Erin Enderlin has been writing songs for as long as she can remember. Her narratives stop listeners in their tracks thanks to their vivid imagery, heart-wrenching storylines, and clever turns of phrase. It’s no surprise that country music royalty, including Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, Trisha Yearwood, and Willie Nelson, have recorded her songs.
The Arkansas native grew up listening to her grandfather’s record collection and watching the Grand Ole Opry on television with her grandmother. She got the artist bug at age four after seeing McEntire perform.
“She was one of the first biggest influences on me, her and Willie Nelson,” Enderlin tells American Songwriter.“When I saw Reba on the Nashville Now show, for one, I thought, ‘Wait, girls do this, too?’ She was singing ‘Somebody Should Leave,’ and I fell in love with it, and it was like, ‘Whatever this is, this is what I want to do.’”
As a child, Enderlin took piano, fiddle, and guitar lessons. The singer-songwriter recalls reading about McEntire in the fourth grade and realizing she had to find her own voice as an artist and a songwriter. At 10, she wrote her first song, “Where the Bluegrass Grows.” Her guitar teacher, Terry Holmes, who played with Emmylou Harris and Chet Atkins, helped Enderlin compose music to her songs.
Enderlin describes Arkansas as a singer-songwriter community. As a teenager, she played songwriter rounds, and says the experience was one of several breakthrough moments. “That was really cool, and really an amazing thing to be a part of and be around so many people that were playing their own original songs, as well as other music,” she says.
Another pivotal moment was attending Fan Fair (CMA Fest) with her aunt at 16. She laughs as she recalls bringing her Trapper Keeper full of songs to the country music festival.
“I wanted to talk to Bill Anderson, and I went and found him,” she says. “I said, ‘I want to be a songwriter like you when I grow up,’ and he said, ‘Well, have you written anything?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got all these songs right here,’ and he just said, ‘Well, then you already are a songwriter.’”
Years later, she’d find herself sitting in the writing room and sharing the Grand Ole Opry stage with Anderson, just one of many full-circle moments in her career.
“Those little different moments of connecting were really important in my journey, to have people allow you to have your own authority over being creative and writing and doing things,” she says.
Another major moment of connecting happened while Enderlin attended Middle Tennessee State University. Publisher Reese Faw critiqued Enderlin’s song “Monday Morning Church” in one of her classes. Impressed by what she heard, Faw introduced Enderlin to her boss, the late Jeff Carlton, and he pitched the track around town. While several artists put “Monday Morning Church” on hold, Jackson ultimately recorded it.
When the song was released, Jackson’s team set aside tickets for Enderlin and her family to see his concert. She met the singer, and he told her to “keep it country.” Years later, Jackson invited Enderlin to his Country Music Hall of Fame induction. She was surprised to learn that the advice Jackson had given years earlier was wisdom he had previously received from another Hall of Famer.
“He told the story that when he met George Jones, he asked him if he had any advice for a young artist, and George told him to ‘keep it country,’” Enderlin recalls. “So, I got second-hand George Jones advice from Alan Jackson.”
“Monday Morning Church” landed in the Top 5 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2005. Enderlin wrote the stirring ballad on loss with fellow Arkansas native Brent Baxter during Christmas break her sophomore year, and Jackson recorded the song during spring break of her senior year. The idea came from a poem Baxter’s mom had written with the lines as empty as a Monday morning church.
Six months after Jackson recorded “Monday Morning Church,” Travis cut Enderlin’s song “Not Your Cross To Bear,” and she signed an artist development deal with RCA. By graduation, she was a full-time songwriter. Womack released her song, “Last Call,” shortly after, and it peaked at No. 14 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
While her songwriting career took off, Enderlin spent her days writing and nights working as a hostess at the Grand Ole Opry. She cites her time there as “an incredible learning experience.”
“You get to see the top artists of country music playing back-to-back and see how each of them connects with the audience, how each of them has their own style and does their own thing,” she says.
Pete Fisher, then-Grand Ole Opry general manager, was a fellow MTSU graduate. Enderlin met him through one of her professors, and Fisher invited her backstage. A longtime fan of the late WSM Radio morning show host and Grand Ole Opry announcer Bill Cody, Enderlin gave him a CD of her song “I Let Her Talk” after running into him backstage.
“I Let Her Talk” is a riveting story song about two women at a bar. When the chorus arrives, the listener learns that the women are a wife and her husband’s mistress.
I let her talk about the hotel room, where she spent last night / Let her talk about the married man and his soft green eyes / A careless drunk will show you pictures, too / So baby, I let her talk about you.
