INTERVIEW: Bomshel "Fight Like A Girl"

When I was asked to interview the gals from Bomshel (Kristy Osmonson and Kelley Shephard), I was excited; they emulate a free spirit and have ambition that simply radiates from them. I borrowed this description from their website which so accurately describes them. “Few young women are equally at ease penning a poignant hit about a friend battling cancer or simply knocking back tequila with Kix Brooks, but then again you can always count on Bomshel to embrace the extremes and---like their name implies---deliver the unexpected.”
Conversation took wings of its own and the gals shared the excitement of the new song as well as what got them to this point in their career along with their plans for the future. Recently signed to Curb Records, these gals have an exciting road in front of them and this duet will soon be a household name.

Bev: Kristy and Kelley, I know without even asking, but tell me how exciting is it to be where you are right now?

Kelly: Oh we are so excited…

Kristy: We stop breathing like four times a day.

Kelly: I think we are just big balls of nervous energy.

Bev: Where were you the first time you heard it on the radio?

Kristy: We still haven’t heard “19 and Crazy” but when we heard “Fight like a Girl” we were both leaving the Dave Matthews concert.

Kelly: We went to Dave Matthews, get this; we just came off the road two weeks straight with each other. I went to the Dave Matthews concert with my boyfriends and Kristy had a date so she went with him and….

Kristy: We live together, we work together, and we really are best friends. Sometimes we are like “get away from me” and need to spend like eight hours apart.

Kelly: So we go to the Dave Matthews concert and we are driving home and all of a sudden our song comes on and I’m dialing Kristy a thousand times and she’s not picking up and I’m just freaking out in the car but…

Kristy: And the point of that was, randomly we are at the Dave Matthews concert and we were both there and didn’t know each other were there.

Kelly: Technically that was my first time hearing it, but I count my first surprise moment, a couple weeks I’m listening to the radio and I was in a Dick’s Sporting Goods shopping and all of a sudden my ears perk up and I think “I know this song” and it was on the speaker, at Dick’s Sporting Goods of all places. I called my boyfriend and I’m like “get over here, get over here now” because he was in the store next to me and I’m like “come over, please come over” and he’s like “what happened” and I’m like listen! I turn to the sales lady and I’m like “this is me! This is me! I’m singing in Dick’s right now”. That was like my first Oh my God. The lady was like “That’s…Awesome.” And I was like “You don’t understand!” It was a pretty cool experience for me.

Bev: Kelly, you always said you wanted to be a Curb artist; now that you are here, is it everything you thought it was going to be? Tell me how that all transpired.

Kelly: I loved Leann Rimes, she was my idol, since I was eight years old and I knew she was under Curb. I always used to put on these big shows upstairs in my house and I would introduce myself as Curb recording artist Kelly Sheppard because that’s what she was. When I was working with a promotions team out of L. A. we had been to almost every record label in Nashville but Curb, and I begged them “please we have got to go to Curb that is like my dream!” And they were like “yeah, yeah, yeah, we will get to it. We still have all these other meetings first”. We eventually parted ways and I met Kristy a month after that. We hit it off as friends and a couple weeks later she asked me to be a part of Bomshel. I was taking it very calmly like that’s cool and she said “we are under Curb…” and I’m like “WHAT!?” I was so excited and screamed “you have got to be kidding me!? It’s like my dream!” I’ll never forget the day we went into Curb, we went into Mike Curb’s assistant’s office and sang for him and there’s this big picture of Leann Rimes and her producer and I felt like an idiot, but I just started bawling! I mean to me it was like this can’t be, this is too weird; it really can’t all come full circle like that. It really is true, if you think it and you speak it, you will be it. Which I didn’t believe in all that stuff and then when all that happened I was like it’s so weird. It’s true, whatever you put out you get back and I just couldn’t believe how full circle that came. I still haven’t met Leann though. I don’t know if I want to.

Kristy: I’m very excited about that moment. It’s going to be fun.

Kelly: I’m not! I’ll be like [makes crying noise] I love you so much! You’ll have to peel me off of her. There’s very few people I get like that with.

Bev: Kristy, Bomshel was already established and signed with Curb already?

