It’s not hard to imagine a child telling everyone who crosses her path that she’s got plans to be a country singer, and from a young age, Kelsey Waldon knew that’s what she wanted. The Ballard County youth switched from piano lessons to guitar at age 12, and her mom—who sold catfish to help pay the bills—soon bought a 10-track recorder to help her get original ideas to tape.

“At the time, I was divorced. And probably, we didn’t have the money. But she loved it,” Waldon’s mom, Kelly Harris, recently told NPR. “And she would record it in our room. So she learned all about that.”

IF YOU GO

John Prine w/Kelsey Waldon

Sat. Dec. 7, 8 p.m. $77-$110.75.

Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 N. McMullen Booth Rd., Clearwater.

Rutheckerdhall.com.

Waldon—who grew up in Monkey’s Eyebrow, a rural Kentucky town 160 miles northwest of Nashville— admittedly spent a huge majority of her life studying her favorite records, songs and her most-favorite singers. She cut her teeth in church and at county fairs before moving to Nashville at the age of 19. The new situation overwhelmed Waldon, so she moved back home, went to community college, then eventually made it to Belmont University where she earned a bachelor’s in songwriting and became the first person in her family to earn a diploma.

On Waldon’s 2016 LP, I’ve Got A Way, it’s easy to hear the 34-year-old’s influences. There are the bounding tempos of Waylon Jennings’ best work. The warmth of Loretta Lynn’s best records is there, and so is George Jones’ vocal inflection. She spent three years working as a bartender at the Nashville Palace, but the so-called 10-year town was listening to the unapologetically rural—and simultaneously progressive—country music Waldon was making, and it didn’t take long for music fans to take notice. In 2017, Waldon played an early set at Tampa’s Gasparilla Music Festival—the same festival that hosted Margo Price years before Jack White signed her to Third Man Records. And while the Bay area was getting an earful of one of country’s brightest young stars, a part-time Gulfport resident, John Prine, was out in the world and listening to Waldon, too. Over the summer, Prine, whom Waldon has described as one of her heroes, signed her to his own label.

“I am bursting with pride to have Kelsey Waldon recording for Oh Boy Records. Her music continues an important arc of traditional folk and country music,” Prine said in a release announcing the label’s first new signing in 15 years. “I love Kelsey’s singing. Her voice is one of the more authentic country voices I’ve heard in a long time.”

In October, Oh Boy released Waldon’s third full-length, White Noise/White Lines. The 11-track collection is colored with the deep greens of the western Kentucky backwoods. Thanks in part to vocal interludes—including a Chickasaw Tribe chant Waldon recorded on her cell phone at her father’s hunting camp, and a voicemail of Waldon’s father who’d called to tell her he’d heard her on the radio— White Lines feels like an intimate look at some of the most vulnerable parts of Waldon’s life. At times, the narratives she puts to tape make the record feel like a release on the historical Smithsonian Folkways imprint. All the old country influence from Waldon’s past work can be heard on the new album, but so can her love of rhythm (the Meters-inspired “Sunday’s Children”) and hip-hop (in a 2017 interview with CL Tampa Bay, Waldon named Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar as one of her influences).

Like Prine, Waldon and her band spent a lot of their early days playing VFW halls as part of bills that included both bluegrass and metal bands. It’s not hard to visualize a VFW hall turning its attention to the stage when the opening bars of White Lines opener “Anyhow” escape the PA, and Waldon told CL that she’d like to make a hardcore bluegrass record someday. But for now, Waldon is navigating a period that’s seen her name appear in more headlines than ever before. She acknowledged the fact that some fans have followed her journey for a while, but added that there’s still a lot of work to do.

Waldon closes White Lines with a stirring cover of “My Epitaph,” which was famously-delivered by a trailblazing Appalachian woman named Ola Belle Reed. The song simultaneously addresses a person’s last cold, lifeless day and the painfully poetic, and obvious, truth that waking up tomorrow is never a give-in. At one point in her career, during a long and dangerous drive through the 2017 Montana wildfires, the song gave Waldon—who was questioning whether or not the music thing was going to work— peace and the resolve to stick it out. To a new fan, it might seem like Waldon stumbled upon all this attention, but the success has been a long time coming.

“There’s been a lot of work leading up to this,” Waldon told CL. “Some people who listen to country music already knew about me, but I do feel like I’m starting over again.”

This particular moment, however, feels like the beginning of the rest of a long and hopefully never-ending career.

Follow @cl_music on Twitter to get the most up-to-date music news, concert announcements and local tunes. Subscribe to our newsletter, and listen to us on WMNF 88.5-FM’s “Radio Reverb” program every Saturday from 4 p.m.-6 p.m.