At her core, Caitlyn Smith is a storyteller. In three songs, it would be probable to hear the drop of a pin while she seared through the years that led up to her new release, High & Low, which is the second half of her 2022 album, High. She shared the heartbreak of an industry rejecting her in her 2018 breakout, This Town is Killing Me, and the excitement of country legend Garth Brooks agreeing to a feature on the new project, which she self-produced. In a town where it is hard to keep an audience’s attention, Smith had them transfixed.
The veteran songwriter, who has written for artists such as Dolly Parton and Meghan Trainor, showed up to night one of her two-night residency at AB in Nashville as a nominee for ACM New Female Artist of the Year. When mentioned before singing a duet with Alex Hall, who is serving as direct support on The Great Pretender Solo Tour, Smith was elated and shared her shock at the news, which came earlier in the day.
The mention of the award nomination was brief, but the undertones of Smith’s influence were present. Smith shared her take on the RIAA Platinum-award winning song, Wasting All These Tears, which she co-wrote with her husband, songwriter Rollie Gaalswyk, and Cassadee Pope recorded, as well as the mention of the Brooks duet, who cut Smith’s Tacoma on his 2014 album Man Against Machine, and her decision to self-produce the two-part album.
Smith kicked off her Great Pretender Solo Tour last week in Austin and will continue throughout April and May. The tour takes her to independent venues across the country in a partnership with Dtour, where she told Music Row Magazine she’d be playing an “unplugged, unaccompanied” set. She delivered on her promise to bring her fans into the room and give them the music in its purest form.
