Alecia Nugent hasn’t released new music in over a decade, which is hard to believe considering her success in bluegrass music with songs like “Hillbilly Goddess”. She’s won the IMBA and SPBGMA Female Vocalist of the Year honors, including both in 2009 and now turns her attention to country music. “Country plays just as much of a role in the way I sing as bluegrass does,” she says. “I grew up listening to old country music and I grew up listening to bluegrass. And I’ve always wanted to do a classic country record.” A native of Hickory Grove, Louisiana, Nugent absorbed the country and bluegrass music of her father Jimmy Nugent’s group, the Southland Bluegrass Band, which he launched the same year she was born. Sitting around the piano, her parents also taught Nugent and her two older brothers how to sing Southern gospel songs and bluegrass harmony. As a kid, she was a natural on stage and got hooked on the applause; she stepped into the role of lead singer in her late teens. Her new album “The Old Side Of Town” is a project with the legendary Keith Stegall, known for his work with Alan Jackson and George Strait, among others.
