The Wall Street Journal - 21.08.2019

thefour singers trading lines,

singing in unison and harmoniz-

ing, hark back to the country mu-

sic of the 1970s and 1980s, but

with a contemporary flair. In a

genre that is largely dominated by

men, they also tackle issues such

as motherhood and female identity

with maturity.

The group has so far released

three tracks from the album—in-

cluding “Redesigning Women,” an

empowerment anthem which

wryly calls women “a critical rea-

son there is a population.” While

the Highwomen currently have no

plans to tour, they have been get-

ting offers from “big festivals,”

Ms. Hemby says.

The Highwomen are a big tent:

The video for “Redesigning

Women” features Tanya Tucker and

Wynonna Judd as guest stars, while

Sheryl Crow and the British vocalist

Yola appear on the album—as does

Ms. Shires’s husband, singer-song-

writer Jason Isbell. Last month the

group performed with Dolly Parton

at the Newport Folk Festival in

Rhode Island.

The warm reception they’ve re-

ceived from both music critics and

fans raises a question: In today’s

age of content overload, can

singer-songwriters gain a bigger

audience by teaming up instead of

just going it alone?

Four or five-person groups are

less economical, since the profits

of touring—now the biggest source

of a musician’s income—must be

split. Yet combining forces with

fellow artists—long common in

hip-hop—can yield unexpected

commercial or critical gains, boost

AL

YSSE GAFKJEN

From left to right: Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Amanda Shires. The four women have formed a

supergroup with the aim of giving women a louder voice in the male-dominated world of country music.

FAMILY & TECH| JULIE JARGON

Vaping Enters the Classroom

Schoolstry to outsmart students who hide e-cigarettes in shirt sleeves and highlighter pens

Vape pens confiscated by the Lefors

Independent School District. Other

popular models resemble USB drives.

FROM

TOP: BRIAN STAUFFER; KELLEY PORTER, SUPERINTENDENT OF LEFORS ISD

individualprofiles and show off

different sides of an artist. Last

fall, for example, young singer-

songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe

Bridgers and Lucy Dacus came to-

gether as boygenius for a highly-

praised project.

Ms. Hemby, who is currently

making her second solo album,

says she has more record labels in-

terested in her work since the suc-

cess of the Highwomen.

“It gives me a new platform, for

sure,” she says.

Three of the Highwomen are

mothers: Ms. Shires, 37, has a

daughter with Mr. Isbell; Ms. Car-

lile, 38, two daughters with her

wife; Ms. Hemby, 42, has an

8-year-old daughter, Sammie Jo,

with her husband, a record

producer.

One of the songs that Ms.

Hemby co-wrote, “My Only Child,”

is a response to her daughter’s re-

quest for a baby sister or brother.

Ms. Hemby had Sammie Jo at

34 and she has tried to explain to

her that having a sibling may not

be possible, she says. She recalls

giving away some of Sammie

Jo’s older things and weeping at

the thought that this could be the

last time she would raise her

own child. Written with Ms.

Shires and Miranda Lambert, “My

Only Child” was “my therapy,”

she says.

Two months ago, Ms. Hemby

played the song to Sammie Jo for

the first time after picking her up

from camp. “I played it for her in

the car, and I look in the rearview

mirror, and she’s crying in the

back seat,” Ms. Hemby says.

“We just had a moment together.”

AMANDA SHIRES,a Texas violin

virtuoso and Americana singer-

songwriter, came up with the idea:

An all-female update of the High-

waymen, the supergroup launched

in 1985 by Johnny Cash, Waylon

Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris

Kristofferson—often dubbed “the

Mount Rushmore of country music.”

She decided to call the group the

Highwomen and approach some of

country music’s most successful

names to join her in the lineup. “We

all blindly just came together,” says

Natalie Hemby, one quarter of the

group and one of Nashville’s most

sought-after songwriters.

The project officially began last

fall. Ms. Shires had enlisted Brandi

Carlile, whose latest album was

nominated for Album of the Year

at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Next to join the band was the

country-pop singer and songwriter

Maren Morris, while Ms. Hemby,

who has helped pen tunes for

Kacey Musgraves and Miranda

Lambert among others, initially

came onboard as a songwriter.

At this point, Ms. Shires was

still looking for a fourth singer for

the group. During a recording ses-

sion one day in Nashville, Ms.

Hemby joined the trio in a perfor-

mance of one of their songs and

everything clicked; they asked her

to join the group. Only Ms. Morris

and Ms. Hemby had known each

other previously. “We got married

first—and then we got to know

each other,” Ms. Hemby says.

On Sept. 6, the Highwomen will

release their self-titled debut al-

bum. Its 12 tracks, which showcase

BYNEILSHAH

Nashville’s Modern Answer to a Classic Country Supergroup

K

idsused to duck

into the school

bathroom to sneak

adragonaciga-

rette. But with the

electronic kind,

they are becoming increasingly

daring, often vaping right under

their teachers’ noses.

I spoke to more than two dozen

teachers, students and administra-

tors across the country about the

creative ways high-school and

even middle-school kids have

found to hide vape pens and take

hits of nicotine—and sometimes

marijuana—in class. Students con-

ceal them in highlighter pens, pen-

cil cases and long-sleeve shirts.

