the industry today there's just so many flavor of the month kind of things. I think if you're really serious about having a career and wanting to sing or play music or something like that it is about...

 

NATALIE: ..the love of the music and your objective. If you're good and if you're even playing around your little bitty small town and then things grow slowly, someone will spot you. I have always known that I was going to do this but I was never a competitive kid, going out there and trying out for Star Search or passing out demo tapes or even making demo tapes. I just felt confident that a slow ride and a slow journey would lead me there and that's exactly what's happened to this band.

 

CATHY: Oooh. That sounds like a good title for a song.

 

MARTIE: Slow Ride

 

CATHY: Slow Journey