Dori Freeman

Dori Freeman brings a modern sensibility to the storytelling traditions of folk and country, a quality that fueled her rapid rise after she decided in 2016 to contact admired musicians directly. Raised in the Appalachian town of Galax, Virginia, she grew up immersed in bluegrass through her father Scott Freeman and grandfather Willard Gayheart, both longtime performers who operated the Front Porch Gallery and Frame Shop as their regular venue. She took up guitar at age fifteen and soon joined the family band onstage. Although she enrolled at Virginia Tech University after high school, she left before earning a degree. At twenty-two, as a single mother living with her parents, she resolved to treat songwriting as a serious pursuit and self-produced her first album, Porchlight, which appeared in 2011.

Alongside Rufus Wainwright and Peggy Lee, Freeman has long named Teddy Thompson among her favorite artists; in 2014 she reached him through Facebook with a video of her performing original material. Thompson answered three days later, expressing admiration for the emotional honesty and power in both her writing and voice, and offered to produce a record. After the project was funded via crowdfunding, he brought her to a New York City studio where tracking wrapped in three days. The resulting self-titled album, issued by Free Dirt Records in February 2016, featured guest contributions from Aoife O'Donovan of Crooked Still, Kacy & Clayton, and Richard Thompson. It drew strong critical praise, including selection by The New York Times as one of the year’s outstanding releases, and the track “You Say” surpassed two million streams by year’s end.