Donna Ulisse
Living Large in Bluegrass
Photo by Kim Brantley
Bluegrass singer and songwriting ace Donna Ulisse is doing exactly what the title of her new album implies, Livin’ Large. The award-winning tunesmith has created an arsenal of bluegrass songs that other bluegrass artists have cut along with many that her critically-acclaimed voice has recorded. It’s a good feeling for Ulisse who was cast aside by the Nashville country music industry after a credible start in the early 1990s with the prestigious Atlantic Records label. Her debut album, Trouble at the Door, charted three singles, “Things Are Mostly Fine,” “When Was the Last Time,” and “Trouble At The Door” and she was a guest on national television shows including Hee Haw, Nashville Now, Crook and Chase, and NBC’s Hot Country Nights.
“Major record deals in the country world are coveted things, that’s one thing they can’t take away from me,” Donna Ulisse said. “They sent me to media school, they gave me acting lessons and tap dance lessons and all kinds of wild things. They groom you to be this thing that I never pictured myself being until I was it.” Then, she says they jerked the rug out from under her, and her world came crashing down. “I felt like I lost my identity,” Ulisse admits. As she was soul searching, Donna discovered a new side of herself in songwriting. “I never dreamed of being a fulltime songwriter until I had my heart broken in that Atlantic Records debacle,” she recalls. “I started writing, and my natural way of writing sounded very mountain. It could be that the mountain sound wore off on me as a result of marrying Rick Stanley who introduced me to bluegrass music.”
Her father-in-law’s cousin, Bluegrass Hall of Famer Ralph Stanley sang at her wedding, but Ulisse said she wasn’t sure at first if she wanted bluegrass music at her Italian wedding. “I really didn’t know the scope of his career in those days. “My dad said, ‘Well, you’re not going to say no to Ralph Stanley.’ When we announced that Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys would be performing at our reception, people we didn’t know tried to buy tickets to it. I learned really quickly how important this man’s music was. I was really country in those days, and my husband’s father always wanted me to be bluegrass. He would call me Donnie. He’d say, ‘Your voice is going to sound better against acoustic instruments and he was right.’ It was through songwriting that I found my true voice, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve never been happier.”
Ulisse has written a plethora of songs in the bluegrass genre including the 2017 IBMA Song of the Year, “I Am A Drifter,” that she penned with her friend “Monday Marc” Rossi. “Rick and I went to Russia and did four bluegrass shows and hardly got to see any of the country. We go to all of these fabulous places around our country, but we never see more than a stage, hotel room and a Waffle House. We just drive, walk on stage and sing, get back on the road and drive some more. I told Marc on a Monday co-write session, I feel like I’ve spent my life being a drifter. That’s how the idea started.”
Ulisse called her friend Kathy Anderson and suggested she pitch the song to Glenn Harrell with Volume Five. “She goes, ‘I just don’t get that song. I don’t think that’s a very good pitch.’ I said, ‘Really! Cause I think it’s really good.’ She goes, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with pitching that song.’ I said, ‘Will you do me a favor and just humor me and send it to Glenn?’ When we got Song of the Year and I’m flashing that award, I said, ‘You didn’t like the song, huh?’ She laughed and said, ‘I’m going to hear that for the rest of my life’.”
Ulisse also joined with Jerry Salley to pen “The Butler Brothers.” Eventually, the song secured a spot on Del McCoury’s 2014 Grammy-winning album, The Streets of Baltimore, but originally, it was intended for another album. “Rural Rhythm was doing a project about the Civil War, and they were asking folks to write for this project. We came up with this really neat idea about a family with two sons—one fought for the North, one fought for the South. This wasn’t an invention. That really happened. We put them on the Loudon County line in Virginia before it split into West Virginia and Virginia. We had both young men lose their life in the only battle in the Civil War that could not declare a winning side and that was in Williamsburg, VA. This poor woman lost both her sons on a battlefield where there were no winners. The poignancy is everybody lost. It took us months to write that song and do the research. We missed that project but Jerry had a wild idea to send it to Del McCoury who loved the song and cut it.”
