Live Photo Credit: Alexa Campbell
NASHVILLE, TN (December 3, 2021) – Newly minted CMA Awards Female Vocalist of the Year CARLY PEARCEwas once just a girl from Taylor Mill, Kentucky, with a dream. Now, the only woman nominated for Album of the Year with 29, she lands a coveted spot on two annual “Best Of” lists. The New York Times Pop Music Critic Jon Caramanica asserts, “A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album” and follows the outlet’s earlier “stoic and affecting” assessment of her duet with Ashely McBryde “Never Wanted To Be That Girl.” NPR Music Pop Critic Ann Powers opines, “One of country music’s great themes, and the root of its meaningful melancholy, is the fact that life goes on even after devastating loss. After you fall to pieces, albums like Carly Pearce’s graceful, funny and impeccably honest divorce album 29: Written in Stone attests, you have to pick yourself up. Few expressions of heartache are this clear-headed, this self-incriminating in the name of healing.”
Unabashedly vocal about her love and reverence for Country music, Carly has created a space for the genre she holds dear. Holler called 29 “a modern country music masterpiece” while Forbes cited her affinity for “writing in a deeper way.” Entertainment trade Variety raved, “If you’ve got a hankering for some sad-ass country music, happy days are here again,” while online truthteller Saving Country Music proclaimed, “a country traditionalist, she’s mashing the accelerator, and doing so unapologetically.”
Tonight, a run of sold-out headline shows chronicling the expanded 29: WRITTEN IN STONE (Big Machine Records) comes to a close at The Castle Theatre in Bloomington, Illinois. Carly brought her heartaches and big breaks to capacity audiences in Chicago; New York City; Washington, DC; Nashville and more throughout THE 29 TOUR.
“I’ve spent the last couple summers out on big tours, where you play for so many people who may not be there to see just you so I often wonder, ‘Did it really connect?’ In cities that can seem more metropolitan than country, to hear those voices coming back to me and faces with their own pain, that’s when you realize these songs matter. It’s no longer just me and my hurt heart or reflection, but it’s a hollow place we all walk through.”
Fans have flashed signs that read “Female Vocalist of the Year/ What’s Next Girl?” and swayed to the songs from one woman’s life, howling at the key lines and throwing their fists in the air at others. Even the aching album track “What He Didn’t Do” was met many nights with tender singalongs, intimately connecting through each person’s own sad fade-to-over memories. “Getting out to do my own tour has been the greatest gift,” she continues. “Any time I can take the kind of Country music I was raised on and made at Dollywood to people who might not hear it, I’m living my destiny. But when those songs seem to matter? That’s when I’m living my dream.”
“Whether singing at the final game of the World Series or being inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, there have been so many honors and unthinkable things this last season of my life,” Carly says. “For all of the dreamers out there, know it takes patience, love and passion. So don’t give up and keep believing because some pretty crazy things can happen.”
She is also slated to play on Kenny Chesney’s HERE AND NOW 2022 Stadium Tour. Catch tour dates and more at carlypearce.com.
