By Georgette Brookes

At just 22 years old, Harper Grace takes to the stage like any seasoned professional. Her strong and confident presence is a result of both the women surrounding her and the resilience she has had to employ through her time in the spotlight. She is so much more than ‘The American Idol Girl’ or ‘The National Anthem Girl’. She is kind, gracious and holds herself with such decorum – not to mention her talent in music and song writing.

Her song, ‘Oh Say Can You See,’ is a letter to her younger self that evokes the raw emotion of what she’s been through. Juxtapose this with a song like, ‘Sparkle,’ or, ‘Down In My Hometown,’ and you’ve got an artist that can do it all.

On her final day at London’s Country to Country (C2C) festival, Harper Grace sat down
to chat with me about the strong women that raised her, the Redemption Tour and her
Nana’s accordion.

How’s the weekend been for you?

It’s been great, I love it so much, I’ve been to London once before and it’s my favourite place to visit I am obsessed with it. I feel like I’m in a romance novel just walking around with the cobbles and the high tea.

Just waiting for Benedict Cumberbatch to walk out…

Right?! It’s been really cool to see so many country music fans in one spot, especially
across the world, for us it’s really cool.

I feel like UK country has kind of taken off as well it’s never really had a presence in the UK. How do you find the audience when you’re performing are we a different crowd, do you tailor the sets for us – how does that work for you?

Yeah the difference is actually kind of crazy. We have places in the US where, you know, we do song writers rounds and there’s a place called The Listening Room where people are pretty attentive and watching and listening to the songs. It’s so cool coming here because you can tell that everybody really appreciates country and it’s nice as a songwriter. These songs that you work so hard on and are so close to your heart – each song is like a little baby – and you cherish them and so having an audience that is so captivated and ready to hear the stories behind it how the song came about. It’s really cool because we put in a lot of time and effort into it and knowing that it’s appreciated is really amazing.

Concerts in the states are still really awesome and the audiences there are incredible but it definitely is really different coming here – I love it. I told a handful of people in both of my shows that I think this is my favourite audience because ya’ll just listen and it’s great.

Your British accent – I saw it on your Instagram and I heard it today – it’s coming along nicely.

Thank you! I’ve been working really hard on it. My friend says I sound like I’m from the 1800’s

I caught your set earlier in the Wayside – Oh Say Can You See was gorgeous (I cried). How did that song come about – was it part of the Redemption Tour or were they two separate entities?

Before my team started talking about a Redemption Tour, I had wrote that song already.
It took me a really long time to write, and I had had that title for a while but didn’t really know how I wanted to write it.

The day that I wrote it I actually knew that I wanted to write it that day so drove to Alex Kline’s house and had already kind of sang a melody in the car. Alex Kline and Scott Stepakoff had been some of my close friends and had known my story and been writing with me for a while. It was like I trusted them with that story enough to be like I know you’ll help me tell it and so we wrote that and a few months later, John Clore – a big part of Curb Records in the States – he’s really kind of put together this whole Redemption Tour and as I’ve kind of elaborated more on the fact – the connection with people matters a lot to me.

I look at life like a puzzle sometimes, if people take a piece of the puzzle out then obviously the picture’s not complete and so I’ve had people in the past be like you know what, let’s cut the anthem, you’re not the anthem girl or let’s cut the American Idol thing that’s not you anymore. I’m like, you’re just taking little bits of the puzzle out. At the end of the day, you want to create a full picture so I’m like that’s always going to be a part of me so keeping that within my career and also using it as a pedestal and a platform to encourage others.

That song was kind of a little bow on top when we realised that we were going to take off and do this redemption tour, they put this whole idea together of going back into arenas and ballparks and stadiums. At first it was hard for me to say yes to, but just realising again the whole puzzle and picture thing I’m like, ‘it’s a piece of me it always will be’ I’m just glad that I have the opportunity to go in and talk about it and sing that song and that song was definitely a piece of healing for that journey. – Thank you for saying that by the way.

You’re only 22, right? Your stage presence is so strong and confident – where do you think that comes from? Your journey obviously started when you were 11 with your national anthem situation – how does that feed into the presence that you have on the stage?