Those songs are only two from Ulisse’s impressive songwriting catalogue. She has written songs for Claire Lynch, Darin and Brooke Aldridge, Larry Stephenson, “You Ain’t Heard Lonesome Yet” from Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver’s last album, Roundtable, and “Flowers and Lace” by the Grascals just to name a few. Along the way she’s also earned the 2016 IBMA Songwriter of the Year and the 2018 and 2022 SPBGMA Songwriter of the Year awards along with SPBGMA’s 2022 Female Vocalist of the Year.
The Hampton, VA native began her journey as a songwriter as early as elementary school. “In the 4th grade I was writing poetry that seemed very much like stanzas in a song. I don’t think there was a time I wasn’t songwriting. When I was writing for commercial country, I don’t think Music Row got me because I loved old country more than the newer style so I was a little behind the times. I wasn’t writing what they were considering edgy. I tend to write more like Loretta [Lynn]. I’ve been described a little Dolly like, a little Loretta like, which is a huge compliment, being such a fan of both of these inspiring women. When I stepped over into the bluegrass world is when it really all clicked. It’s honestly like my world settled down and became very sharp and focused because this is where I should have always been and where they get me as a songwriter.”
For Ulisse crafting a tune is like a miracle every time. “I do a lot of song editing for other writers that are new and want to know what’s good and bad about their song. Somehow I see songwriting like a puzzle, so I can look at someone’s lyric and see where the story might be a little disjointed or not as clear and concise. It’s just a gift I quit questioning. I love to read novels, and study how a writer gets from the very beginning of that story to the end and tie it all together. I’ve always been a real fan of how the rhythm of a certain writer works. Somehow I’ve taken the best of all authors I’ve loved throughout the years and incorporated them into how I approach a song, much like a mini-movie in my head. When say, for instance, I thought of ‘Livin’ Large in a Little Town,’ in my mind, I already knew what it had to do from the beginning to the end, where it had to go.”
The talented tunesmith is a strong lyricist but she often has the melody accompanying her creation. “Even in the very first little bit of a line I always have a melody running. It will just start that way. It’s what gives me the rhythm and the meter of the line. Sometimes those melodies will stay and be the one to complete the song, and sometimes I know that I’m onto a better lyric than melody.”
That’s when she calls in the “big dogs” like Jerry Salley, her husband, Rick Stanley or Marc Rossi. While Ulisse, the author of the book, The Songwriter In Me, loves flying solo with her songwriting, bringing in other writers adds another layer of creativity. “I do a fair amount of writing by myself which allows me to get really reflective in some of my lyrics, stuff I might want to keep private until it hits the airwaves but I also love what co-writing adds to my songs. When I teach, I tell writers I feel like knowing how to write a song by yourself before co-writing comes into play allows you to really be able to contribute with more confidence in a co-writing session. Then it’s all about developing a writing relationship with your song partner.
“Once I learned to stop resisting the idea of my song going to a place I wasn’t planning on it going, co-writing became this beautiful thing. You already see it one way, and then this other writer comes in and sees it his way, and somehow we meet in the middle until it becomes our way. Sometimes what I do, because I’m a pretty busy writer, is write whole lyrics and just sit on them. I’ll have a little melody that I’ll hum into my voice recorder and wait for those magical co-writes that come my way.”
Donna’s passion for songwriting extends into her desire to share that love, teaching the craft at The Little House Workshops, located on her farm in Lebanon, TN. (For more information: https://donnaulisse.com/songwriting-workshops/) “I can see them as they walk in my door with their guitar case and the dream of writing a hit song. Some of them can’t wait to play me a song they brought in for a critique in hopes I might throw myself back in a chair and go ‘That’s it. That’s the best song I’ve ever heard in my life.’ And it just might be, you never know. The hardest part for songwriters starting out is learning how to say things the way you talk. Everybody starts out trying to be Hemingway but the truth is, there is no need to get in your own way. You just need say it in your own voice. We have these exercises that we just do and do and do, hoping to break that mode of what they think a songwriter has to be in hopes they become the songwriter they need to be. When we see the dawning happen for these on fire songwriters, me, Rick and Jerry are as kiddy as five year olds, so honored to be part of that experience.”
