Laura Bell Bundy photo by Michael Elins, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Her theatrical career has been a wonderful life experience that was a natural extension of her original dream of having a music career. Indeed, her time on Broadway propelled her pursuit of music, exposed her to a community of talented creative people and helped her become a better writer and performer.

After moving to New York at 18, she formed a country duo with roommate Amber Rhodes and they wrote and performed songs in various New York clubs. "In the meantime, I got Hairspray and Wicked, and honestly, that’s how I supported myself."

"People can look at it and go, ‘You went from Broadway to doing country,’" she says. "I actually went from the country to Broadway. I’m from Kentucky and I always listened to country music. When I started writing songs, it all came out country.
"I moved to New York and my intention was to have a music career, not to do Broadway. For me, it was like I had two different baskets of eggs and one was the acting basket and the other was the music basket and the acting basket of eggs hatched first. The others were incubating, and honestly I’m glad because where I am in terms of the emotional place I am in my life and my ability to express myself is much better now that I’m a bit older. I have more life experience to talk about when I write music and I’m a better performer now that I’ve been doing it for so long. My ability to put on a good show is stronger now, and I’m more in tune with who I am.

"It wasn’t until I was on the Broadway radar that Nashville noticed me. Isn’t that ironic? My showcase was my show, in some ways."

Born in Lexington, her father is an electrical engineer who owns a manufacturing plant and her mother manages a Victoria’s Secret. Growing up, she had two older half-sisters, and at 16 her parents divorced and later remarried, so now her extended family is like a modern-day Brady Bunch.

Her father was raised in Sheffield, Ala., which is near musical hotbed Muscle Shoals (where his friends started Muscle Shoals Sound and Fame studios), so he introduced his daughter to 1960s soul, while her mother played country music in the house and car. "When I was three or four, I distinctly remember listening to ‘Islands in the Stream’ in the car and thinking it was the best song ever written," she says. "My mom kind of looked like Dolly Parton, so I thought Dolly Parton was my mom."