Camille Parker's 'uniquely American,' countrified life explored on 'After The Whiskey' EP

"[My [family] taught me not to take no s**t. At my core, that's who I am."

The above quote is not from Dolly Parton.

Instead, it's from a 2006 Mary J. Blige interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Both artists' hardscrabble roots and extraordinary frankness are almost hidden by visual aesthetics that highlight their allure but are invisibly underpinned by incredible determination and grit.

If you drew a connecting line from Parton to Blige into the modern era, Durham, North Carolina, native Camille Parker might fall somewhere in the middle.

"Do no harm, but take no s***," she tells The Tennessean, is a governing mantra for her songwriting and performances on her new EP "After The Whiskey."

"God's voice is where I hear music the best. So, when you hear my music, you hear my conversations with God as developed by creatives at the highest level of song-making."

The vocalist has an apparent, God-given ability to sing just about anything from just about any genre. However, her talents exist best in country music because it, like her, thrives around universally aspirational themes, including freedom, truth and defining beauty.

The EP is as independent as it is intentional. Instead of grinding on the ground in Music City pulling it all together, Parker's taken over a decade to amass solid music industry relationships while releasing singles. Thus, her EP features Nashville co-writers, players and producers but was also mixed and mastered in Los Angeles.

Parker's new music tells stories defined by her globetrotting life and how country music has always remained "at the heart of the American music she heard while living her very American life."

She's lived in Durham, attended New York City's Talent Unlimited Performing Arts School in New York City (alums include Living Colour's Corey Glover, rapper Mos Def and actors Laurence Fishburne and Malik Yoba, among many), plus attended the schools of hard knocks and unexpected joy in everywhere from Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.'s suburbs to Paris, working as a blackjack dealer, R&B demo singer, in retail sales, as a waitress or even as a receptionist at a bottle cap company.

"Yeah, I was the one singing Shania Twain while I was dealing blackjack in Vegas," Parker jokes.

Pop-aimed country music's so obviously a part of her DNA that even before her debut EP's release, singles like 2021's "The Flame" earned her a co-sign from Rissi Palmer's "Color Me Country" artist grant program, CMT Next Woman of Country 2022 class membership, plus being a featured artist on Apple TV's music competition series "My Kind of Country."

However, swift inclusion into Nashville's singer-songwriter community was premature and problematic for Parker. She was set back by deaths in her family, surgery for an autoimmune disorder and adjusting to the rigors of a day-to-day Music City grind that eventually whittles away what she refers to as "her ability to spare other people's feelings."

That notion directly inspires her new work.

Her inspiration is aided by haunting atmospherics and acoustic guitars on songs like "Heartless" and "Peace," which are bittersweet love ballads that showcase her reclaiming her autonomy and goals amid a controlling relationship.

However, on "Neon Tears" -- a track inspired by Parker's years as a waitress -- the frankness finally overtakes the beauty in her art and a powerful chorus arrives:

"I′m crying neon tears / In a twelve-dollar drink, what the hell am I doing here / Oh I could just disappear / Would my friends even know / Am I just part of the atmosphere"?

It's delivered as the most heartbreakingly sad turn of phrase.

She describes her EP as a solution to the inner "resentment" she had towards not "having the guts" to actualize the "something more" she creatively craved.

That antagonism arrives via a new mantra Parker has for her work moving forward.

"Tell the truth and make them dance."

"I'm finally a professional in the one job I loved and wanted the most. I'm the heroine of my journey. Now, I can show myself for who I am and let the cards fall where they may."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Camille Parker's 'uniquely American,' countrified life explored on 'After The Whiskey' EP