Girls hide them in their bras and

headbands. They inhale when the

teacher isn’t looking and the vapor

they exhale dissi-

pates quickly,

though the fla-

vored kind can

leave a fruity fra-

grance in the air.

Pam Blackwell,

a substitute

teacher in Pendle-

ton, Ind., was

alerted by a student assistant to

two freshman boys who were

crouched down, vaping behind

binders they had placed upright on

their desks. She texted the school

secretary and a few minutes later,

the assistant principal came in and

asked the boys to follow him. A

search of their backpacks yielded

the vape pens, and the boys were

suspended for five days.

“We did so much education in

schools about the danger of smok-

ing cigarettes and then cigarette

smoking declined, but now kids

feel like vaping is a safer alterna-

tive,” Ms. Blackwell said.

E-cigarettes are a 21st-century

phenomenon. They first hit the

U.S. market more than a decade

ago but have grown in popularity

during the past few years. The bat-

tery-operated devices have become

increasingly high-tech and styl-

ized, with some resembling USB

drives that can plug into a com-

puter to charge. (It’s also another

way students can slip them into

class unnoticed by teachers.)

While cigarette smoking has de-

clined among middle- and high-

school students, e-cigarette use is

on the rise. Almost 21% of U.S.

high-school students and 5% of

middle-school students now vape,

according to the U.S. Food and

Drug Administration. E-cigarette

use increased 79% among high-

school students between 2017 and

2018 and 48% among middle-

school students, the FDA says.

“You’re pretty much an oddball

if you haven’t tried it,” said Elise

Parkman, a 16-year-old high-school

senior in Plainfield, Ill., who added

she tried vaping about five times

before deciding to stop. “It didn’t

seem like something worthwhile to

get addicted to. One of my close

friends does it all the time.”

Vaping has become a nation-

wide public-health concern, ac-

cording to the FDA. Even e-ciga-

rettes labeled as “nicotine-free”

contain toxic chemicals, it says.

Teens and young adults in eight

states who had reported having

vaped have been hospitalized in

recent weeks with severe breath-

ing problems or lung disease. But

awareness of the health risks of e-

cigarettes remains low among

young people, prompting the

FDA’s recent youth prevention

campaign.

Some administrators are taking

a hard-line approach, by treating

vaping like smoking. Schools in Ar-

izona, New York and Illinois have

installed vape detectors in the

bathrooms. The governor of New

Hampshire last month signed a

law prohibiting all vaping devices

from school grounds.

The Lefors Independent School

District in Lefors, Texas, was hav-

ing such a big problem with stu-

dents hiding vape pens in their

long-sleeve shirts and exhaling the

vapor back into their sleeves that

it now requires students to roll

their sleeves up to their elbows

before entering school. Adminis-

trators there got the idea from the

nearby Channing Independent

School District, which did the

same thing last spring.

Lefors, a district of 165 K-

students, also has taken other

steps to combat what it says is a

problem that has come to its at-

tention during the past year. Dis-

trict Superintendent Kelley Porter

estimates that 18% of the district’s

junior-high and high-school stu-

dents have been caught vaping at

school and says officials have con-

fiscated several vape pens. She

said she suspects many more

students vape but haven’t been

caught.

Students reported seeing foot-

ball players vaping during the

three-block walk between the

school and the field, so the district

now requires them to ride a bus to

practice. A sixth-grader who was

caught vaping twice at school—

one time he hid the pen in his

boot—had to do a research project

on the harms of vaping and pres-

ent it to all of the students just

before school let out for the sum-

mer. The district developed a new

searched him, but he had hidden

his vape pen in his waistband.

He said if his fellow students

had been smarter about vaping at

school, the new restrictions

wouldn’t have been put in place.

“They were being stupid about

how they did it and who they did

it around,” he said. “You could just

sit there and do it in front of the

teacher all day. It’s not as easy

now because the teachers are

watching for it.”

E-cigarette company Juul Labs

Inc., under pressure from regula-

tors and health advocates, has

taken steps to try to curb use

among minors, such as no longer

selling flavored pods at retail loca-

tions, removing its Facebook and

Instagram accounts and support-

ing state efforts to raise the pur-

chasing age for tobacco products,

including e-cigarettes, to 21. “We

do not want non-nicotine users to

buy Juul products, and are com-

mitted to preventing underage ac-

cess to our products,” a Juul Labs

spokesman said.

Ms. Porter said the Lefors dis-

trict’s new rules have cut down on

vaping on campus, but that she re-

alizes kids can still find ways to

sneak the pens into school: “We’re

pretty sure a kid was hiding one in

his underwear.”

sign-out procedure for using the

bathroom during class, to keep

better track of students. This fall

the district is adding a resource

officer three times a week to help

enforce the measures.

Brody Seely, a 16-year-old at Le-

fors High School, said he used to

vape in class. When he was ques-

tioned once by a teacher about a

fruity smell around him, he said he

was wearing cologne. Officials

Almost21% of high-

school and 5% of middle-

school students vape,

according to FDA data.

THEWALLSTREETJOURNAL. Wednesday,August21, 2019 |A

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