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Stories   >   Tift Merritt - You don't need a lawnmower or a truck to write country music / theguardian

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Tift Merritt - You don't need a lawnmower or a truck to write country music / theguardian

Posted: August 26, 2015

For some it takes a No 1 hit, for others winning an award. But for Tift Merritt, recognition of her musical talents came when she learned that one of her songs, Bramble Rose, is to be covered by the Eagles drummer, Don Henley, with Mick Jagger on vocals. "It's pretty unbelievable," says Merritt, a charming North Carolinian who is touring Australia for two weeks with the Nashville veteran Mary Chapin Carpenter. And while she's yet to meet the Rolling Stone, she says she's "working on getting his phone number".

Despite a Grammy nomination for her 2004 album Tambourine, Merritt has largely flown under the radar. She's an artist who has always been willing to do something different, each album taking a path quite different to the last. Sometimes she has been in jaunty, poppy territory – such as with the striking Memphis soul sound of Tambourine – while in 2013 she teamed up with the classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein to record the album Night.

But Merritt, who lives in New York these days, admits "you can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl", and that she's back to ploughing a more earthy furrow. "I've taken time off for the first time in six to eight months and I've got a bunch of new material I haven't played before," she says from California, preparing to depart for Australian shores. "I'm really excited to play these beautiful rooms in Australia. I've been messing around with open tune guitars and electric guitars … I'll be on my lonesome on stage but I've travelled with Mary Chapin before and I think the rooms will be really conducive to direct solo performance."  READ THE FULL guardian ARTICLE