Carly Pearce Shares About What It Means to Be the Newest Member of the Grand Ole Opry
The past few years have been filled with many exciting surprises for Carly Pearce, from winning CMA and ACM Awards to being tapped to go on tour with Lady A. However, nothing could have prepared her to receive the news of a lifetime, when Dolly Parton recently asked her to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
“Oh my goodness. I think it’s just 31 years of dreams that I really have had since I was a little girl coming true,” exclaims Pearce. “All I ever wanted to do was have a seat at the Country Music table and the fact that I am seeing that I have one, and I know that sounds funny because I’ve been doing this for a few years now, but it still just feels ‘Wait a minute, is this real, is this real…’”
Being that Pearce had worked as a performer at the Dollywood theme park when she was a teenager, she thought she was simply being asked to shoot a promotional commercial for the park to share about her experience. When Dolly showed up during filming, she figured they may be doing the commercial together. But as Parton continued to talk about the Opry, Pearce began to connect the dots that she was about to receive some of the most monumental news of her career.
“I thought I was doing a Dollywood commercial,” she remembers. “They told me that Dolly wanted me to be a part of the new campaign that she was launching, and I was like ‘Yes, please!’ And I heard her high heels coming down the hall and I freaked out. And even when I saw her, I thought ‘Oh my gosh she’s going to do this commercial with me. This is so awesome, like we get to do this together…And then she used the ‘O’ word, and I was like ‘Excuse me. Why are you asking me about the Opry?’ and then she used it again and then she used the ‘O’ word with ‘You should be a member’…and I was like ‘Dolly…if you are not about to say what I think you’re going to say, I don’t know what I’m going to do to you…’”
Pearce was so overcome with emotion that she fell to her knees for a moment as she processed the pivotal moment that was taking place.
“…My favorite part of the whole thing is I dropped to my knees and she [Dolly] goes… ‘You can’t do it from down there’ and I was like ‘Oh no, Dolly told me I got to get up, I got to get up,’ says Pearce. “And so, I like try to compose myself, but in true Dolly fashion she’s like ‘Get your butt up.’”
The invitation was a complete surprise to her, as she was not expecting to receive the honor so early in her career.
“It came a little sooner honestly for me than I thought I was going to get…” she reveals. “It honestly came at a time in my life where I just look up at God and I’m like ‘You’re funny… you continue to make me laugh in a good way.’”
Having Parton be the one to break the news to her, was an extremely significant event that was not lost on Pearce.
“She to me is just the epitome of class and the epitome of a Country Music queen and the fact that she took time—she’s never asked someone to be a member, invited them in her fifty years of being a member—so that makes it even more special that she did that for me,” explains Pearce.
Once she collected herself, her first call was to the two people who have encouraged her music dreams from the very beginning.
“I immediately called my parents,” she remembers. “They did not know what was happening and they actually drove up to be there the other night at the Opry when I announced it to everyone. My parents are the reason I got to drop out of school when I was sixteen. They were insane… it’s just an extremely moving and emotional time for the three of us because without them I couldn’t have done it, so they have to be there.”
In the days following that special moment, Pearce has received overwhelming support and well wishes from the Country community, including a personal phone call from Barbara Mandrell and a text message from Trisha Yearwood. “It’s just so crazy to have these women that I’ve really looked up to, that are Country Music royalty, wrapping their arms around me in this time,” she says.
Pearce has great respect for the Opry and the legacy it holds. She spent her childhood days immersed in the history of Country Music and was educated on the genre and the importance of the Opry from her grandfather.
“My grandpa bought me these sets, these like Opry sets of cassettes and CDs to make me understand, ‘You’re not just gonna love the you know superstars of it, you’re gonna love everyone,’” she remembers. “And so, I as a kid, instead of listening to you know contemporary, I don’t know *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys, I was listening to these tapes of the Opry and these tapes of all of the different classic Country eras. I mean I had it from the ‘50s up until the ‘80s and that’s what I was listening to and just really understanding what this place meant. It was the lifelong dream for me. I always said that if I got to play there, I’d make it a part of who I am and not just be somebody who plays it and then leaves or plays it, gets inducted and never talks about it again. I wanted to be a true ambassador of it.”
If she could go back to the moment when she was about to step on stage at Dollywood for the first time, she has a few words of wisdom that she’d share with her sixteen-year-old self.
“I would tell her to take in the moments that she’s having in that moment because she was really happy to be performing and loved to sing,” she says. “And I think I would just tell her to never let any of the moments that were going to come that maybe felt hard take away from the feeling that she had because I will tell you the feeling that I have now getting on stage fifteen years later is the exact same feeling that I had when I was sixteen. And that is why I do this and that is why I’m so moved to be here because it’s never wavered.”
Pearce is counting down the days until her induction on August 3rd.
What will she wear for the big night of her Opry induction? Fans will just have to wait and see. “I’d be lying if I said I don’t already have my dress, because I do,” tells Pearce.
The outfit she wears on stage that night is likely be a little bit different than the one she wore the first time she ever visited the Grand Ole Opry as a fan.
“The first time I actually got to go to the Opry, I think I was fifteen or sixteen. This is going to be funny, but I wore a little, white tank top because Dierks Bentley was there and he was a new artist and he was singing ‘What Was I Thinkin’, which is funny. Maybe I’ll tell him that someday…I just remember looking at the circle and just being like ‘Gosh, what would it be like to stand there.’ It just felt like this full circle moment for me of hearing about the Opry forever but never going there and I was just like, ‘I have to make it into the circle.’”
Not only did she eventually get to perform at the Opry, but the young woman who looked up at that circle so many years ago is now going to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
“I view the Opry as the most prestigious thing that you can do as a Country Music artist and Eddie Stubbs long ago, maybe the first or second time I performed, he looked at me and said, ‘You understand the importance of the Opry and do you want me to tell you why…,’ she remembers. “He said ‘You dress like you’re here to put on a show and you dress the way that you understand that the Opry is important.’ And I always remembered that and I feel like I try really hard and I feel like Carrie [Underwood] does a really good job of this, it’s important to be respectful at the Opry to understand what this place is…I have fun finding outfits that maybe are a little bit reminiscent of maybe what the girls wore, what Tammy and Loretta and Dolly…and Dottie West and all these women wore in the ‘50s and ‘60s and I enjoy getting to do that.”
Now that she’s achieved this pinnacle status that practically every Country artist aspires to reach, what’s next on Pearce’s list of dreams to accomplish?
“…I mean I want more of it all and just really want to be a staple. I want to be a household name…like when you say Dolly and Loretta and Reba and Trisha and Faith and Miranda and Carrie, I want you to say Carly and people know. And that just makes me want to continue to raise the bar for myself in everything I do.”
As she prepares to step into this new role as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, Pearce intends to continue to carry the baton that has been passed through the Country Music family for generations.
“…It’s a lifelong commitment to keep the circle unbroken, for me,” she says. “It is my duty as someone in this generation, I have sat in a room with Jeannie Seely, with Trisha Yearwood, and they’re looking at me saying ‘We feel confident in you to pass you the baton.’ And so I feel like it’s my responsibility as this generation, and probably the way Trisha felt about Jeannie’s generation to keep it and preserve it in the way that it needs to and I know that Carrie Underwood has done such a great job of that and I feel like I want to follow in her footsteps of making it a part of who I am, not just something that I check off of the list.”