Her New Music
Ulisse had a lot to say and plenty of time to say it with the extra time created for touring musicians from the pandemic restrictions. Working on the Livin’ Large album with her producer, bluegrass icon Doyle Lawson, was challenging because of COVID, but they found their footing to make it happen. “We didn’t have the one-on-one time that I usually get with Doyle. It was a lot of over the phone and trying to figure out what songs to cut. He’s just such a genius at that. I overwhelm him with songs because my song catalog is huge. I have written so many songs now. I picked about 40 or 50 to send his way. He keeps all my songs, and I forget that. He went back through his old stuff that I had pitched for his music recordings and drew a few out of that too. His choices always surprise me.”
This was the third project that Lawson produced for her. Before Ulisse had the opportunity to work with him, she had heard of Lawson’s reputation. “He was known to be kind of a scary dude in the studio,” she recalls, laughing. “But he is nothing but a teddy bear for me. He really does let me be me. The beauty of Doyle Lawson is he gets me. He likes my music, and he already likes my songwriting and singing.”
“The worst thing you can do is try to change the artist,” Doyle Lawson said in an earlier interview with Bluegrass Unlimited. “Let them be who they are. My approach is to give a little direction, a little guidance when they need it. With Donna, she’s such a great vocalist anyway.”
“It’s just this love fest,” Ulisse says. “What he brings to the table is his uncanny sense of song. I’m not the best judge of my songwriting because I love everything I write. He just knows a good song.”
Lawson’s judgment comes into play with the arrangements as he carefully dissects the music. “My band doesn’t play one note that is not Doyle Lawson approved,” Ulisse said. “If they’re not playing the note he hears, he will go in there, take the instrument, [and] show them where to play it. This is Doyle at his finest. When it comes to background [vocals], there’s nobody better. I’m an old-time background singer. That’s how I made my living when I first came to Nashville. What Doyle finds in background parts—the actual notes and the placement on the lines—is pretty incredible. I’ve worked with some great producers in my life [but]…Doyle Lawson is the best. None of them can hold a candle to what he does.”
Ulisse admits she can be a bit of a perfectionist with her vocals, but Lawson appropriately reigns that part of her personality in. “This is a Doyle-ism. I call him The Chief, and when The Chief is behind the glass screen, it is his way. Because I trust him and admire him so much, I never fight him on it, but I’m always wanting to do another take. I’ll say, ‘Chief, let me run that one one more time.’ ‘Nope, I got what I wanted. You were fine. Trust me.’ I’d probably sing the soul out of them. I want to sing them and sing them and sing them.”
“You’ve got to know when you hear that magic,” Lawson said. “That’s the time to stop. I think the first two or three times is where the real heart is for the song. Even though you might be unaware, I think mentally you kind of lose faith in your ability.”
The first single from the album was the title cut, “Livin’ Large in a Little Town” that she co-wrote with Jerry Salley. “Rick and I had gone to Al’s Foodland here in Lebanon, and when we were coming back, I said, “You know honey; I love this place. I feel like I’m living large in this little town. We both looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a song.’ Rick said I want to write that with you. Jerry got over that same day for a co-writing session, and he goes, ‘Do you have anything on your mind?’ ‘Yeah, but Rick’s going to kill me.’ He said, ‘Let him kill you;’ I had to miss on that other one,” she recalls, laughing.