“I was writing that with Leslie Satcher,” she says. “We got to that chorus, and I was like, ‘Wait, is this going where I think it’s going to go?’ When it comes together right like that, it’s pretty awesome.”
[RELATED: Erin Enderlin Places New Songs, Wins Arkansas Country Music Awards]
“I Let Her Talk” was written from the first line down. Enderlin describes it as a song that “got me onto the Grand Ole Opry.” A few months after she shared the track with Cody, he featured her on his radio show. Cody later hosted her EP release party, and Fisher invited her to make her Opry debut. The only catch: she had to stop working there.
It all worked out, as Enderlin has performed at the Grand Ole Opry over 30 times. The revered singer-songwriter continues to hone her craft, writing for country artists, in her solo career, and for film and television. She’s also working on a new album, with Sunny Sweeney and Harley Husbands producing, that’s expected next year.
“I’ve always been interested in writing topics and ideas that are a little bit outside of the everyday for a lot of writers,” she says, recalling a song she wrote as a child about a kid whose parents were drug addicts.
This vision has led to penning songs for the Amazon Prime Video series The Gray House,which tells the story of four women who run the Underground Railroad. The singer contributed several songs to the limited series’ soundtrack alongside actor-songwriter Jeff Fahey (Fire Country, The Institute) and Grammy-winning songwriter-session player Jim “Moose” Brown (Jackson, Bob Seger). She also shares executive producer credit on the soundtrack with her collaborators.
Brown invited her onto the project, and Enderlin says Fahey brought excitement into the writing room. The trio learned The Gray Housestoryline and began writing “Blood in the River” after executive producer Leslie Greif described a scene that he needed music for.
“We had been texting back and forth,” she says. “Jeff had the idea for the hook, and we started working on it a little bit. I was out at the Opry one night, and I got the idea for the first couple of lines, and I jumped into Porter Wagoner’s dressing room and put a little voice note down and sent it to him, and we got together and finished it.”
The Gray House team liked the song so much, the studio offered to make it the theme song if they found the right artist. The War and Treaty sang “Blood in the River” and contributed to another song with the trio, “The Devil’s Boat.”
“Erin Enderlin has a remarkable gift for finding the emotional truth in a story,” says The Gray House producer Lori McCreary. “On The Gray House, her writing helped deepen the emotional through line and brought heart, history, and humanity to the songs that truly elevated the series.”
Greif agrees. “Every lyric feels as if it was lifted directly from the hearts of the characters, giving voice to feelings audiences instantly recognize as true.”
“Heart of America,” the closing song the trio penned for the series, features Nelson. Another full-circle moment for Enderlin, Nelson also recorded “I Wrote This Song for You” six months prior.
“Willie was one of the first records I had, and the first song I ever learned to play was ‘On the Road Again,’” she says, adding that she had “a visceral response” after learning he cut her song for his 2024 album, The Boarder.
“I literally had to lay down on the floor,” she admits after co-writer Larry Cordle called her to share the news. “I was like, ‘What is happening?’ I didn’t think that was an option. That was not on my bingo card.”
Enderlin draws song inspiration from everywhere. Sometimes she’s “tearing a little piece of my heart out” and other times she’s “snowballing.” There’s often a gem of inspiration, whether it’s an experience she’s had, a line featured in a movie, or something she overheard.
So, what does she love most about songwriting?
“The fact that you can sit down with a blank piece of paper or blank screen, and then end up with a character that, in three or four minutes, you can see an entire movie, and you tap into some little missing piece in humanity that wasn’t there before,” she says. “It’s such a part of the human experience to create something that connects people and can live on after you.”
Sometimes the person that connects with the song is a country superstar. After having “The Bar’s Getting Lower” on hold for two albums, McEntire recorded the track for her 2019 project, Stronger Than the Truth. Enderlin penned “The Bar’s Getting Lower,” about the perils of dating, with longtime friends and collaborators Alex Kline, Kellys Collins, and mentor Liz Hengber.
“There are a lot of things about that song that were really magical,” Enderlin says. “I wrote it with a couple of my best friends. We would get together and write in the evening, specifically try and write songs for Reba.
“I’ve had so many full-circle moments,” she continues. “I feel like a kid in a country music candy store. It’s really incredible, the things that I’ve been able to do, the people I’ve been able to work with.”
Photos by Ryan Nolan
The post Through Songs of Heartbreak and Hope, Erin Enderlin Continues to Honor Her Influences While Carving Out a Voice Uniquely Her Own appeared first on American Songwriter.
Author: Annie Reuter