Of the earth: Rising star Young plows on

By Zach Hanner
Star-News Correspondent


Wanna go?
Who: Adrienne Young and Little Sadie
When: 9 p.m. Wednesday
Where: The Soapbox, 255 N. Front St.
Tickets: $8 in advance, $10 at the door
Details: 251-8500

Opening the case for Adrienne Young and Little Sadie's disc Plow to the End of the Row, a puff of country dust escapes and a small packet of seeds falls in your lap. The cover resembles an old Farmer's Almanac and the music within quietly bears you away to a warm, earthy barn in the time before radio.
Ms. Young herself lives in Nashville, a very different place from her home in Clearwater, Fla. where she grew up.
"I come from a musical family, but I think everyone comes from a musical family," Ms. Young said during a phone interview. "You'd be hard pressed to look back a couple of generations and not find somebody, an aunt an uncle or a grandparent, that didn't pick. What else were you going to do when you came in from the fields? Before there was television, there was music. I was really lucky that my family kept their music alive."
On Plow, Ms. Young flips back and forth between old-time numbers like Leather Britches and pop strummers like Home Remedy, an inimitably catchy single that was voted best single of 2004 by Nashville Scene Magazine.
"Home Remedy is a really special song," said Nashville music journalist Craig Havighurst during a phone interview. "It's got an infectious, melodic quality with that '60s jangly guitar. But when that band plays an old-time fiddle tune and she's on banjo, it's the real deal. They don't fake their way through the old-time music. They're very dedicated students. The style and the timing and the intensity and dynamics of it, they really get it."
In addition to the kudos that Home Remedy received, the band has earned some impressive nominations as well, receiving a nod for the Americana Music Association's Emerging Artist of the Year and a nomination for The Nashville Scene's Best Bluegrass/Old-Time artist.
"We've had an incredible year," Ms. Young said. "I didn't know the guys I'm playing with now until we started to put the show on the road. The album had been done for a year and I was calling people up saying, 'Hey, I hear you play a great fiddle. Want to make this show? We're leaving tomorrow.' It really happened quickly. Once we got a national distribution deal, we went back in to the studio and re-recorded some material so everyone felt more of a part of the whole thing."
Mr. Havighurst, a contributor to publications such as No Depression and Nashville's Tennessean newspaper, heard both versions of the record and felt the changes improved it greatly. "Just changing the sequence of songs altered the way you took the album in," Mr. Havighurst said. "Adrienne's a really promising talent with one foot in the world of bluegrass music and one foot in the Americana genre's more pop side."
He also admires the singer/ songwriter for her sincerity.
"One thing I notice about Adrienne is that she lets her spirituality gush through," Mr. Havighurst said. "She doesn't make any apologies for being kind of an 'earth mother' type. In some artists that could be kind of tedious, but with her there's such genuine enthusiasm and that always works in music. It translates through her songs."
Ms. Young is on the cusp of something great and looks forward to each challenge ahead. "I'm wanting to go back a little further with regard to the traditional fare on the new record," Ms. Young said. "I'm working with some Irish musicians from Boston that play Celtic music as well as bluegrass. I want to get more into the old time music. I've learned so much since we recorded the last record and I want to try to convey that."
With seeds set and growing, music fans have an ample harvest to look forward to.