Tammy Wynette Archives - chimesfreedom

Kasey Chambers With Ex-Husband Shane Nicholson: “The Divorce Song”

Kasey Chambers and her ex-husband Shane Nicholson recounts the bond that can develop between exes in “the Divorce Song.”

In 2024, the great Australian singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers released her first album in six years, Backbone. On one of the tracks from that album, she is joined by her ex-husband Shane Nicholson on “The Divorce Song.”

Understandably, songs about divorce are usually sad songs. For example, one of the greatest divorce songs is Tammy Wynette’s recording of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” That song, written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, recounts a mother talking about her impending divorce but spelling out key words so her four-year-old son does not understand what is happening.

By contrast, Kasey Chambers’ “The Divorce Song” takes a humorous and touching look at two ex-spouses. The song captures the unique friendship that can eventually develop from two people apart who once were married.

Chambers and Nicholson previously released the album Rattlin’ Bones in 2008 and the album Wreck and Ruin in 2012. I loved those albums, so I was sad to hear the two singers had parted ways and that we might not hear any future collaborations.

But sometimes the end is not the end. And now we have Chambers’s and Nicholson’s sweet voices touching us once again with a little bit of humor

It’s a long road to get to the gold;
We made it through paper and wood;
We couldn’t survive as the marrying kind,
But we do divorce pretty good.

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Song of the Day: Lee Ann Womack “Chances Are”

While listening to an Oxford American CD that came with the magazine’s Texas music issue, my ear caught “Chances Are,” a song that sounded like a country classic that has been around forever, or at least since the days of Tammy Wynette. So I was surprised to learn that it is a much more recent song, Lee Ann Womack‘s 2014 cover of a song written by singer-songwriter Hayes Carll.

Womack Chances Are “Chances Are” originally appeared on the 2011 album KMAG YOYO (& other American stories) of Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll. Womack apparently recognized the song as an immediate classic and included it on her 2014 album The Way I’m Livin’.

One of the reasons the song sounds like an old country classic is that the lyrics capture a common country theme. Someone is in a bar wondering why they are so alone, looking to heal a scarred heart. Then the person sees someone, and for a moment at least, is able to hope for love and happiness.

And it seems I spent my whole life,
Wishin’ on the same unlucky star;
And as I watched you ‘cross the bar room,
I wonder what my chances are.

We do not know what happens to the singer. The singer and the stranger begin a dance, as the singer seeks healing and love. Maybe it will work out, or maybe it won’t. But for that moment, the singer does something we all have done, wondering what our chances are.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

Kasey Chambers With Ex-Husband Shane Nicholson: “The Divorce Song”

Jesus and Elvis, Painted on Velvet

John Prine Releasing New Album, “For Better, For Worse”

I Sit Here Tonight, the Jukebox Playing Kitty Wells

Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig! on May 20, 1965

Tribute to Guy Clark CD is “Stuff That Works”

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

I Sit Here Tonight, the Jukebox Playing Kitty Wells

Country music legend Kitty Wells passed away July 16, 2012 at the age of 92. Among other accomplishments, she will be remembered because in 1952 her record of “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” became the first country music #1 song by a woman soloist.

Not only did the recording become an important first, it is a great country song too.

Although Wells may be best remembered for that groundbreaking hit, she had many other popular recordings, including a version of “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and she was known as the “Queen of Country.” She was generally listed as the top female country singer for more than a decade during 1952 through 1968 before being dethroned by Tammy Wynette, who was followed by other female country singers. Wells’s website notes a number of honors, including that she was inducted into the Country Music Association Hall of Fame in 1976.

Although it is hard to imagine now, but “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was controversial when released. The song was an answer song to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” where the singer said he didn’t know that God made honky tonk angels and bemoaned the lover that left him to go back to the wild side of life.

In Wells’s response with “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” written by J.D. “Jay” Miller, Wells put the blame back on the men. At the time, some of the male-dominated radio stations would not play the song and she was not allowed to perform it at the Grand Ole Opry. But the song struck a chord with enough people to become a bigger hit than Thompson’s song.

Both Thompson’s and Wells’s songs used the same tune, which appeared in the earlier songs of The Carter Family’s 1929 “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and Roy Acuff’s 1936 classic record of Rev. Guy Smith’s “The Great Speckled Bird.” Kitty Wells herself later recorded “The Great Speckled Bird,” where you can hear the similarity to “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”

Wells was born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville, Tennessee on August 30, 1919. She changed her name to Kitty Wells in 1943 based on a suggestion of her husband, Johnny Wright, who was also a country music performer. The name came from a folk ballad recorded by the Pickard Family, entitled “Sweet Kitty Wells.” Here is the song that provided her name, recorded by Billy Grammer.