Soul Step Announces SSR-112

Nashville country artist Tony Hannah will release her new album, Love It or Leave It, on vinyl October 16 in partnership with Nashville’s Soul Step Records.

On Love It or Leave It, Hannah reaches back to the warmth, wit and emotional honesty of ‘80s and ‘90s country while writing from the perspective of a modern working woman. Across ten songs about work, money, desire, heartbreak, independence and knowing your worth, she makes country music for what she calls “the girls who hold it all together.”

Influenced by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, Hannah brings an old-school country songwriter’s sensibility to thoroughly modern problems. She finds kindred spirits in Tammy Wynette, Crystal Gayle, Linda Ronstadt and Rosanne Cash, women whose emotional honesty, femininity, individuality and unmistakable points of view helped define generations of country music. Hannah isn’t interested in recreating another era. She carries that same spirit forward in songs rooted firmly in life today.

“Comin’ Up Short” speaks to women working their asses off and somehow still struggling to get ahead while “bringing home the bacon and frying it too.” On “It Takes a Man to Say Goodbye,”co-written with Brennen Leigh, Hannah turns the modern indignity of being ghosted into timeless country wisdom. “What the Heart Wants” finds heartbreak in an achingly ordinary moment when she realizes she’s still making enough morning coffee for two.

The album also carries a piece of Hannah’s own country music history. Her late uncle, Art “AJ” Masters, was an accomplished Nashville songwriter and recording artist whose songs were recorded by Randy Travis, Faith Hill and The Oak Ridge Boys. Masters earned a BMI Millionaire Award for “Change My Mind,” recorded by The Oak Ridge Boys and John Berry. Hannah grew up singing around the campfire with AJ and credits him with planting the seed for her own songwriting career.

On Love It or Leave It, that family story comes full circle with Hannah’s recording of “An Old Pair of Shoes,” co-written by Masters, Jerry Foster and Johnny Morris and released as a single by Randy Travis in 1993.

Produced and recorded in Nashville with acclaimed songwriter, artist and producer Elijah Ocean, Love It or Leave It features drummer Aaron Goodrich (Colter Wall, Zach Top), fiddler Mary Meyer (Molly Tuttle) and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Long, with mixing by Buster Allen (Garth Brooks).

The result is an album that honors the country music Hannah inherited without getting stuck in the past. Its women work hard, love hard, make mistakes, get their hearts broken, laugh about it when they can and ultimately know when enough is enough.

Classic country. Present tense. Now on vinyl.