Caroline Jones Etches a Roadmap to Personal Freedom on ‘No Tellin”: ‘I Think There’s a Big Cultural Shift Around This Conversation’

“The truth,” according to the New Testament, “will set you free.”

As it turns out, Jesus wasn’t just a spiritual leader; he was also a good psychologist. Withholding the truth can prevent people from fully developing emotionally, particularly because it leads to guilt, anxiety and the fear of being found out.

In that context, Zac Brown Band member Caroline Jones’ first single for Nashville Harbor, “No Tellin’,” highlights the personal damage that hiding secrets can inflict, and the catharsis that comes once the truth is revealed. Not that the process of putting it out there is easy. Current or recent legal cases involving Sean “Diddy” Combs, Stormy Daniels and Harvey Weinstein have demonstrated how difficult it is for victims to come forward with the most egregious abuse.

“I do think that there’s a big cultural shift around this conversation, and people are starting to understand that it’s a cultural, social problem,” Jones says. “It’s existed forever, really, but now, I think, there’s more consciousness around it, and more compassion and more understanding around it.”

Jones wasn’t making a social statement when she wrote “No Tellin’” in November. She was actually working through her own experience with emotional abuse from a relationship around the time she turned 20.

“It was something that I hadn’t really ever written about and had only recently processed in therapy and in my life with the people who are close to me,” she says. “I feel like I had been unconsciously, or subconsciously, writing it for a long time. Most of the song came out really fast, and it was just a matter of organizing it and structuring it.”

The initial thread of “No Tellin’” had been around for years. Jones created an ascendant acoustic riff with a bluegrass flavor and would play it instinctively while noodling on her guitar. She’d already written another song with that riff, but she recycled it while prepping at her Nashville home for a co-write. She was ready to explore the emotional abuse from her past, and it emerged in a classic country twist in “No Tellin’” – “There ain’t no tellin’,” she sings in the first line of the chorus, recognizing the attitude she’d been taught about secrets; “But I’m still tellin’ on you,” she concludes at the end of that stanza. She pulled together a bundle of thoughts about holding negative stuff inside, made a rough recording and brought it the next day – Nov. 18 – to the appointment at SMACKSongs on Music Row, along with her notes, hand-written in a spiral notebook.

“She’s like, ‘I have this idea that I’ve been working on. It’s just a little something. I don’t know what it is yet,’” co-writer Lauren McLamb recalls. “And she just proceeds to play us half the song,”
But Jones was missing some lines, and a second verse, and she didn’t know how to sequence what she had.

“She had lyrical paragraphs just kind of pasted, and she was like, ‘I don’t know where each line goes,’” says co-writer Clara Park. “We read through them all and talked through the idea, and then we pieced it all together.”

The three bonded over the topic, sharing stories about abusive relationships from their past – either their own entanglements, or their friends’. The conversation helped both the song and their souls.

“She had a line about ‘hiding skeletons,’” Park says, “and I think I added the ‘just ain’t in my bones’ line. And I remember thinking that hiding skeletons actually is in my bones. I feel like being a sugar-coater – you know, a people-pleaser from Charleston – I don’t really speak up too much. I got to wear this different hat that day, and it reminded me that I should live more like this song.”

One of the keys came in organizing the story. With verse one, the singer admits she’s been hiding secrets. In the chorus, she announces the truth is coming out, and in verse two, she begins to show how burdensome it was to stay silent. In perhaps their most significant decision, the three women built a bridge, acknowledging the risk that came with revealing the past, but noting that exposing that information might benefit the next potential victim: “The truth will set her free.”

“This isn’t a takedown song,” McLamb says. “It’s an empowering song, and it’s all about morality. It’s not about a vindictive situation on [the singer’s] part, and I think that was something that was important to get in there lyrically. We were clarifying why we were telling this truth.”

To heighten the drama, they fashioned that bridge over an a cappella breakdown section with claps and bass drum. “I wanted it to sound like the old prison songs,” Jones says.

Her team got excited about it once she began sharing the demo, a mostly acoustic effort that includes a haunting “woo hoo” counter-melody; that element helps “No Tellin’” walk a difficult emotional line.
“It’s a heavy subject, but it turns out to be a celebration in the end,” says Jones’ manager, producer Ric Wake (Mariah Carey, Taylor Dayne).

Big Machine Label Group senior vp of A&R/staff producer Julian Raymond (Glen Campbell, Justin Moore) co-produced “No Tellin’” with Jones and Wake, booking a session at Blackbird Studios before the year ended. Jones sat in on guitar and vocal with the studio band, and they built a track that used a series of scene changes to enhance the storyline’s evolution. It started with a swampy feel, took on a driving beat in verse 2, then broke into a New Orleans funk after the breakdown in the bridge, finally relaxing into a ghostly finale. Keyboardist Tim Lauer wrote a string arrangement that included a heat-inducing, descending glissando. Lauer contrasted that with an ascending glissando on his Wurlitzer in the middle of the bridge.

“We kind of lifted that [string sound] a little bit off my loving history of Bobbie Gentry,” Raymond says. “It’s got a little bit of bluegrass vibe in there. It’s a roarin’ track, and it’s just a lot of fun.”

Jones sang all the vocal parts herself, including the lead and a load of harmonies, extra melodies and ad libs. She manages to sound like someone else – even like a gospel singer – on some of those extra parts.
“She’s a chameleon,” Raymond says. “She can change her voice easily when she needs to.”

“No Tellin’” immediately became the frontrunner for Jones’ first Nashville Harbor single, released to radio via PlayMPE on May 13.

“When [BMLG president/CEO] Scott Borchetta and the guys over at the label all heard it, they said, ‘This is the one,’ and we all agreed,” Wake notes. “We had a couple other ones that were really close, though. I’m happy to say we definitely have some follow ups.”

While Jones worked out some of her internal issues around holding back the truth with “No Tellin’,” she hopes it provides healing – or a warning – for others who hear it and take its message to heart.

“In the end, it’s not about one person, whether it’s the villain or the victim,” she says. “It’s about the fact that when you tell the truth, then it takes the power out of shame and isolation, and it helps other people who are going through the same thing. Or helps people, hopefully, not have to go through it at all.”