Grace Pettis’ music is described as a little bit of folk, a little bit of country/Americana, and a whole lot of soul. After my recent conversation with her, I can attest that this young lady has a whole lot of wisdom, talent, and determination as well.

Due to Grace’s busy tour schedule, our conversation happened over Zoom. She connected from her home in Nashville. “I actually just got back, like, two hours ago,” she said. “So I literally hauled my suitcase up the stairs, threw on a little mascara, and called you.”

Her tour, in support of her new album “Down To The Letter,” has been eventful, to say the least. “We were out for this past run for two weeks, but I ended up having to cancel some shows at the beginning because I got Covid and had to quarantine in Maine for ten days,” she said. “So it’s been like two weeks on, maybe a week off for, you know, months now since early spring.” Grace has been doing several shows with fellow singer/songwriter Robby Hecht, who also has a new album out.

If Grace’s name sounds familiar, it could be because I recently shared with you my conversation with her father, Pierce Pettis. The northeast corner of Alabama has always been a home for Grace. “My grandfather owned the Western Auto Store in Fort Payne,” she shared. “And so as a little girl, when both of my parents were living in Atlanta, we would come up on the weekends, we’d come up in the summers, and we’d spend time with them and with my aunts.”

When her parents divorced, Grace lived primarily with her mother until the ninth grade, when she moved to Mentone to live with her father and attend Fort Payne High School. “I had Mr. Guice for biology, just like my dad,” she said. “And you know, I went to school with a lot of kids whose last names were the names of all the kids that he’d gone to school with. I like to say that it’s the kind of the town where all the names on the kindergarten roll are the same as the names in the graveyard. You know what I mean?”

It’s also a town, she said, where “all the weird kids sort of clump together.” She described those as being “a little quirky and, for whatever reason, in some way, we sort of don’t fit the mold. And maybe that’s like the gay kids, or maybe that’s the kids that aren’t the right color or the right religion, or maybe they’re just like nerds, you know, or goths or, whatever it is.”

Grace Pettis performs at the JSU Canyon Center as part of the May’s Gulf Songwriter’s Series

Attending high school in a small town, Grace said she discovered that “at the lunch table, all the weird kids kind of have to band together, to compose enough of a group to fill up a lunch table. So because there just aren’t that many kids in your graduating class, you end up being friends.”

That same feeling of being different and finding like-minded people is what made Austin, Texas, the ideal location for Grace’s next home. “Austin kind of feels like a bigger version of that,” she said. “But it’s also this weird contradiction because it’s the state capital as well. And they’re very proud of being Texas and being the capital. But there’s also a ton of liberals, there’s a bunch of hippies, there’s a bunch of hipsters, frat boys, cowboys … and everybody just kind of gets along.

“It’s so southern,” she continued, “and it’s also so liberal. It’s also really diverse. And everybody just kind of hangs and gets along. It’s definitely changing. It’s gotten a lot more corporate in the past couple of years. But when I first moved there, it was just this kind of paradise … There’d be like a barbecue place next door to like a yoga place, and you’d have a rancher and a vegan drinking together and hanging out. And it was really cool. I wish all of America could be a little more like what Austin was like for me when I moved there.”

Grace’s music career blossomed in Austin. A long-time relationship, however, came to a painful end. “I was in a 14-year relationship, and 11 years of that were marriage,” she shared. “I ended up having to leave kind of abruptly and unexpectedly. There were some things about how it all went down that made it more nuanced … not necessarily easier or harder because I think every divorce is unique in its own way. We each get our own version of hard, but when there’s addiction involved and stuff like that, it’s not like a lifetime movie where there’s like an obvious bad guy and a good guy. It’s complicated and nothing feels like the right thing, and nothing feels like the easy thing.”

As with many artists, Grace found herself processing the pain and fallout through her craft. “It was hard for me,” she shared. “It was a really challenging, and also cathartic, experience. I think it was really healing for me. But it also was work, and it was painful.”

The resulting album, “Down To The Letter,” may well be Grace’s finest work to date — as a songwriter and a performer. “I think I spent about a year just writing about it as a means of trying to make it make sense,” she said of her breakup. “And I wrote, like, 27 songs about it. And then we got in the studio and we recorded 14, including a few older ones that sort of fit with the the body of songs that we were listening to … Then we recorded 14 and we put out 12.”

The 12 tracks on the album are heartfelt and outstanding. Hopefully we will hear the two unreleased songs someday as standalone singles, or perhaps as part of a special edition release.

This album is part of a recent span of good events in Grace’s life. “I’ve had a really good kind of year and a half where some of my all-time dreams came true,” she said. “There’s an artist named Ruthie Foster who’s covered a number of my songs. And then on this last record, she and I co-wrote three songs that ended up on her record Healing Time, which was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the Grammys this past year.

“It’s just a dream to have an artist like that covering your songs because she’s the best singer I’ve ever heard,” Grace continued. “So that in and of itself, to be able to write with her and have her sing those songs and put them on a record was already a career lifetime career achievement. But then to be nominated for a Grammy definitely is a nice thing.”

Grace has also been involved with the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, set up by the legendary artist’s widow to honor his legacy. “They do these songwriting retreats, and they do them all over,” Grace said, “in Louisiana and in Texas, and in Detroit and in England. I got involved with them first as a scholarship kid, because I had been living in Texas for many years, and they like to send one up and coming Texas songwriter to these retreats. And you write with all these other songwriters, some of whom have hit songs and awards.”

This led to a publishing deal and a record deal for Grace. She was also asked to be a host at the next retreat, to be held this summer in New Orleans.

But that wasn’t the end of her good news. Grace recently accepted a Wurlitzer Foundation residency in Taos, New Mexico, for January through part of April 2025. “They pay all your rent and all your utilities, and you live in this casita on, like, 16 acres with a handful of other artists of various disciplines,” she said, the excitement obvious in her voice. “Sculptors, poets, photographers, and things like that. It’s one of the oldest residencies, going back to the 1950s.

“So it’s going to be really great,” she continued. “And all I have to do is write. I don’t have to have any of my day jobs. And in fact, you’re not allowed to work other than on your art. So it’s the first time in my life that I’ll have that much consecutive time to just write … that’s going to be really great. I’m planning on working on my next record there.”

Grace looks forward to the travel, something that was instilled in her at a young age. “Both of my parents are very nomadic,” she said. “My mother and my father traveled all the time when we were kids. And so because of that, by the time I was in high school in Fort Payne, I had already been to like 11 or 12 different countries. And every state that you can drive to, pretty much. So I have been on the road since I was a little kid, and it’s something that I feel really grateful for and I feel very privileged to be able to do.

“I don’t have a lot of money,” she added, “and growing up, my parents weren’t rich or anything. But I think there is a kind of wealth that comes with being able to collect those kinds of experiences and meet different kinds of people, and just seeing this beautiful country and all the different places. I feel really fortunate to be able to do that … It’s something that I really don’t take for granted. I know people work their whole lives to save up enough money for retirement to go see like one or two cool things. And I get to see cool places all the time.”

Grace does find time to return to Alabama occasionally. Recently she was a featured artist of the May’s Gulf Songwriter’s Series, a special event held at the JSU Canyon Center atop Lookout Mountain in Fort Payne.

Do yourself a favor and check out Grace’s music. Better yet, check out her tour schedule and catch her live in concert. Her songs will move you, and her personality will make you an instant fan for life.