Charlie Marie will perform SoundCheck series concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, at the Camden Opera House, at 29 Elm St. in Camden.
Marie fell in love with country music at 10 years old, after a music teacher compared her voice to the timeless croon of Patsy Cline. She began riding horses at the same time, and the two disciplines went hand-in-hand. While heading to a local horse farm every week, she would listen to country songs in the car, absorbing the sounds of 1990s hit-makers like Alan Jackson one minute and mid-century icons like Loretta Lynn the next.
By 16, she was fronting her own country band, playing songs like “Crazy” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” at fairs and festivals across New England. Her voice — brazen one minute, hushed the next — was commanding, but it was her biographical songwriting — a skill she truly developed after relocating to Nashville for college — that set her apart. Marie wrote songs about her own experience, portraying herself not as some guitar-strumming southern belle, but as a proud outsider who had fallen in love with country while living far from the genre’s Bible Belt headquarters. While living in Tennessee, she turned that unique approach into songs that saluted her influences while still exploring new territory.
“Ramble On,” Charlie Marie’s full-length debut, shines a neon light on her updated brand of classic country. It’s an album filled with everything that first endeared her to the genre itself, from honky tonk piano and twangy Telecaster guitar to rich storytelling, swooning pedal steel, and nuanced nods to her heroes. Recorded in Nashville with an all-star band whose members have performed with Margo Price, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and other torchbearers of classic cool, Ramble On cements Charlie’s status as one of country music’s newest old souls.
Pick-your-own comfortably spaced reserved seats ($10, advance purchase encouraged) plus free Facebook Livestream. Sponsored by Camden Maine Stay Inn and 40 Paper. Masks are required in the building.
For more information, visit camdenoperahouse.com.
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