Singer-songwriter Bailey Hefley returns home to Little Rock on Saturday to open for Sawyer Brown on the Main Stage at the Arkansas State Fair.
The 27-year-old Hefley is working on a music career in Nashville, Tenn., and has a pair of recently released singles, "So That Girl" and "Dust on a Diamond," that deftly walk the country-pop line and will appear on a forthcoming EP.
"It's going to be really fun," the Pulaski Academy graduate says of coming home to perform. "There's nothing better than a hometown crowd, and I'll get to see all of my friends."
When she was 5, Hefley began having petit mal seizures, and the medication she was prescribed drowned out her normally upbeat personality.
"Overnight, my life changed," she says. "I was like a zombie. I was so zoned out. I also had attention deficit disorder, and it was a really bad combination. I was always daydreaming and wandering off."
By eighth grade she was able to stop taking the medication and the change, she says, was dramatic.
"I was like Austin Powers when he comes out of the time machine and is like: 'What's happening? Where has everybody been?' It was a whole new world."
She even took up competitive barrel racing.
"My mom and I would load up the trailer and go [race] on the weekend," she says in a video on her website, baileyhefley.com. "That's my tomboy, farm girl side coming out."
There was always music, though.
"Music was my safe place," she says. "Being onstage was the only time that I felt like people were listening."
By 16, she was writing her own songs.
She attended college for a while, including taking music business classes at Belmont University in Nashville, and moved to Music City for good in 2012.
She worked on her songwriting and opened shows for Old Dominion, Deana Carter and fellow Arkies Ashley McBryde and Justin Moore.
She has also hung out with Erin Enderlin, the Conway native who lives in Nashville and has written songs for Alan Jackson, Luke Bryan, Terri Clark and others.
"We haven't written together, but we have had coffee and chit-chatted," Hefley says. "She has given me advice and been a little bit of a mentor."
"Dust on a Diamond," about picking yourself up after a failed relationship, was co-written with Marti Dodson and Linda Greene. The EP, which doesn't have a release date yet, is called So.That.Girl and was produced by Jamie O'Neal, who has written songs for LeAnn Rimes, Reba McEntire and Martina McBride.
"She has really helped me as a songwriter," Hefley says of O'Neal. "We write about once a week, and she brings a lot to the table. She's really talented."
Weekend on 10/17/2019