Page 61 - The Hunt - Winter 2023/24

BOOTS
on the Ground
Now almost 800 miles from Nashville, Carly Simmons still aims to make her mark on country music.
BY GINA LIZZO I PHOTOS BY JIM GRAHAM MAKEUP BY JACKIE SCULLY
Credit Carly Simmons’ mom for knowing raw talent when she heard it, singing along to the radio in the back seat of the family car. Patty Pruitt couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But when she asked her daughter to sing for the family, stage fright took over. “I went quiet for years,” Simmons recalls with a laugh.
Simmons found her voice in sixth grade, working up the courage to perform “I’m Goin’ Down” by Mary J. Blige in a school talent show. Her dad was moved to tears. She tried the choir at Wilmington’s
Tatnall School, but dropped out to pursue sports instead. Upon graduation from Tatnall in 2010, she accepted a full track-and-field scholarship from the University of Delaware. At a college party, she performed the Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried,” and she had a brief stint in a collegiate a capella group. But it simply wasn’t her time.
Soon after transferring to James Madison University in Virginia, Simmons got a message from Sean Verchick, a musician she’d worked with six years prior in the studio of his parents’ home. He’d since made the move to Los Angeles and encouraged Simmons to visit.
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