Salley was running late for a past co-writing appointment with Donna. His tardiness, though inspired a new song, “When I Go All Bluegrass on You” from her previous album, Time for Love. “He kept calling and being later and later,” Ulisse remembers. “I said, ‘That’s okay Jerry.’ Finally, he called me about 11:30 and said, ‘You’re going to hate me, but it’s going to be more like noon-ish.’ I said, ‘That’s fine.’ So, I sat down and I thought, “When he gets here, I’m going to go all bluegrass on him, meaning that I was going to give him a tongue-in- cheek, piece of my Italian mind for being late. I thought it sounded like a funny line, but I thought, ‘Wait a minute! That sounds like a song.’”
Ulisse penned the song with her husband instead of Salley. But don’t misunderstand. Salley and Ulisse are quite the dynamic duo of bluegrass songwriting. “About every song we’ve ever written has been recorded,” said Salley, who is the head of Ulisse’s label Billy Blue Records. “In addition to being close friends and writers, I just think she’s one of the greatest singers I’ve heard. My mother absolutely adores her and her voice. It kind of makes me mad, but she is on pitch every time. I mean I don’t care if we’re in a little room writing or she’s on stage somewhere performing at a festival. I have never heard that girl sing a bad note. She’s one of the greatest voices that I’ve ever heard.”
The muse struck again for Ulisse one night in a hotel room with the album cut, “End of Crazy.” “I had a girlfriend go through a pretty rough broken heart. I was her Dr. Phil. She went a little bit around the bend with this broken heart. You can’t tell somebody, ‘Oh, you’re going to get over this,’ because when they’re going through it, it’s this horrendous thing. I got a lot of songs out of that one to be honest. But when I saw her kind of coming out of the broken hearted stance, I said to Rick … I think she’s at the end of crazy finally. There’s a song!”
Perhaps the song on the album that is most touching for Ulisse is one that she wrote about her grandmother. “She was the person who sort of launched me into this [music] with an old Loretta Lynn 45 that she bought me at Woolworth’s Drug Store when I was a little girl, ‘When The Man of the House Is Not At Home.’ I’ll never forget it. It was the first song I learned to sing. She bought me that record, and it changed my life.”
When Ulisse’s grandmother died, it left a tremendous void in her life. Several years after her grandmother’s death, her uncle was cleaning out his garage and discovered a box with Donna’s name on it from her grandmother. “It took me about six months to open that box, and when I did, it just broke my heart,” Ulisse remembers. “This is the little plaid blanket that she kept on her lap,” Ulisse explained, sharing the cherished possession during our video call. “This is the little string of pearls. This is a little note that she wrote me and the Bible. I wrote a song on this record called ‘Don’t Bury This Bible With Me,’ and it is literally almost word for word about my little grandmother. It took me a long time to write it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sing it live, but I’m going to try because she was such a dear person. I think about her every day.”
One precious moment during the album process happened with the cut, “Daffodil,” that she co-wrote with her husband. She pitched the song to Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver several years ago but never heard anything about it. When Lawson sent her the list of possible songs for the album, “Daffodil” was on it.
“I love the song. Rick and I wrote it, but I never dreamed it for me. He [Doyle] calls me Singing Lady. After I finished doing my final vocal he punches the talk back button [to the vocal booth] and says, “Hey Singing Lady. I don’t hear harmony on this one. In my head, I thought wow because when I wrote it for Doyle, I imagined all the Quicksilver harmony on it. I just knew what it was going to sound like on the chorus.”
Later, Lawson surprised her with an emotional change in the mix of the song. “I sat in the floor and cried for a whole hour after I listened to “Daffodil” because Doyle put his voice on it. The chorus is like a duet with me and Doyle. It was a total complete surprise. Especially now that he’s gotten off the road, it seems like an incredible generous gift to me, Doyle’s voice on “Daffodil.”
Whether Ulisse is penning songs, teaching others about her craft or touring in support of her album with her band, the Poor Mountain Boys [Rick Stanley, Greg Davis, Nate Burie and Evan Winsor], the talented bluegrasser is enjoying life to its fullest. “Going down this highway of life, writing songs and singing with my husband and friends is truly Livin’ Large, I feel blessed.”
