Adrienne Young

Adrienne Young
Little Grill Collective, June 27, 2008 "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" benefit
Background information
Origin	Tallahassee, Florida, United States
Genres	bluegrass, country, old-time music, American folk music
Associated acts	Little Sadie
Website	Official Website

Adrienne Adeana Young is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She is founder and operator of AddieBelle Music which produces her recordings.

A native of Tallahassee, Florida, in fact a seventh-generation Floridian, she was raised on the land farmed by her family generations earlier. Young grew up in a musical family in Clearwater, where she was a member of the band Big White Undies.

She was graduated magna cum laude from Belmont University in Nashville with a Music Business/Spanish degree. Endless and unfulfilling clerical jobs along Music Row motivated this triple-threat singer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist to start her own record label, Addiebelle Music. She also formed the short-lived band Liters of Pop with Eric McConnell.

She learned to play clawhammer-style banjo from Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, and set about amassing a catalog of old-time tunes. As she says:

"I got really into traditional music when I was longing to connect with my family again, and that led to trying to build up a repertoire that my grandfather was familiar with, the classic old-time and bluegrass tunes."

Young began gaining attention with her 2003 win in the Chris Austin songwriting contest at MerleFest for "Sadie's Song". Co-written with Mark D. Sanders, the song is a re-telling of the murderous bluegrass standard "Little Sadie" told from the victim's point of view.

"Little Sadie" featured prominently on her first CD, Plow to the End of the Row, produced with another Nashville-based musician, Will Kimbrough, and released on her own AddieBelle record label. (The label takes its name from a nickname Young was given while working as a tour guide at Nashville's Belle Meade Mansion.) The CD, which includes a packet of wildflower seeds along with artwork based on the Farmers' Almanac, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Package.