Country Showcase Preview: Brittany Ray

Junior music business major Brittany Ray will hit the stage Saturday night at the 2017 Country Showcase, making this her first appearance as a solo artist at a Belmont event.

Ray’s first piano lessons were in kindergarten, and, soon after, she picked up a guitar. But her interest in music came at an even earlier age with singing.

“I don’t know when I first started singing,” Ray said. “I imagine it was somewhere around the time I started talking.”

Inspired by strong female vocalists like Miranda Lambert, the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain, Ray likes to make her own songs matter.

“I try to make everything I sing and write about come from a very real place,” she said. “The most important thing to me is to really believe in what I am singing.”

Ray has been building up her brand since early high school and has been performing throughout her three years at Belmont.

Her dedication to craft has certainly paid off and resulted in nearly 7,000 followers on social media.

Ray has performed in Women’s Choir and Oratorio, but despite her extensive social media following and performance history, she has never performed in an setting quite like Belmont’s Curb Event Center.

She hopes the showcase will open her up to the experience that will come with performing in an arena, which she says, she will hopefully be doing more of in the future.

Catch Ray and all the other performers at the Country Showcase. The show starts at 7 p.m.

This article was written by Reed Ferguson. Photo courtesy of Hannah Drake Photography.