Grammy Winning Singer Songwriter, Comedian and Prolific Voice Actress Grey DeLisle Premieres the Video for '40 Something Runaway' Featuring Cherie Currie from The Runaways

Unlike pop music, country music never set out to be music for teenagers. Until Taylor Swift came along, it was primarily music made by adults, for adults and about adults. It's always held space for stories where women were able to be women with songs about the workplace, motherhood, marriage and divorce, adulthood and ageing. On the other hand, it's always found space for songs about running away from all that too.

If you're going to write a song about running away from it all, then who better to have sing it with you than one of seminal '70s girl group The Runaways.

"I had just landed at LAX after a short run of dates in the Midwest and I saw a woman around my age with no shoes on softly strumming her guitar," Grey DeLisle explains about how '40 Something Runaway' came about. "I wasn’t sure if she was coming or going but I started to imagine what her story might be and wrote this song. Later that night I was invited out to The Smokehouse in Burbank to discuss being part of a tribute to Billy Vera and found myself sitting RIGHT NEXT TO CHERIE CURRIE! A real live RUNAWAY! I was so thrilled when she agreed to sing this with me."

The first taste of forthcoming album The Grey Album, due out on April 4th via Hummin'bird Records, '40 Something Runaway' is a swaggering slice of classic honky tonk country that mixes the old school twang of Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson with the '70s glam of Suzi Quatro and the garage pop sensibilities of The Donnas.

As the most prolific voice actress in American animation history, having performed over 1500 cartoon voices since 1996, voicing over 2,058 roles in 533 titles, as well as dozens of bit parts in 45 titles in which she is credited with "additional voices," it's unsurprising that it's Grey DeLisle's voice on '40 Something Runaway'that really grabs you by the ears and swings you around the room. She's a belting country powerhouse with a punch in her voice that could take out Reba in a sing-to-the-death karaoke contest.

"She’s headed eastbound in a stranger’s car / Leaving LA with a mixtape and a scar," she sings, playfully reimagining the road song with a middle-aged woman as its unconventional protagonist. "This hitchhiking life ain’t going her way / She’s just a 40 something runaway."

Watch the video for '40 Something Runaway (ft. Cherie Currie)' exclusively on Holler below.

Anyone flicking back through Grey DeLisle's back catalogue will notice a sizeable hole in her recording history following her 2005 Sugarhill Records album Iron Flowers and it was 18 years before she returned to her original Hummin'bird Records home with She's An Angel in 2023.

Once the songwriting tap had been unblocked though, the songs just kept on flowing, faster than ever. In the isolation of 2020, the spark came back, and she began writing feverishly. The songs were coming so fast that she decided to record them with her longtime creative partner Murry Hammond of Old 97’s, with whom she has collaborated for over two decades on countless musical project as well as one child, their son, wunderkind visual artist Tex Hammond.

Using Hammond’s full complement of vintage recording equipment, the pair racked up the songs and played them for producer and longtime collaborator Marvin Etzioni, who took the helm and brough in a Who’s Who of Americana and roots rock to play on the album: strings by Tammy Rogers (Emmylou Harris, Neil Diamond, Patty Loveless), horns by David Ralicke (Lucinda Williams, Beck, Morrissey, John Cale), pedal steel by Greg Leisz (basically every major American artist who has ever used pedal steel).

The best part is, that they all separately contributed their parts in the coolest game of relay ever: after the original analog recordings were digitally mastered by renowned sound engineer Todd Burke, DeLisle would send the tracks off to Rogers, who laid down the heavenly strings, passed it on to Leisz for the pedal steel magic, then on to Ralicke for horns.

Along the way, DeLisle kept writing more and more songs, and meeting more and more artists with whom she just had to collaborate. With the same kind of serendipity as she benefited from when she sat down in a restaurant next to Cherrie Currie, she brought in Stephen McCarthy, founding member of the Long Ryders and later The Jayhawks to play on the record as she sewed together the collaborative threads to form the album. The Grey Album follows Driftless Girl from 2024 and those creative juices don't show any sign of drying up again anytime soon.

“I’m in a position where I don’t have to worry about if there’s a single or not,” she once told No Depression magazine, explaining how her voice over work for Scooby Doo, The Simpsons and all the other TV shows gave her the freedom to be more artistically cavalier. “Because of the cartoons, I’m able to hold onto my musical integrity. I think Daphne just saved country music."

Who's the damsel in distress now?

The Grey Album is released on April 4th via Hummin'bird Records