Alecia Nugent Returns With Stegall-Produced Country Album After 10-Year Hiatus

Alecia Nugent was known as one of the more potent female voices in bluegrass for years, working with writers and musicians like Carl Jackson (Glen Campbell, Brad Paisley) and the legendary bandleader and banjo picker JD Crowe. But after her third album for Rounder, Hillbilly Goddess, Nugent disappeared from the scene, and has been out of sight for a decade. Now she’s back, with a new country album called The Old Side of Town, produced by megaproducer Keith Stegall (Alan Jackson, Zac Brown Band). Featuring co-writes with Jackson and Stegall, as well as songs by Tom T. Hall and Brandy Clark, the album features Stegall’s usual top-notch production with his usual crew of Nashville’s top session pickers.

With this new album, Nugent has returned to Nashville from her native Louisiana, where she had retreated to for family reasons. “I went back home and got myself a real job,” she told American Songwriter by phone. “I didn’t plan on leaving music at that time, I just kinda thought I was gonna slow down from the road and do everything from Louisiana. Every now and then I sang on the weekend, and of course I sang in church. I wasn’t traveling, just doing it a little.”

“I came back to Nashville in 2017,” she continued, “and I got in touch with Rounder [Records]. I’d had a five-record deal with Rounder and I only did three, but it had been 10 years and I wanted to record a fourth record with them, but that wasn’t gonna happen. They didn’t want to continue the deal, I’d been gone for too long. So I just started networking. I wasn’t gonna give up, and I started trying to figure out if there was some way I could do this on my own. Then I met a sponsor at [Nashville bluegrass club] the Station Inn one night when they got me up to sing who said they’d provide me with the funds to make another record.”

When it came time to write material, Nugent said that she couldn’t haven’t anticipated having two songs on the album that were co-written by her with Stegall and Roger Murrah (Waylon Jennings, Alabama). “Writing with them was quite intimidating but it was such a treat. Just writing with Keith alone would’ve been one thing, but then to add Roger Murrah – they treated me like I was one of them, and it was an honor.”

For the album’s title track, she chose to cut a song by someone who has been a close friend for years, country songwriting icon Tom T. Hall. “When Keith realized I was very close to Tom T., that I had worked with Tom T. and [his late wife] Dixie for years, he said to me, ‘You are planning on doing a Tom T. Hall song on the record, right?’ I hadn’t really planned on it, but I was gonna do a cover tune, so I said ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ So I picked out ‘The Old Side of Town,’ but it was Keith who definitely urged me to do something by Tom T.”

An SPBMGA (Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America) and IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) award-winner, Nugent said she’s working on ways to promote the album without being able to make live appearances during the pandemic. “I’m trying to figure that out right now, what to do using social media and how we can get some live streaming stuff going on. That’s all we can do until we see what 2021 is going to look like as far as bookings.”

The album also includes both country and bluegrass versions of her tribute to her late father, “They Don’t Make ‘em Like My Daddy Anymore.” “I did those three bluegrass albums,” she said, “but I was never able to do a country record with fiddle and steel guitar. I grew up loving both styles of music, country and bluegrass, and I’d always wanted to do a classic country record. So this is my chance. I’ve been there, done that, and I wanted to do something different, wanted to have a classic country record in my portfolio.”