Hannah Dasher humbly stands ready for stardom at country's 'rawest edge'

Savannah, Georgia, native Hannah Dasher's value to country music is incalculable on profit and loss sheets and invisible in data-driven marketing presentations.

The performer lives 10 minutes north of the Grand Ole Opry in a home Waylon Jennings lived in while the finishing touches were being put on his 1976 album "Wanted! The Outlaws."

The release was the first platinum-selling country album of all time, featuring his work alongside that of Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser.

The second half of Dasher's 2021 EP "The Half Record" arrives on Oct. 20.

Not unlike the home of its creator, it's a testament to the power of honky-tonk tested creative freedom bathed in a unique blend of countercultural inspiration and traditional Southern values.

'Cryin' All the Way to the Bank'

Song titles for Dasher's "The Other Damn Half" include the cheekily seductive "(I'm The One Who Taught Him) That Thing You Like," alimony ode "Cryin' All the Way to the Bank," plus a song with the hook "I'm gonna whup yer redneck a** and take you out like a piece of white trash."

The release's sounds and vibes are inimitable.

As much as it has traditionally been a part of conversations about her, digging deeper than her bouffant hairdo, impeccable stage makeup, bell-bottom pants and constant stream of down-home witticisms is essential.

She debuted at the Opry in 2019. This was after spending a decade in Nashville after a childhood when the only fight she ever had was one about country music that she won.

Her desire to wear an Alan Jackson T-shirt in elementary school was the reason for that fight.

In the past decade, she's also grown from being a former University of Georgia journalism major and Bass Pro Shops employee to a Sony Music-signed songwriter who's had songs cut by Brad Paisley and been honored by CMT Next Women of Country.

For the past year, seemingly nonstop, she has played four shows a week at biker bars, honky-tonks, juke joints and music festivals nationwide.

She also has nearly 2 million followers on social media. They, via her viral cooking shorts entitled "Stand By Your Pan," are aware — like The Tennessean was on a recent Monday evening in her "outlaw" bungalow — that her ability to prepare Southern cuisine, like tender, fluffy biscuits and savory sausage gravy, is impressive.

'Gas station original recipe fried chicken'

Since its 1990s boom, Nashville's past three decades have, on some level, been a story of how genteel Southern society blends into the filter of so-called "coastal elitism" from both New York and Los Angeles, plus integrates with the influence of global conglomerates.

It's created a genre that is, on the surface, a discordant hodge-podge that rips away the top-down, "Nashville to the world"-type branding that dominated the genre's cross-cultural surge of the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the past 30 years have been more, "the world invades Nashville," which, in the genre's mainstream, has largely stripped away the rough-hewn, authentic core of the genre's outlaw urges.

For female artists, stripping the genre's "outlaw" inspirations has not benefitted those willing to awkwardly blend "countercultural" rock urges with folk-styled, genteel pop-country social cues.

About the condition of Music City's industry after three decades of a deluge of influences, Dasher offers one of many honest statements.

"Nashville — and many of the stars it has attracted and made (in the past three decades) — were created by people easily swayed into chasing what they can be led to believe, by quantifiable numbers, is cool or hot," she says. "The [Nashville] I believe in was built on people who didn't bat an eye at what a machine told them worked. Instead, they listened to actual human beings from all walks of life (gay, straight, crooked, level, young and old), telling stories about how they wanted musicians to sing about things that mattered beyond numbers."

"We've gotta get back to trusting that hits are made when three different types of crowds sing the chorus back to you three nights in a row," Dasher continues.

She adds some homespun wisdom about how a metaphorical sky of country music stars is born.

"We've gotta do that, plus remember that as good as gas station fried chicken is, there's always room for the original recipe version, too."

'Ugly Houses'

"I had to renovate myself insofar as my relationship to my craft and [my humanity]," says Dasher about why she feels more prepared than ever for an increased spotlight.

She always believed herself to be a country music star, but perhaps one for whom the relationship with the potential of stardom existed as far as the mirror.

However, she's now 12 years into the Nashville chapter of her life and being viewed by millions yearly, both online via social media and at performances nationwide.

Her EP track "Ugly Houses" summarizes her statement well.

"God’s been humbling me the past two years. I felt like I needed to share it with the world. Whether listeners are believers or not, I hope this song leaves 'em in a better place than it found 'em.”

"Whether it's with a joke or a song, my main goal is to connect with people — and they know what is and isn't bulls***. Even more, as country music has its renaissance, in those places like Los Angeles and New York [that pushed country music in one direction], the culture and the songs are too strong to be contained by where country music [has existed for three decades]."

"Everyone wants country music's rawest edges back at its forefront," states Dasher.

An off-handed comment completing her thoughts summarizes her and her hero Alan Jackson's beliefs.

"Fiddles, pedal steel guitars and 'a lot about livin' and a little 'bout love.'"

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Hannah Dasher humbly stands ready for stardom at country's 'rawest edge'