Image Credit: Michael ElinsLaura Bell Bundy made her name starring on Guiding Light and in Broadway musicals like Legally Blonde, Wicked, and Hairspray, but the 29 year old Kentucky-born songwriter always had her eye on a country music career. So let’s take a moment to congratulate this smart, no-nonsense chick on having it all: Her split-personality debut, Achin’ and Shakin’, drops tomorrow (it’s one-half achin’ songs, one-half shakin’ songs), and she’ll perform its campy, catchy first single “Giddy On Up” on this Sunday’s Academy of Country Music Awards telecast. There will unquestionably be quite the production number.

Ms. Bundy hit Los Angeles this month for a couple warm-up gigs at local gay clubs — gotta show the fanbase some love — and we sat down for a chat about her unconventional album concept, attraction to “dirty, unshaven” men, and something called “Cooter County.”

Entertainment Weekly: You flirted with a lot of labels before settling on Mercury Nashville.
Laura Bell Bundy: Yeah. It’s like dating. I didn’t put out until I hooked up with Mercury. I was a total c—tease for a while.

Were you shopping your self-released album, Longing for a Place Already Gone, as a demo?
I guess so. That was kind of the proof that I was a singer-songwriter. My showcase was Legally Blonde.

I don’t know how many legit musical theater people sound like they could have mainstream recording careers.
That’s what people were nervous about at first at the label. We had guys, like, “This is a Broadway singer! What makes you think she can do a record?” But I already put out a country record that they could listen to and go, “It sounds like a country record.”

Then why did you need the Broadway show as a showcase?
It’s different when you hear someone sing out of a CD player, and then you see what they’re capable of doing live. They go see a Broadway show, and they go, “Okay, actually, she can sing.” And Legally Blonde was not, like, Oklahoma. It was musical theater pop. READ FULL STORY »