Award-winning singer brings country side to Tucson concert

Elle King always takes the long way to end up where she’s going.

Like her nearly 10-year journey that brought the “Ex’s & Oh’s” singer from pop to country with the release four months ago of her debut Nashville album “Come Get Your Wife.”

Funny thing about long journeys; sometimes you realize you were already there.

“Now that I look back and I see all the different markers of my life, country was always kind of there just waving at me. I just didn’t realize it,” she said last week during an interview to talk about her “Rock the Fox” benefit concert for Angel Charity for Children on Wednesday, April 26.

In between the driving rock of “Last Damn Night” and the pop exuberance of “Ex’s & Oh’s” on her 2015 debut album “Love Stuff,” King proclaimed she was not “America’s Sweetheart” in a banjo-picking song that countrythangdaily.com said, “is like a hall pass to lose control and get emotionally wild.”

Her sophomore album “Shake the Spirit” in 2018 was more alternative rock with a slight Southern edge to songs about divorce (she had just gone through one), PTSD and drinking.

“Every release I have ever put out has had at least one country song on it because at the heart of country music, I think, is great beautiful storytelling and songwriting,” she said.

Her distinctive vocals also lean more country and blues than pop, soft at times, rough-hewn, and smoky.

It was the kind of voice country superstar Dierks Bentley was seeking when he was looking for someone to back him on his 2016 single “It’s Different For Girls.”

“I had no idea who he was,” said King, who recorded the song with Bentley in Texas, where she lived at the time. “It was a really wonderful day that kind of completely altered the direction of my life and changed it forever in a great way.”

“It’s Different For Girls” became Bentley’s 15th No. 1 hit and earned the pair a Country Music Association award for vocal event of the year in 2016 and a Grammy nomination in 2017.

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It also opened the door to other collaborations, including with violin great Lindsey Stirling (“The Upside”) and pop singer Andy Graham (“Best of You”).

King tapped country superstar Miranda Lambert to duet on her rockabilly-country rocker “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” which is on “Come Get Your Wife” alongside a second duet with Bentley, “Worth A Shot.”

Country music has given King, 33, license to be vulnerable and tell her story, from growing up in rural Ohio to her relationship with her comedian father Rob Schneider and her two younger sisters and becoming a mom to now 21-month-old son Lucky, who changed her life in ways she never imagined.

The baby can be heard cooing at the end of “Lucky,” a song on “Come Get Your Wife” that counts its blessings for finding happiness after navigating through life’s pitfalls. King wrote it, and most of the songs on the album, and the two songs she didn’t write sound like she did. When she was considering songs by other Nashville writers, King had two criteria: The songs had to make her wish she had written them or make her feel that they were written about her.

“Come Get Your Wife” might be the most country thing King has done, but when you peel back the layers, it is very much an Elle King record, from the wink-wink of “Try Jesus” since all the men in your life are losers to the twangy toe-tapper of “Crawlin’ Mood” (“Crawling is the only way to make my way back to you/Baby, I ain’t in no crawlin’ mood”) and the rollicking “Before You Met Me” (“I was a weeknight drinker/Karaoke singer/Top of every preacher’s prayer list”).

“I don’t think this is too far off from what an Elle King record is,” she said. “Actually, this is the most me thing that I’ve ever made because I felt comfortable in the creative process of it. ... I’m very proud of this album and every aspect of making this was an absolute labor of joy and love. I’m just proud of it.”

The Angel Charity for Children’s “Rock the Fox” with Elle King, featuring Madeline Edwards, is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, at Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.

Tickets are $35-$80 through foxtucson.com; proceeds benefit Angel Charity for Children.