Katrina Elam

Katrina Elam possesses the ability to compose and deliver modern country material marked by sharp wit and easy charm, yet her earliest phase involved nothing more than an ordinary youngster singing at full volume. At nine, she deliberately softened her approach during a 4-H talent competition in Oklahoma, producing a performance so emotionally direct that her mother wept. Alarmed, the child hurried over, only to learn that her own singing had prompted the tears, an epiphany that fixed music as her vocation. From that point she rehearsed with a karaoke setup and sang at weddings along with corporate functions. By fifteen the Oklahoma Country Music Association and the Oklahoma Opry had both designated her their state’s female singer of the year. When Reba McEntire and Vince Gill appeared in Oklahoma they asked Elam onstage with them and later returned to Nashville carrying word of an undiscovered talent still at home. Having already begun writing songs, she mailed a demo to the city, prompting Warner-Chappell Music to extend a publishing deal to the sixteen-year-old. At seventeen she relocated to Nashville. Content at first to work solely as a songwriter, she soon wished to record her own material. After performing for label executives for just one month, she received a recording contract from Universal South. The label issued her self-titled debut album in October 2004, followed by Turn Me Up in 2007.