It may seem like Tift Merritt is slowly slipping away from us — what with her latest album, Another Country, ranking on numerous end-of-year lists and her first sing, “Broken,” reaching number one on the Americana Radio Chart — but she keeps comings back.
The singer-songwriter will perform at Fletcher Opera Theatre at the Progress Energy Center in Raleigh on May 1. Tickets for An Evening With Tift Merritt will go on sale Friday, Jan. 9 at 10 a.m. through Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets and by phone.
Another Country was written and recorded in Paris, and the album was was mentioned by Entertainment Weekly as a 2008 album worth owning. The Americana Music Association listed the release at the number five spot of the top 100 Americana albums of 2008 based on radio plays.
“I guess sometimes you do have to go very far from home and get very lost to realize that life is all around you and shouting at you to take its many good things with you,” Merritt writes of her experience in Paris. “I don’t know if it was the church, the piano, the markets full of figs and fresh milk, the funny faces you make when you are trying to explain yourself in a foreign language, or the things you cannot take for granted when you are far from home by yourself with just a few words in your pocket.
“I cannot explain what happened except to say there were never enough hours in a day to write, and there was always kindness close at hand. I wrote songs. I played piano. I wrote stories. I took pictures. One day I wrote so much that I convinced myself that I must be dying. Otherwise, how could I possibly write so much? How could there be so much inside to say? It was the happiest I have ever been.”
“Broken” by Tift Merritt
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