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Grammy nominated singer to play the Windjammer

By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT

PROVIDED

Singer Tift Merritt has earned a large cult following because of the strength of her voice.

If, by chance, you haven't heard of Tift Merritt, chances are someone that you know has.

For those who aren't familiar with Merritt, her story isn't all that unfamiliar.

At a young age the singer/songwriter moved with her family from Houston to North Carolina. She was eventually inspired to pursue a music career by the influential scene in and around the Chapel Hill and Raleigh area.

"It was a really genuinely amazing scene of musicians," she was quoted as saying in a recent issue of American Songwriter. "They're breathing life into it their own way."

Her dad taught her to play guitar and by the time she was in early teens she discovered the '70s era songwriting of Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, adding, "I was sometimes stuck in the past in my record collection."

Having later played the club circuit, Merritt released her first EP, a traditional country compilation of covers and two originals. That was in 1999.

Nine years later her catalog consists of four studio albums as well as two highly regarded live albums. The live recordings include "Home is Loud," recorded in her adoptive home state of North Carolina, and "Live from Austin Texas," which recorded in 2006 during appearance on the acclaimed show, "Austin City Limits."

Merritt's 2004 release, "Tambourine," was a breakthrough of sorts for the Texas native when it was nominated for a Grammy ("Best Country Album") and three Americana Awards ("Album of the Year," "Artist of the Year," "Song of the Year").

Throughout her heralded career, the 33-year-old has not only earned rave reviews from critics, but she's also impressed her peers and shared the stage with the likes of Elvis Costello, James Blount and, of course, her mentor and hero, Emmylou Harris.

"Emmylou was such a role model because she was a pioneer," Merritt was quoted as saying. "She championed a sort of storytelling and her singing is so clear and true. She blazed her own trail.

"She's also just an amazing person.

"I mean, I would never presume to say that I know her," she continued, "but she has a warmth and kindness. It's always an amazing thing when you can look up to an artist's work and look up to him (or) her as a human being."

Finally, four years after "Tambourine" was released, Merritt has recently released her follow up studio album — the aptly titled "Another Country" — of all new material.

She traveled to Paris, France, to write songs and the "open" way of living in Europe afforded her a freedom she hadn't experienced before in a creative way. Merritt noted, in the American Songwriter article, that the French are "detail-oriented" to the extent that the local butcher can tell you where your pieces of meat are from.

She was also inspired by the sights of women sewing dresses together for hours on end right in the storefront window.

"I was completely outside of my life and the things that I knew," Merritt said. "It's just really intimate and detail-oriented culture."

Like Joni Mitchell years before her, Merritt then made her way to California to record the album during the summer of last year. On Friday, in the midst of her exhaustive tour schedule, she makes her way to the Isle of Palms with her band — Jay Brown, Zeke Hutchins, Danny Eisenberg and Scott McCall — for a show at The Windjammer.

Keith Ryan Cartwright is a Colorado-based freelance entertainment journalist.