Music that comes from the heart is the most honest, and sometimes that honesty isn’t always stars and rainbows. Ask Ben and Kassie Wilson of the husband and wife Americana duo My One and Only. Their debut EP The Past Year, released on September 7, is five tracks of raw, authentic lyrics about their marriage told through powerful vocals, smooth harmonies and perfect instrumentation.
We talked with Ben and Kassie about their journey over that past year and, as a result, their incredible debut project.
CN: For our readers who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?
B&K: We are husband-wife Americana duo My One And Only. We are Ben and Kassie Wilson. We have been married over 9 years now and have been separately writing music and singing since we were young, although we didn’t officially come together as a musical duo until about a year and a half ago. If we eat out, we generally eat Thai food. We love thrift store finds and bargains. We are big fans of our Creator. And we also host an Airbnb in Nashville.
CN: Which musicians, country or not, have influenced you both personally and as an artist?
Ben: I grew up listening to a lot of Counting Crows. I always loved the way Adam Duritz portrayed emotion with his vocals. It really connected with me. I’ve seen them live many times and I always loved the way they break down and extend their songs during a live performance. Ryan Adams and Lucinda Williams are other artists who influenced me after I moved to Nashville. I remember seeing Lucinda live and I realized that I knew almost every song she sang at that concert, and that’s when I realized how much of an influence she really was to me. As a songwriter, I am attracted by John Prine and his story-telling writing style and off-center take on subject matter. I love his simplicity too. It takes a lot of experience to boil it down to “simple”, and yet be so effectual.
Kassie: Growing up I can remember standing in front of the tv singing and dancing to Paula Abdul. I loved her so much! Boyz II Men was the first CD I bought and I would listen to it on repeat on my Discman lol. I loved R&B and soul. My parents listened to everything so I was introduced to all kinds of music at such a young age. I’ve always adored Dolly Parton and loved her songwriting and infectious personality. She’s an all-around entertainer and she has been an inspiration to me.
CN: Kassie you are originally from Alabama and Ben you are from Iowa. How did you meet each other?
Kassie: Yes, I am from sweet home Alabama. Me and Ben met over 10 years ago at a small church plant that was meeting in a cafeteria of a school in Antioch (a suburb of Nashville). My then-personal trainer at the gym, who also happened to be the Pastor at this church, invited me to come visit. I’m so glad he invited me because that Sunday was the day I met my future husband. Ben was playing in the praise and worship band and he definitely caught my eye. Eventually, I sent him a Myspace message and I asked him to lunch. I wasn’t afraid to go after what I wanted. The rest is history.
Ben: Ha. Yeah. I was definitely more shy back then. But I also definitely noticed Kassie out there in the congregation. I was pretty clueless about dating and relationships at that point. I remember our first time to get together was eating at some sandwich place in Nashville. I didn’t even pay for her food! I just paid for mine and then let her pay for hers! Wow. I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose it showed her that she wasn’t getting into this for the money, that’s for sure. Ha. Well, it all worked out in the end. We’ve been married 9 years now, and there will be many more.
CN: When did you realize that your vocals harmonize like honey?! My goodness so beautiful!
Ben: Thank you! Kassie and I have been singing together since before we were married. At that time, she was pursuing a solo country music career, and she would have writer’s rounds or gigs where I would play guitar and sing harmonies. Back then, I’m sure that our mixture was more like gravel than honey (on my part at least!). But we just kept singing harmonies on each other’s music over the years and we learned each other’s inflections and tendencies. And now it seems so natural. In fact, thank you for reminding me that we do sound pretty good together! When you are so close to something, it’s hard to be objective.
Kassie: I love honey!! What a sweet compliment, thanks so much. It’s crazy bc I have always struggled with harmony. It just never came naturally. I always envied people who were able to harmonize with such ease. But after all these years of singing with Ben it just fell in place. I love to harmonize to his voice. There’s no one I’d rather sing with.
CN: You participated in the “Mara Tour” in Uganda, something that you have admitted to being one of the most rewarding musical challenges of your life. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Ben: Yes. I believe our admission was that it was one of the most rewarding as well as difficult musical challenges of our life. The first time we did the Mara Tour, I came down with Typhoid fever in Rwanda before we flew to Uganda. I literally almost died that night in Rwanda. Truly by the amazing grace of God, situations were manipulated by Him so that I could get the treatment I needed. So this was the difficult start to our travels to Uganda, not to mention the very late nights of travelling in a small van in northern Uganda, the culture barrier when organizing logistics, and the dust everywhere that made so many of our team sick. But we persevered through it and we were able to sing into the lives of thousands of Ugandans (mostly youth) throughout the 4-city tour, sharing our talents and our faith and our stories. I always just wanted to be open to whatever opportunity God wanted to open up for our talents.
