DURANT, OKLAHOMA (September 6, 2012) – On Thursday, September 27, country trio Pistol Annies, featuring Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, will show off their spunky, harmony-heavy sound at Choctaw Casino Resort’s Event Center, located an hour north of Dallas at 3702 Choctaw Road in Durant, Oklahoma.
Tickets start at $29.95 and can be purchased by phone at 1-800-585-3737 or online at www.choctawcasinos.com. The doors will open at 7 p.m. and the show will begin at 8 p.m.
The Pistol Annies began on a wild hair: Two girlfriends on a giddy whim – Lambert (Lone Star Annie) and Monroe (Hippie Annie) — made a midnight call to fellow singer Presley (Holler Annie) with an invitation to join the fun and maybe start a little trouble…and a band.
“I thought they were in slumber-party mode,” recalls Angaleena Presley of that midnight call she received nearly two years ago from her friend, fellow Nashville-based singer-songwriter Ashley Monroe. Monroe wanted Presley to email every song she had immediately, because she “and Miranda” had hatched a plan to put a band together and they wanted her onboard.
“I was like, ‘Girls, you’re going to wake up tomorrow and realize you’re stupid,'” Presley continues. “And then I went, ‘Miranda who?’ And Ashley says, ‘Lambert!‘ That’s when I was like, ‘Oh … better get out of bed right now!’”
Between the two of them, Presley and Monroe (from Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively) had landed a handful of cuts working Nashville’s Music Row for the better part of the last decade. Monroe had also worked on projects with famed indie-rocker/producer Jack White and released a major-label debut, while Presley has an exceptional album of her own waiting for a proper home.
Lambert landed on the public's radar in 2003 when she successfully appeared on “Nashville Star,” a reality TV series modeled after the “American Idol” format. She has since become one of country music’s biggest stars with four successful #1 albums: 2005’s Kerosene, 2007’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, 2009’s Revolution, and 2011’s Four the Record.
Monroe actually co-wrote two songs with Lambert for Revolution, including the chart topping single “Heart Like Mine.” But the songs they’d begun writing that fateful night at Lambert’s cabin in Oklahoma two Novembers ago begged for an entirely new and different outlet.
The newly formed trio began writing and recording songs together straight away, but barely had six tracks down, when they were offered an opportunity to make their official debut on national TV via the Academy of Country Music’s “Girls’ Night Out: Superstar Women of Country” special on CBS in April 2011. Their first album, Hell on Heels, was released shortly after in August 2011, and their second album, Takin’ Pills, debuted this past February (2012).
The three girls have all adopted nicknames of their own: “Lone Star Annie” for Texan Lambert, “Hippie Annie” for Monroe, and “Holler Annie” for Presley (a nod to her Eastern Kentucky roots). They’re all women of the South, but as Monroe points out, they each bring different musical influences to the table: classic Tennessee country (a la Dolly Parton) from Monroe; bluegrass from Kentucky girl Presley (daughter of a third-generation coal miner); and hard-edged, outlaw honky-tonk (from Waylon to Merle) from Lambert, who cut her teeth playing the rowdy bar and festival circuit in Texas long before finding fame in the mainstream. But it all blends together in the Pistol Annies’ original music as seamlessly as their voices.
“The music just came so easily, it’s like we didn’t even have to try,” says Presley. “It kind of just spilled out of us. I think we were writing a song with 30 minutes of getting together for the first time.”
ABOUT CHOCTAW CASINO RESORT IN DURANT, OKLAHOMA
The AAA Four Diamond Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Oklahoma, includes 330 hotel rooms, a natatorium, fitness center, business center, full-service spa and three retail outlets. In addition, there is a 175-seat amphitheater, 10 restaurants and 110,000 square feet of gaming space, including over 4,100 slot machines, 30 poker tables and 48 table games. For more information, visit www.ChoctawCasinos.com or www.Facebook.com/ChoctawResort.