Metro Spirit Article

Metro Spirit Article:

On the road
Natalie Stovall may not be a household name, but that may all change soon enough for this all-American girl

BY ALICE WYNN

AUGUSTA, GA – One wouldn’t think that winning the title of Silliest Kid in America would lead to bigger and better things. But for Natalie Stovall, that’s exactly what happened. Of course, she was no stranger to the stage.

“I started playing the violin when I was four and, when I was about 10, I auditioned for the Opryland Kids Club, which was a show out at the Opryland theme park, and I played my fiddle for them and they were like, ‘That’s great honey, but you have to sing in this show,’ and I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for them and I got the job,” she said from the road en route to Pennsylvania.

Winning the Silliest Kid title, which she won by doing a “crazy ventriloquist baby crying thing that I had learned backstage at the Opryland show,” led to an appearance on Oprah, followed by other talk shows and radio spots, which prepared her for the road ahead.

“It was a really incredible experience to get as a child performer and only helped develop me and get me ready for doing it all the time now.”



During her second year at the Berklee College of Music, Stovall formed a band that would move to Nashville during the summer, staying at her parents’ house while touring around Tennessee. After graduation, Stovall and her drummer James, who last year became her husband, moved to Nashville and found some musicians to tour with. They have been at it ever since, and have spent the better part of the past two years on the road.

“It’s part of making it happen for myself as an independent artist,” she explained. “I don’t have any record label or anybody writing the checks for me, so I gotta go out and do it myself. It can be very hard and it can be very stressful, but it’s been pretty amazing to watch. I write a blog every day and the traffic keeps coming from doing it and really being on the road, and that’s what’s rewarding about it.”

A country girl at heart, Stovall cites Keith Urban, Shania Twain and Garth Brooks as some of her favorites.

“I always really love to watch the people that put on really amazing live shows,” she said.

“That’s kind of where I get going is watching people that really put a lot of time and energy into their live material. That’s where I draw a lot of inspiration from.”

Her shows, although rooted in country, mix things up a bit, with covers such as Prince’s “Purple Rain” and Guns n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” And because she plays the fiddle, Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is a given. In fact, she included the song on her upcoming EP, “Standing My Ground.”

“We put it on the record to give everybody a little something from our live show,” she said.

For her first record, “Late Night Conversations” released in 2006, she wrote all of the material. But the new record enlisted the help of co-writers, including Taylor Swift producer Nathan Chapman.

“It was a totally different venture for me, but the more that I started co-writing, the more I really, really liked that environment for writing because it allowed me to kind of take these ideas I always had and bounce them off someone else,” she said. “It was just fun because it gives a different perspective for the new record and I’m just really excited to release it.”

Natalie Stovall
The Country Club
Saturday, October 3
Doors, 7 p.m.; music, 9:30 p.m.
$5, guys; $3, girls
myspace.com/nataliestovall
augustacountry.com