Kristy: Yes. Bomshel had been touring and there was a different girl and I had a different duet partner and she quit. I consider my early years with Bomshel as learning how to write songs and learning how to really listen to our audience and try and articulate what people are feeling and saying. I had met Kelly and she and I clicked in a way artistically and it’s so rare to find a co-writer that you finish each other’s sentences. You have that magical Ying and Yang to where she’s walking along dropping song titles and I’m walking after her just writing them down. Then we sit down and kind of marinate and put it together. It’s so rare to find that co-writer and as a duet partner, that was a magical and amazing experience. For me, the magic that is music is the collaboration. I’m such a fan of the magic that happens when there is a connection or chemistry among people, and I think artistically that is the best kind of thing you can have happen is collaboration. So, we have a blast.

Bev: What is the age difference between you?

Kelly: I’m 21

Kristy: I’m 29

Bev: So there’s a little age difference but not a big age difference; do you notice anything with that?

Kristy: I think initially I think there might have been a little bit, because when she first moved in with me, it was her first time living outside of her parents house, it was like six months of party hard, maybe.

Kelly: Yeah I just turned 21, but now I’m like gosh I’m over that. I want to be in bed by like nine.

Kristy: I forget sometimes that she’s 21, sometimes I totally don’t even think about it. We really enjoy the same things when we’re home. It’s really just popcorn and movies, and TV and reality shows you know and just…we’re very boring. Every now and then we’ll go out and tear it up like once every four months.

Bev: Kristy you were an established song writer and have a single out now by Joey + Rory. Do you plan on continuing to write for other artists as well as for the two of you?

Kristy: Yes, I wrote “Cheater, Cheater”. It was when I dated one of my actual idols, I was excited about the whole thing and it turned out there was lots of girls dating him as well so that was frustrating. So “Cheater, Cheater” came out of that. It was funny because Joey and Rory were going for adds on it and but they weren’t getting any response on it because it said “ho” and you can’t say “ho” on the radio and we’re going a “ho’s a ho” what else do you call her? Then it’s like…what did Carmen say? Karma’s a bitch, you can’t say bitch on the radio and so you know Karma is a female dog and that’s how our other song “Female Dog” came about. It is on the record and it’s really a spin-off song to “Cheater” and anyways we’ll see how that one goes.

Bev: Do you want to pursue the avenue of other artists recording your songs or do you want to keep them for yourselves?

Kristy: I think eventually I would love to do songwriting full time, because I think there will come a time when I’m fat and on my front porch, eating Krispy Kreme’s. Right now we want a career as artists. We have a lifetime to write songs for other people but you have a window, a real small window, grab it, live it and do it. Eventually, but I want to go to the moon too and make movies.

Bev: On many of the things I have read about you it says you guys like to brace extremes and expect the unexpected.

Kelly: Absolutely! For us, our show is a lot of what we do and a lot of what we’re about. Being a female, it’s hard to go to a female show and watch. When we first met this was one thing that we really connected on; that we are both first and foremost, entertainers, before anything else. And when people come to a show we want them to feel like they got their $30, $40 worth. I personally hate it when I go to a show and someone stands behind a microphone and sings. During our performances nothing is really the same every night, it all depends on the audience and it depends on our surroundings, but Kristy climbs stuff and I usually stage dive or you know whatever. She’ll climb like metal scaffoldings in the middle of thunderstorms. It’s pretty unexpected because it changes from night to night. We don’t have like a routine or anything.

Kristy: It’s also translated really well into the record, hopefully in the sense that when we put this album together it was a good representation of what our live show is, which is intense, very intense, up-tempo, in your face. “Fight like a Girl” is the only ballad on the record.

Kelly: That and “Thank you”.

Kristy: Hopefully they are different sounding and say different things because we just want to keep everybody guessing. We are very excited about the current project and we have so many unfinished things going on to the second album. I’m excited for the second one.

Bev: When you do your show, do you do the same set every night? Or do you mix it up completely?

Kelly: It kind of depends on how much time we have. If we have an hour show then we pretty much have a full set and that’s the same set every hour, if we do forty-five we’ll give and take a few songs.

Kristy: We mix it up a lot though based on who’s there.

Kelly: There’s like three ending songs sometimes we’ll do one song and then not do another, or put them in different spots depending on how the audience is…

Kristy: But we don’t have like a set list that is written out and goes to every show. We really do gauge what we are doing on who the audience is.

