Next weekend it’s the Country to Country music festival, an ever-growing event that sees Nashville come to London and twangy US stars Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood and Eric Church top the bill over three days at the O2 Arena.
It’s a mighty endeavour, running concurrently in Dublin and Glasgow. Beaneath the headliners are dozens of country musicians whose names aren’t known this far from Tennessee.
Appearing twice over the weekend, one singer-songwriter among the lower echelons looks like she might follow her friend Kacey Musgraves to become country’s latest crossover star.
Maren Morris, from Texas but now (of course) based in Nashville, has already identified her broad appeal in interviews: “I'm not in the teenybopper bracket, and I'm not in the 30-plus bracket,” she has said. “The fan response has been really widespread, age-wise."
Like Musgraves, there’s the tiniest quantity of edge to her schtick, with her arm tattoo, nose piercing and a song, My Church, in which she identifies as a sinner who (gasp!) prefers music to the Bible. Its big, gospel-tinged chorus has seen it reach the top 10 on the US Country chart and number one on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart for musicians on the rise. It just needs a spot on Radio 2’s playlist for a serious UK assault to begin.
C2C: Country to Country, March 11-13, O2 Arena, SE10 (0844 824 4824, c2c-countrytocountry.com); March 14, Borderline, W1 (020 7734 5547, theborderlinelondon.com)