WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month Annie DiRusso released her first full-length album Super Pedestrian recently. I fancy Annie like an elite surfer riding the tsunami wave of younger female artists, reverent of the 1990s alternative rock music that prioritizes hooks but also volume and has a lot to say. But when DiRusso came to Belmont University, she said, it was still sort of a boys’ club in terms of people making rock music and gigging out.
“When I first moved to Nashville and got involved in the indie scene, it was pretty male-dominated,” she said. “And even within Belmont, I remember when I first got to Belmont, like, I really couldn’t get on a show unless it was girl’s only. And now it actually feels like much the opposite, which is kind of the best thing ever. Anytime I feel like a lineup’s announced, it’s almost always just girls. OK, that rocks.”
So the indie music scene has changed in the several years that DiRusso’s called Nashville home. She came from New York and stayed because of the creative community she’s forged. Even as a college student, she self-released songs that got traction on streaming platforms and landed her opening spots on tour with some of her heroes turned peers like Samia and HAIM.
But the time from first singles through this first full-length release has marked a big leap in confidence for the artist as a songwriter and certainly as a guitarist. Her humble roots as a preteen are pretty relatable, strumming chords on an acoustic guitar starting, of course, covering the artists she loves.
“I learned very, very minimal guitar, like probably six chords. I was addicted to my capo. From the ages of 12 to 18, I got better at guitar, but I wasn’t really pushing myself to learn scales or anything. And then when I got to Nashville, I got an electric guitar and I got a distortion pedal. I got into barre chords, as well, which makes playing the electric guitar make a lot more sense.”
Of course, it’s not just the what Annie DiRusso picked up in “going electric” that changed her sound and advanced her skill beyond strumming to Ed Sheeran covers. (She says evidence of this lives on the internet somewhere, by the way, from a time she “looked like Justin Bieber.”) Once she was performing out regularly, it was the whom.
“Then touring with a band who, very luckily, are like the most beautiful people in the world. None of them — even though they’re all these guys who are incredibly proficient at their instruments — none of them ever, ever, ever talked down to me. I think there were times at Belmont where people absolutely did, you know, like while I was forming my band,” she remembers. “But the people that I ended up touring with were only ever supportive, and I think that made me a much better instrumentalist.”
She spoke of the novelty in co-creating with the dudes, for once, finding hype and collaboration versus condescension. “Just playing with an amazing guitarist and drummer and bassist made me so much better and inspired to be a lot better at my instrument. And they were only encouraging me like, ‘Well, what if you tried this pedal?’ And when I revealed to them I couldn’t play a scale, they weren’t like, ‘What?! You never learned to scale? Like, how do you even know…’ They were like, ‘Oh wait, it’s pretty easy, actually.’ And just taught me.”
DiRusso said she found the same sort of safe space and fertile ground for growth once she recorded Super Pedestrian in Asheville at Drop of Sun Studios with producer Caleb Wright, who’s worked with indie artists such as Hippo Campus, Charly Bliss and Briston Maroney.
“He was the first producer I got on the phone with that said, ‘So what’s the record about?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it is about something, isn’t it, Caleb?’ And his whole purpose the whole time was really serving the storyline of the record. It really wasn’t music-focused at all in a way that I think was kind of the most beautiful possible situation for me to create this record in.”
I gathered that it can be a rarity, as a woman in music, to feel so safe to explore and also to have someone see the through-line in your art. Wright offered both.
“It feels like there’s this bar of entry, but the bar of entry is just having the confidence to walk into a studio and, like, tinker around with things. Because a lot of times growing up, and honestly until recently, I would feel very, ‘OK, well, you know how to do that. I don’t really know how to do that.’ But then I realized — and there’s kind of a theme on the record about autonomy, as well — in terms of playing music, that they know exactly as much as I know, or they did when they first did it.”
Before she actually laid down these tracks, DiRusso was writing many of the songs that appear on Super Pedestrian in a period post-tour that she dubbed “Party July.” It was a blitzy few weeks in the summer of 2023, where she really wanted to maximize time with friends. But creatively, things just poured out of her. She was also messing around with atypical tunings on her guitar.
“It immediately opened up a whole new world for me,” she said. “It made me feel so inspired musically and led me to a whole new group of melodies, which I think was so fun. I wrote so many songs over the same chords and then had to, you know, pick one. But yeah, I feel like most of the record is actually in alternate tunings. I just felt very supported to explore that. I don’t think that every woman with the guitar gets that experience.” Early single “Back in Town” is one such song in an alternate tuning.
In order to create some demos, DiRusso’s close friend, bandmate and co-producer Eden Joel (who played on the whole of Super Pedestrian) took her shopping for recording gear and pedals. Back at home, she experimented with distortion and her roommate got on the drum kit and they just messed around. Rocked out. No agenda. With that came another a-ha moment for young women making music.
“This is what these guys have been doing since they were, like, 12, you know? While we were also, in a really important way with our acoustic guitars, writing stuff and that kind of thing. But it’s like, ‘What if we just started jamming like this,’ because they weren’t good when they started! But you had to start somewhere. And we had this whole revelation where we were like, ‘Alright, we’re starting now. We’re going to jam and it’s going to sound bad. And then, eventually we will sound better and just make crazy sounds.'”
Annie DiRusso is making a righteous noise on Super Pedestrian, her debut full-length. And she’s in good company. Nashville seems chock-a-block lately with women rocking out and growing their fanbases because of it. Like it or not, and DiRusso quite likes it, this is no longer the boys’ club of yesteryear.
