“AIN’T we all the stars playing the leading part in our own soap opera?” Brandy Clark belts out at the start of ‘Big Day in a Small Town’ that marks the premise of all 10 songs that follow on the new album of the same name.
For Clark, the dream she harbored in her small hometown of Morton, Washington, was to be a country singer.
Once she moved to Nashville, she had successful hits as a songwriter but being an artist in her own right was a dream she had stopped dreaming until three years ago when her first album, the stunning ‘12 Stories’, debuted.
At the time, it was a passion project more than anything but one that went on to become a Grammy-nominated release that topped a myriad of ‘Best Albums of 2013’ lists, earn her opening slots on tours with Eric Church, Jennifer Nettles, and Alan Jackson and land her performances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
“When I made 12 Stories, I think my dreams were a lot more realistic, in that I didn’t expect a lot to happen and then it did,” she reflects. “This time, my dreams are very much what they were when I was going to Vince Gill and Patty Loveless concerts and decided I was going to move to Nashville. Right now, my dreams are as big as when I was naïve enough to really dream them.”
Produced by Jay Joyce, ‘Big Day in a Small Town’ tells the stories of the football star, the father, the homecoming queen, and the hairdresser because those are the stories and people that Clark grew up knowing. ”All these songs, there’s some little truth in them, somewhere, that resonates with me or that is about me,” she confesses.
Explaining the genesis of ‘Soap Opera’, she offers: “When I would get worried about what people thought of me or what was going on with me, my mom would always say, ‘You know, we’re all the star of our daytime drama’.
“We’re just bit players in someone else’s. Nobody cares that much about what’s going on with you. They’ll only care until there’s something juicier going on.”
Brandy Clark is live at The Sugar Club on Thursday, November 2. Tickets, €20, including booking are on sale from Ticketmaster.
