TERRI CLARK

You might begin in 2004, the year Terri joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry, tapping into the rich traditions of country music’s most famous stage. There’s always 1995, the year Terri launched her career with “Better Things to Do,” a contemporary twist on the no-nonsense approach of Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” and pretty much the entire Loretta Lynn catalog. Or maybe you go all the way back to 1987, when Terri’s mother and her best friend packed the aspiring singer and her belongings into a Honda Civic and drove from Canada to Nashville, leaving her to play for tips at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a legendary Lower Broad honky-tonk. The songs of Classic span four decades of timeless country music, starting with the tunes young Terri learned via impromptu living-room parties her grandparents often hosted – standards like “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” or “I’m Movin’ On” by ‘The Singing Ranger’ Hank Snow, the first Canadian member of the Grand Ole Opry. Terri’s grandfather would break out his fiddle, her grandmother would start singing; soon it seemed like the entire neighbourhood would join in. Classic bears the stamp of influences Tanya Tucker and Reba McEntire, who each join Terri for duet versions of their hits. Friends Jann Arden, Dierks Bentley and Dean Brody sing with her, as well. “These are the songs that led to ‘Better Things to Do’ and to everything else that followed in my career,” Terri says. “They shaped who I became as an artist, from the very beginning.”