Country Star Lee Brice Highlights Entertainment Schedule

This article first appeared on Berlin Patch.

The rugged feel of steel guitar and fiddle, the images of growing up in a world of fields and farms, of heartbreak and hard work … You can’t miss the fact that Lee Brice is country all the way.

It’s in his voice – think of it as honey trickling through lines of melody etched in leather – and in the images it conjures, of “country girls and redneck boys” anticipating the night to come in the sunset glow of a Dairy Queen (“Sumter County”), of growing up “on the edge of a cornfield” (“Picture of Me”).

And that makes one detail in his dream seem especially surprising.

“Ten years from now,” he says, smiling at the idea, “I’d love to hear my songs on the radio – on the rap stations, not just country.”

This sounds absurd, but only until you remember what makes Lee’s debut album, Love Like Crazy, one of the strongest debuts in any genre over these past several years. That’s when you realize that if anybody can make this happen, it’s this young man from backcountry South Carolina. His voice, his sound, even his wide-open grin are as country as they come – but his view of life is much broader than that.

Begin with his tastes in music. Ask him to name the artists who influenced him, and he’ll answer with Garth Brooks and Hank Jr., sure, but also Coldplay, John Mayer, Brian McKnight, Tom Petty, 3 Doors Down, Whitney Houston, Edwin McCain, Ray Charles … a list you might assemble by grabbing randomly at bins as you wander through the Tower closing sale.

But Brice insists that something ties all these artists together: “They’re all great, which appeals to me because I want to make every song I do as great as I can too. I’m not comparing myself to them in any way, but I want the same thing that I love in what they do: They all make music that you can believe in.”

Brice takes a big step toward his dream with this album. This is music that takes you to special places, from the farms that he worked as a kid through the dirt roads where he and his buddies would spin their wheels and race for the smiles of their girlfriends. He has that knack for making memories come alive that he sensed in the songs of his heroes.