PLEASE NOTE: THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED BECAUSE OF A WINTER STORM. Ticket refunds are available at point of purchase.
WANT TO GO?
"Mountain Stage"
With Dashboard Confessional, The Watson Twins, Juliana Hatfield, Clare and The Reasons and Brooke Waggoner
WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Culture Center Theater
TICKETS: Advance tickets $12.50, At the door $20
INFO: www.mountainstage.org or 1-800-594-TIXX
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Call her a Nashville rebel, and
Brooke Waggoner giggles. The 24 year-old gets that she's not what anybody expects to come out of the heart of country music. Nashville is known for banjos, fiddles and guitars, not piano-heavy symphonic pop that occasionally sounds like the soundtrack to a major motion picture.
The singer/songwriter who performs Sunday on "Mountain Stage" could have gone the route of honky-tonks, hard luck and Hank Williams. She grew up in country music territory -- southern Louisiana -- but instead of taking a rural path, Waggoner found classical music. She spent 17 years formally studying classical piano and even graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in Music Composition and Orchestration.
"Nashville was kind of random," she said. "When I graduated from LSU, I wanted to go to a music city. Nashville was the closest and the most affordable I could find. So I just hopped up here, thinking I'd figure out what I wanted to do in a year or two."
PLEASE NOTE: THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED BECAUSE OF A WINTER STORM. Ticket refunds are available at point of purchase.
WANT TO GO?
"Mountain Stage"
With Dashboard Confessional, The Watson Twins, Juliana Hatfield, Clare and The Reasons and Brooke Waggoner
WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Culture Center Theater
TICKETS: Advance tickets $12.50, At the door $20
INFO: www.mountainstage.org or 1-800-594-TIXX
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Call her a Nashville rebel, and
Brooke Waggoner giggles. The 24 year-old gets that she's not what anybody expects to come out of the heart of country music. Nashville is known for banjos, fiddles and guitars, not piano-heavy symphonic pop that occasionally sounds like the soundtrack to a major motion picture.
The singer/songwriter who performs Sunday on "Mountain Stage" could have gone the route of honky-tonks, hard luck and Hank Williams. She grew up in country music territory -- southern Louisiana -- but instead of taking a rural path, Waggoner found classical music. She spent 17 years formally studying classical piano and even graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in Music Composition and Orchestration.
"Nashville was kind of random," she said. "When I graduated from LSU, I wanted to go to a music city. Nashville was the closest and the most affordable I could find. So I just hopped up here, thinking I'd figure out what I wanted to do in a year or two."
After four years, she still doesn't know for sure. Her third release, "Go Easy Little Doves," is an expansion of the piano-driven pop/folk she began with the 2007 EP "Fresh Pair of Eyes." Only now, she's gone further from folk and more toward the classical sounds she was raised to play.
"Originally, when I got to Nashville," Waggoner said, "I was very interested in pop music. There's a lot of it here. It's just a little underground."
"Go Easy Little Doves" isn't a pop album, she says. It's more of a classic album with lush arrangements, the kind of music that takes a pretty full stage of musicians to create.
"I've only recreated the songs live two times because of the amount of instrumentation it takes to do it."
She loves performing the album, though she says its feels more like a recital than a concert and not all of her fans are thrilled with it. "Go Easy Little Doves" is different than what she's done in the past.
"My previous two records showcase Nashville a little bit more," she said. "They make more of a mass appeal. This album was just for me. It was the album I wanted to make that I could look back on with no regrets."
That's good enough for her.
Another album will eventually follow and while she hasn't got it mapped out yet, Waggoner will be taking her music in another direction.
"I think it will be completely a rebel in comparison to this album," she said. "I want to write lots of the catchiest two-minute pop songs I can create."
She laughed.
"Or maybe not."
Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5195.
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