Kassie: Yes, this was a very difficult trip. From Ben getting so sick, to losing our luggage and instruments, early days and late nights, and not to mention it was the hottest climate we’d ever experienced. But it was totally worth it. It was challenging yet rewarding too. We got to share our music and the gospel with thousands of Ugandans. We got to share our personal testimonies and spread love. After that tour I said I would never go back! I went back the next summer. I guess God showed me! Ha!
CN: Let’s talk about your debut EP The Past Year, which was just released on September 7. What was it like to work with GRAMMY-nominated producer Andrija Tokic?
Kassie: It was an adventure! Andrija is a little ball of energy and I love it!! Working with him was so much fun. His creative direction mixed with ours made the perfect representation of “The Past Year”. He really helped bring our songs to life. And watching him work with the musicians in the studio was like watching a conductor conduct a symphony. It was a sight to take in. He’s the man!
Ben: Yeah, Andrija is a producer that really relies on “feel” during his work. Whatever comes out of his studio has to feel good, you have to be able to sway to it. This really comes across in the recording, where you can hear that the “realness” of the recording is dominant over any sort of rules or gridlines. Our concern when we came to him was that we didn’t want our songs to feel too somber. As we were writing for the record, all we’d really heard of our new songs were the acoustic versions. And when all you are hearing is acoustic guitar and vocals, it seems like every song seems somber! But Andrija helped it all come to life. He was like a maestro conducting the musicians (and us) in the studio, waving his hands all about and getting so into the music. He is a real character.
CN: The EP is an all-analog recording. What lead to the decision to record it that way?
Ben: Well, that’s all that Andrija does. His studio, The Bomb Shelter, in Nashville is simply all analog recording. I knew that I wanted to work with Andrija and I knew I loved the sound he produced from his studio, and so we were up for whatever to get that sound. This is the first time we’ve ever recorded onto analog tape and, wow, I loved it. For those unfamiliar with the “sound” of it, they might recognize it by it’s “old” sound. The way the analog tape saturates gives off that vibe of when you listen to records. Almost everything sounds better when recorded onto analog tape. This really shaped our album sound by giving it that reckless, raw feel. I love it.
CN: The five tracks are so raw and genuine, letting the listener into your personal relationship. Can you talk about your songwriting process? Obviously you are writing about yourselves, but how do you get to that place where it’s so candid and becomes universal that others can see themselves in your lyrics?
Ben: It wasn’t easy finding our own sound when we had just made the decision to become a duo. It was like a trial and error process. But a certain style and sound would come out that we liked, and we held on to that, and we learned from that. When we songwrite, we almost always want to write something that is real and true. I suppose our goal is, like you said, to have the lyrics feel universal and applicable to the listener, even though they are about very specific situations. I’ve always loved songs that spoke about very specific things, even if I didn’t know exactly what the writer was writing about….it’s like they were letting us in on just a scene from their lives, and even though I wouldn’t know the whole plot, it would still feel so personal to me. That’s the style that kept coming out of our writing sessions.
Kassie: We try to write a couple times a week. So we literally make writing appointments to hold ourselves accountable. Sometimes one of us has an idea to write about and other times it seems like we got nothing. So, we will just talk and Ben plays around with chords and a melody. We love to write about personal experiences and be honest with our listener. We all have the same struggles, we just sing about them. I’m ok with being an open book and letting the listener know me on an intimate level. I prefer it that way.
CN: Did you plan on such an honest album for your first release, or did it just reveal itself in the process?
Kassie: We didn’t have a plan. We just wrote for a year. We wrote about troubled times, highs and lows of marriage, family and anything else we experienced. It just came naturally to write about true personal events.
Ben: Yeah, the album is called “The Past Year” because over the last year, we dedicated ourselves to writing, and to discovering who we were as artists. It felt like starting over musically. But it was such a revealing process. So as we were writing, we kind of experimented around with focusing on different topics. There were many songs that just didn’t make the cut. But whenever we would write ultra-personal songs, it just seemed like a fit. And we kept doing that. Like Kassie said, we didn’t plan anything. We just started to discover who we were, and this is what came out. I really love singing such personal songs though. I know that others’ vulnerability has always been very effective and influential to me, and so we wanted to be vulnerable with the audience as well.