Kelly: It irritates our band. They are like you guys don’t have a set list and I’m like well I don’t know how many minutes they want us to play tonight. They will be like well you should have a set list and I’m like I don’t know if I feel like playing that song tonight.

Kristy: It’s fun to be able to feel that live energy and in the middle of the show, call the song and maybe do a Bomshel song or maybe not, honestly before Kelly and I came together I never had an opportunity to enjoy a show like that. We have this band that is absolutely amazing and with these guys we marinated and vibed together in a way musically when it comes together it is a really amazing experience. We are very blessed on that.

Bev: The name Bomshel is unique, you left the b off on purpose; is there a story to that?

Kristy: B-O-M-S-H-E-L.

Kelly: For us, we get a lot of raised eyebrows with our name. People are like oh it’s because you’re blonde bombshells – but really we are trying to prove originality and being unique as individuals.

Kelly: I’m blonde today, but I don’t know what I want to be tomorrow. We consider ourselves just everyday average girls who are talented and have an opportunity to live our dreams. I mean I’m a size 6, average weight. Kristy is a size 6, and I look at girls like Kellie Pickler and Carrie Underwood and I think they’re beautiful and I love their music but I go I’m never going to look like them because I love Taco Bell and I hate to run. I’m a healthy happy girl. In society it’s such a problem being a woman because we scrutinize ourselves so much. I’m meant to look like me and be happy looking like me. That’s what a bombshell is; just to be happy in your own skin. Whether you have blonde hair, purple hair, whether you’re two or twenty-two, it shouldn’t matter. It should be that you are loving what you are doing in life and that you love yourself.

Kristy: We also have a song and it’s called “Love Me For Me”. I believe it is going to be an expected favorite on our record. Nobody knows it yet, but I know I’m calling this one. It was a funny situation when Kelly and I sat down to write and she wasn’t feeling well that day. Our co-writer was coming in and she said, “you know what? I’m not feeling well, I’m laying on the couch and when he comes in he’s going to love me and he’s going to love me for me” and that’s how it happened.

Bev: Well said. Going back to the leaving the “B” out, how often do you get mail addressed to you or sent that misspell it?

Kelly: Daily. We’ll show up to shows and our dressing room will say B-O-M-S-H-E-L-L or B-O-M-B-S-H-E-L-L. We changed the spelling because I believe that being able to identify what we’re trying to define Bomshel as and what Bomshel is to us and sets it apart.

Bev: Setting yourself apart opens up a whole new realm of opportunities for promotions, do you have anything coming up?

Kristy: We are doing release parties in all the cities that have really supported us and supported our songs.

Bev: With all of the social media like Facebook and such, do you have a favorite?

Kelly: TWITTER!!

Kristy: Twitter was one of those things I was like I am not signing up for, I will not do it, I already have a thousand things I have to keep up with and now I’m addicted.

Kelly: it’s not like people care what we are doing every five seconds

Kristy: They need like a Tweet-hab. For those of us junkies who can’t stop.

Bev: So are you going to use that for any of your promotional stuff.

Kristy: Daily! Our BomSquad is amazing! They are a group of girls (and guys) they have expanded.

Kelly: They have gone from like four to a hundred.

Kristy: They are so much fun and honestly, they fly in and they have these like BomSquad parties. And when we were in Vegas we played a big show and all of them flew from all parts of the globe and one has a “fight like a girl tattoo” and they’ve all become friends through our shows. It is a riot, they are absolutely amazing! We’ll call Stephanie we need activity here and she’s in Minnesota, she will call somebody who will call a zillion people and there ya go, got it done. It’s really amazing. Thank you BomSquad, love you girls! You’re amazing.
It’s really fun, it’s an incredible experience to be an artist at this point in time and I think a lot of people go, Oh God the industry is dying and we’re seeing the death of the music business and I totally disagree. It’s the most amazing opportunity because like our record was born at the kitchen table and a lot of it was produced upstairs in my bedroom on the laptop. We did all of our over dubs and comp-ing at the house. And so if you can see it you can be it.

Kelly: With things like twitter, it makes you so much more attainable. I would’ve loved to be able to at nine years old to be able to tweet Leann Rimes and have her tweet me back.

Bev: Gals, you are so refreshing and inspiring and full of energy; I see only positive things happening for you. Thank you for sharing a part of who you are with me.

For more information on BOMSHEL visit www.bomshel.com.