I think I gained a lot of confidence in realising that it didn’t matter what people said, that I could still do the thing I loved the most. I also grew up in a very faith-based family – my parents were missionaries my whole life. I have a pretty strong mum – my mum is with me here today. My Dad always used to say that he felt like he was watching my mum grow up through me. I was home-schooled, so I spent all day every day with my mum. She’s very strong, she’s very faith-based, she’s very encouraging and has taught me to also be strong in everything and I’m grateful for her and she’s played a really big part in the way I handle situations and have overcome a lot because of how great she is.

It really comes through because it’s just you and your guitar on those little acoustic stages and that’s daunting for anyone. I’m fangirling hard, sorry!

No, I love it. People are so important. People won’t come to watch you play if they don’t want to watch you play, and there’s a role that you have to tend to if you’re a performer and an artist. I’ve always thought about the person in the very very top or the very very back, you know, how are they going to feel like they’re also a part of the room that I’m standing in.

So really just trying my best to make it feel inviting and also entertain at the same time as telling stories and that’s always been really important to me – to just be able to capture an audience in a way that it’ll last long and they’ll remember. They’ll have a good time – you know, it’s so cool that there’s so many people in this festival in particular that come out of their way from so many places to come and see country music and you want to give them what they came and paid for.

You want to leave them wanting more but you want to be remembered. And that kind of feeds into country music doesn’t it – the authenticity, the community, and the people. I want to be as approachable as I can be. I want people to come up to me I’m like ‘no, I want to meet you, you’re the reason that I’m doing this!’ The more the merrier- all the necks that I can hug, I will.

Your new songs…

So we have seven songs releasing this year. ‘Break It Like A Man’ will be the next single
that comes out April 12th and I wrote that with Alex Kline and Scott Stepakoff. The one that I wrote with Taylor Philips and Jackson and Gabe Foust – we wrote ‘He Broke Mine’ and I actually texted my team the other day because we were originally going to cut another song but I’m bumping it off so I can replace it with that one.

We wrote it just two weeks ago and I fell in love with it. It was really really great. We wrote another song that day too it was a Saturday. We wrote one song and Taylor starts humming that melody and I was like WAIT hold up that’s really good and it was way faster than the first one.
We were like this is great we need to cut it so I texted my team like scratch this song we’re doing this one and they were like we need to talk about this and I was like no it has to happen it just has to happen. We’ve got another song called, ‘Getaway,’ another song called ‘Apologetic song’. I’m doing a cover of ‘Jolene’ and my nana is coming and playing the accordion on it so kind of get to bring her into that.

A lot of music, a lot of stuff. All singles then, no EP?

All singles this year. Kind of just seeing what happens with that. I feel like this is the year
where I can kind of test and trial things and see what happens. We’re just gonna load out the music. I mean, I’ve got so many songs so I’m sure we’ll end up doing an EP or an album shortly after depending on how it goes. We’re excited.

Any plans to come back to the UK any time soon?

I really hope so. I’ve told my team it’s really important to me to come back out here and that the audience and everyone here is really near and dear to my heart. I don’t want to wait a handful of years, it’s definitely important to be here and yeah I hope to maybe play C2C again next year. London has a big place in my heart.

We will welcome you back with open arms!

Last thing, I love the story of your nana and the accordion, can you give us a bit more on that?

Yeah my grandma – she always used to get out her big old accordion with the pearl lining and nice leather strap and pull up her wooden chair and just go to town on that thing. Sometimes she’d make up little melodies and I’d dance around and then we’d sing old school songs and old school country and yeah it was definitely – I talk about that being my earliest and fondest memories of falling in love with country music.

I’m very grateful for Nana, she had a little piano in her house too so I would go and mess on
that. She was also the first person that bought me a guitar when I was 7. She can yodel –no one else in my family sings and no one else in my family does music so that was kind of the one piece that I had within the family that was anything musical. She taught me how to yodel and we’d do that together.

Chatting to Harper Grace was like sitting down with a friend. Her enthusiasm and passion for her music as well as her love for the UK had a refreshing energy to it. She owns her past and uses it as a springboard for not only herself but to show others that you can do hard things. Her Redemption Tour is a professional and personal milestone that demonstrates her courage and resilience. There will be no stopping her now – and that’s the most exciting part.