Liz Rose Brings Texas to Tennessee

Liz Rose (L) pictured with Kacey Musgraves (R): Photo via Instagram

Liz Rose has been known to the world as a hit songwriter for years from her collaboration with Taylor Swift to this year’s hit single “Girl Crush,” which she co-wrote with Hillary Lindsey and Lori McKenna. But she has another talent that until recently was only known by friends and colleagues.

“I love to find different things that are hard to find gorgeous textiles and stuff out of the Southwest,” Rose tells Sounds Like Nashville. “I always said there isn’t a store like that and there are so many Texans here. There are so many great Southern stores but I was coming back from Texas with these really colorful pieces of furniture and blankets and people would come to my house and they’d say, ‘I really like that!’ And I’d say, ‘You want it?’ I was giving stuff away.”

That’s when the light bulb sparked and Rose decided to open her own boutique, along with her daughter Hailey, in October 2014. Castilleja (cos-tee-yay-ha!) brings Texas to Nashville’s Edgehill Village, a block off Music Row. The name has personal roots for the Texas native.

“My daughter found it,” Rose explains. “We were looking for something with the Texas feel and she looked up Indian Paintbrushes, because that’s my favorite wildflower. She looked it up and found that the guy who gave the Indian Paintbrush its name was Castilleja.”

Rose is as devoted to the boutique, as she is to her songwriting. “I’m very hands-on. Hailey and I do all the buying, along with Taylor Brashears,” Rose explains. “The three of us doing all the buying trips. I’m there in the mornings and I go by in the afternoons. Yesterday, I worked from 2-6 and closed. You never know.”

The shop, which is two blocks from Rose’s writers room, brings in a wide variety of people. “I like to cater to my songwriter friends and publisher friends,” she says. “They run in at lunch and get a card or a gift. I love going over there before or after I write and seeing my friends.”

She’s also happy to see fans of songwriting walk in the door.

“I get a lot of fans in there,” she reveals. “I get a lot of Taylor fans. They’ll come in there with their moms or they’ll be a college student. I can usually tell. Saturdays, I get a lot. I try to be in there because it’s fun. They’ll be looking around, then they’ll look at me and say, ‘You’re Liz aren’t you? I want to tell you I’m such a fan. I’m going to be a songwriter. Can I take a picture?’ I love that.”

Learn more about Castilleja here.