Heather Myles

Heather Myles fuses the Bakersfield honky tonk tradition with sharp contemporary wit and attitude, building a reputation as one of the strongest traditional country vocalists to appear in the 1990s while demonstrating songwriting equal in power to her voice. Raised on a ranch in Riverside, California, by parents Jim and Vera Myles, she developed an early love for horses and the classic California country sounds favored at home. As a youngster she experimented with her father’s ukulele before moving on to guitar, and during the 1980s she began performing with the Lonesome Myle Band. Her standing grew steadily inside the West Coast roots community, resulting in the 1992 release of her first solo album, Just Like Old Times, on the blues-and-country-focused Hightone label. The follow-up, Untamed, appeared in 1995, followed a year later by the live set Sweet Little Dangerous: Live at the Bottom Line on the British Demon imprint. Myles joined Rounder Records in 1998; her debut for the label, Highways and Honky Tonks, featured a guest turn by one of her heroes, Merle Haggard, on the song “No One Is Gonna Love You Better.” Another Bakersfield native, Dwight Yoakam, contributed vocals to her fifth album, Sweet Talk & Good Lies, issued in 2002. The 2005 collection Rum and Rodeo gathered her Hightone recordings and added one previously unreleased track.