Interview: Laura Bell Bundy Is Ready to Share a New ‘Piece’ of Herself
Laura Bell Bundy's first album with Big Machine Label Group, Another Piece of Me, was a (very) long labor of love for Bundy, but she says that the end result was more than worth it.
"I feel like I’ve been pregnant with this album for three and a half years, and I’m finally giving birth to a toddler," Bundy tells The Boot. "And it’s painful to get it out, but it’s exciting."
The 15-track project, which was released on June 9, follows Bundy's 2010 Achin' & Shakin' record, but the singer says that Another Piece of Me is markedly different from her previous project.
"I have maybe four other albums' worth of songs that I could put out," Bundy admits. "I pretty much started writing for this record as soon as Achin’ & Shakin’ came out. I just continued to write. And then I’ve also listened to other songs that I’ve loved, that other writers have written.
"My producer and Joe Fisher, my A&R guy, we were like, ‘First, what do we want this album to be?’ Because the last album, Shakin', was one extreme to the other extreme," she continues. "And this album, we wanted more of a journey throughout. The peaks and valleys, but let’s get some of the middle, too, because I started writing some of that."
"I Am What I Am," Bundy's current single from Another Piece of Me, is already climbing the charts, and the Kentucky native says that the tune is a reflection of the entire record.
"When I thought about "I Am What I Am," it’s a very good representation right now of the way I feel musically," she says. "I am what I am, and this is who I am, and that’s the music I’m doing. And also, personally. It’s the right song."
Bundy filmed the video for "I Am What I Am" in the Swiss Alps, but while it might seem like a fully produced video that took days to film, not to mention dozens of crew members, the 34-year-old says that couldn't be farther from the truth.
"It was amazing," Bundy boasts. "I had this gig at a country music festival, and I’m looking at this place, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to film here.’ I kind of had imagined that "I Am What I Am" feels like you were in the mountains, like Maria Von Trapp in the Sound of Music. And so I invited Becky Fluke, who is a good friend of mine, to come to Switzerland with me and film the video.
"We did it rogue," Bundy continues. "We didn’t ask permission from the label. I paid up front for it. We had the concept for the video. Andy Davis also conceptualized the video with us, who was my boyfriend at the time. And, we wanted people to hold up who they were. We rented a helicopter for an hour. We had all these crazy shots where Becky was hanging out of the helicopter, and they’d drop me off at the top of this mountain. My skirt was flying up in the air. It was hilarious."
Bundy is know as much for her music as she is for being an actress, having appeared in Broadway musicals like Hairspray and Legally Blonde, as well as the movie Watercolor Postcards and the TV shows Hart of Dixie and Anger Management. Although it can be hard to juggle her many roles, she says that the acting and singing worlds really aren't very far apart.
"I love entertainment, and I love entertaining people," Bundy explains. "I love every aspect, from the conception of an idea, whether it’s an idea for a song, and then you write the song, and then the production of the song, and then directing the video and writing the video. So I absolutely think that my past has helped, the things that I’ve done in the past have helped, and my performances, too."
Bundy has poured a lot of herself into Another Piece of Me, but she isn't worried about if the record will be a commercial success.
"I think that you always hope that your album is received well by other people," she says. "And, there were some additional added pieces to the record, and you hope that it feels consistent all around. But I’m also really happy to get music out to my fans, and I’m also not concerned with what people think as much as I have been in the past."