Music Spotlight: Mackenzie Carpenter

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Those who follow my column know I find a lot of my new artists from the Song Suffragettes or SiriusXM’s The Highway. On The Highway, They feature new artists who are often named as their “Highway Finds.” And while I’m not always crazy about every new musician they feature, when I heard Mackenzie Carpenter’s “Can’t Nobody” a few months back, it was love at first listen.

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Music Spotlight: Drew Parker

One of my favorite type of artists to interview are “Highway Finds” from SiriusXM The Highway. The Highway plays new mostly unheard artists on their weekend show, On the Horizon and if they get enough response from their subscribers, they move the song over to their weekly rotation.

Even though Drew Parker has had a #1 song as a songwriter, Jake Owen’s “Homemade”, he has never been on the radio as a performer until recently when Sirius radio introduced him to the world with his title track to his up and coming EP, While You’re Gone.

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Music Spotlight: Adam Doleac

Adam Doleac

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – -When I heard Whiskey’s Fine, on Sirius XM the Highway, I always stopped talking and turned it up. There was something about the lyrics to this bluesy, country song that got me. It was that good. Several months later at an event I attended during CMAFest, Sirius’s Storme Warren said to me out of the blue, you need to interview Adam Doleac.  Since I loved his song, I decided to pursue it. The thing I like most about interviewing up and coming artists is hearing their “where I came from” stories.  And Adam Doleac’s is definitely different than anyone else’s. Adam Doleac grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi where is he was strong, athletic boy.  By high school, he was really into basketball and golf and was even offered a golf scholarship from  Delta State University his Junior year. But in his Senior year, friends stated they needed one more player for their high school baseball team.  Having not played since Little League, he went to the batting cages and played in a game that night. By the end of his senior year, he was offered a baseball scholarship from Southern Mississippi University where the hometown boy led the…

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Music Spotlight: Kalie Shorr

Kalie Shorr

When I first heard Kalie Shorr, it was on Sirius XM’s The Highway in 2016.  Fight Like a Girl was a gutsy song by a cute girl who was trying to navigate the murky waters of country music in Nashville.  But when I sat down to speak to her, as is so often the case, I found out there was so much more to Kalie Shorr, a lot more. Kalie Shorr literally wrote her first song when she was just seven years old.  By thirteen, she was highly influenced by pop, rock and country and begin posting cover songs on the popular app, YouTube.  Since Kalie lived in Maine at the time, it was the only way she could get her music out there.  “I always wanted to be in Nashville and it gave me an opportunity to reach Nashville without actually being there.”  She received validation from viewers that this was something she should be doing.  The door opened in 2010 when Kalie was 16. Blogger Perez Hilton, noticed her on YouTube.  He paid for her first official recordings and her initial trip to Nashville.  “[Perez Hilton] introduced me to a lot of people that I needed to know and…

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