CN: Each song is amazing, both vocally and lyrically, and because they are so personal, could you possibly take us through the background of each track?
Ben: Thank you. Well, “Mom and Dad” is a song of reminiscing about your parents as you get older. It’s a weird feeling to remember your parents at the age that you are now. You start to wonder what kind of dreams they had at that time. What were they focusing on? Did they feel like they had it all together (like we thought they did when we were kids)? And Kassie and I think back on memories of our parents and we kind of wish that we could go back and take better advantage of the time. My parents just moved closer to us about 2 years ago. It’s the first time since college that my parents have lived less than 10 hours from me. Now we get to see them quite often, and so I suppose that has jogged my thoughts about thinking of them as people separate from me now. We always think of our parents in relation to their parenting, but now it’s like “wow, they are individual people with real desires and hurts and dreams too”.
“Sometimes Bring Me Back Again” is about that weird thing that happens when the very thing that attracted you to someone in the beginning, now becomes an annoyance, or a frustration. It seems like everyone experiences this, and that thing about that someone can go back and forth between attraction and annoyance. I don’t completely understand it, but I suppose there is a shift that happens when we get really close to someone, like how you can be quickly angry with your spouse, but be more patient with a stranger on the phone. Anyway, it’s a learning process. But, the bridge of this song sums everything up….that through the process, we carry and love each other through it.
“Talk Yourself Up Now” started on a plane. It was very early in the morning, we were flying back from Canada, and there was this young guy directly behind us that was really talking himself up to his friend. Boasting of all sorts of indecent behaviors and using all sorts of vulgar language. And he was talking so loud! I think everyone on the plane was hearing this guy (at 6am in the morning!) It was too much. And it really showed his insecurities. So I put some headphones on and started writing down some of these lyrics. This song is just like a venting. And then, in the bridge, it’s like a plea to those insecure people…”it’s not hard to be loved”. Truth is, you can probably just relax and be yourself and probably be more likable, instead of trying so hard to sell yourself to someone.
Kassie: “Lord I Need Some Mercy” is the perspective from an addict, feeling not worthy of God’s grace and mercy but calling out for it. My brother was addicted to crystal meth for 14 years and it nearly killed him and nearly ripped our family apart. I never lost hope or gave up on him, and I never would have. He went to a year-long Christian recovery program called “Adult and Teen Challenge” and God got ahold of Kevin’s heart. He’s been clean now for over 2 years now and is head of operations at the recovery center he graduated from. I am so proud of my brother. We all need God’s mercy. We just gotta talk to Him, He’s waiting on us.
“To My Rescue” This song is a peek into some hard times of our marriage. Every line of this song is true. Boy, did I sure put Ben through hell. We have been married for 9 years now and we aren’t proud of everything we’ve done but we’ve hung in there with each other. I know I can always count on Ben.
CN: Do you have a dream collaboration in mind?
Ben: I’d love to do a collaboration with John Prine for sure. I always loved his writing and perspective. That would be amazing.
Kassie: Chris Stapleton, he’s one of my favorite singers and writers, it’d be magical to collaborate with him.
CN: If you could describe yourselves in one word, what would it be and why?
Kassie: Softie, I’m really softhearted. People always laugh because I cry so easily. And not always because something bad happened. I cry when I’m happy too. I just love a lot, so with that comes sensitivity.
Ben: Introspective. I’m a thinker. I love to know why I believe what I believe and why I think what I think. That’s why I love seeing other cultures of the world, because they come from completely different mindsets than Americans. That fascinates me to know what other people think is “normal” and “acceptable”. It’s a double-edged sword though, because my introspective-ness can be a hindrance sometimes, especially when it comes to creativity. Sometimes creativity needs to just flow, and I have to allow myself that sometimes.
CN: Now that the album is officially out, what’s next on the horizon for you guys? Tour?
Ben: Yes, we are booking a lot of shows around the states right now in promotion of our EP. I know in the next several months we hit up New York, Atlanta, St. Louis and Nashville. We are also writing a ton of new stuff and looking forward to recording again in 2019. You can always check out our tour on www.myoneandonlymusic.com. We are always adding new dates and we excited to come through some cities we’ve never been to before.
Kassie: Yep, hitting the road to promote this new E.P. And, of course, we are already writing for the next project.
For more information on My One and Only, visit their website at www.myoneandonlymusic.com and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.