Twice Grammy Nominated
Dale Ann’s story begins in rural Appalachia and ends on some of the biggest stages in music
Dale Ann Bradley is a Kentucky native who is proud of her state. Her music reflects that love as she often sings of the state’s multiple charms including sparkling streams, rolling hills and mountains, lush hillsides filled with native plants and beautiful landscapes. She also includes songs about coal mines (her father was a miner) and another business, that of moonshine stills.
Born in Bell County, Kentucky, Dale Ann grew up in a tar and paper shack, under the guidance of her mother and father, a Primitive Baptist minister as well as a miner. She admits to it being a harsh life, although one that she appreciates having grown up in. “We had no running water or what would be considered safe electricity until I was a senior in high school,” Dale Ann remembers. “One light socket and an extension cord was what kept a 1950’s Philco refrigerator, box fan and radio running. When I look back I realize just how dangerous that was!”
It's interesting that although there were no musical instruments permitted at the church which she attended, Dale Ann had an immediate love for music. Perhaps growing up singing all the church songs acapella helped contribute to Dale Ann’s sweet vocals and her ability to pull every emotion out of a song.
“USA Today” said that “The angel-voiced Bradley is one of the finest talents in bluegrass.”
The “Richmond Times” described her as “A shining star of bluegrass, armed with one of the purest voices in music.”
Thanks to a great-uncle who noted Dale Ann’s interest in music, an 8-track player appeared at her home, along with tapes of some of her favorite singers. When she was 14, she was given her first guitar. “It was a little plywood, small body guitar, but it had six strings, and I made a pick from a milk jug. I drove everybody crazy learning to play it.”
The singer learned to play her guitar and soon was singing the songs she heard on the radio and off the 8-track player. When she was a junior in high school, the new band director at school and his wife, known as Back Porch Grass, sang in the summer at Pine Mountain Stage Park in Pineville. Acknowledging her talent, they asked Dale Ann to join them, which gave her the opportunity to learn to entertain an audience. Attending one of her concerts is almost like having a friend in your living room, as she chats back and forth with the audience and doesn’t hesitate to share jokes on herself as well as the rest of her band.
She met Harold McGeorge while performing with Back Porch Grass, and he introduced her to the folks at Kentucky’s Renfro Valley Barn Dance. It was there that she met the New Coon Creek Girls, a group she joined in 1991 and performed with until 1997. Dale Ann considers her time at Renfro Valley a huge learning curve in her career. “I can’t put a price on all I learned at Renfro Valley,” Dale Ann says. “It was an amazing time for me.”
Dale Ann released her first solo album, East Kentucky Morning, on Pinecastle in 1997. One of her music heroes, Sonny Osborne, half of the Osborne Brothers team, was her producer. After several albums, Dale Ann left Pinecastle in 2001 to sign with Doobie Shea before joining Mountain Home in 2004. In 2006 she went to Compass Records for two albums.
In 2015 the singer rejoined Pinecastle Records, for whom she continues to record. She added producer to her list of accomplishments with her first album back with the label, Pocket Full of Keys, which received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. The album charted on Billboard, Gavin and most of the Bluegrass magazine charts, and she was featured in dozens of industry publications. She continues to produce her albums, including her self-titled one in 2017, The Hard Way in 2019 and Things She Couldn’t Get Over in 2021.
The singer has been invited to play on the Grand Ole Opry numerous times, a dream of hers since she listened to the famous radio show on that old radio back home in Kentucky.
Dale Ann’s continued success with Pinecastle has taken her music around the world. “I am getting album reviews that I can’t even read,” she says with a laugh. “They come in from all over the world.”
One of the singer’s trademarks is to take songs that are not typically bluegrass and make them her own. Over the years she has recorded U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” Journey’s “Wheel In The Sky,” Stealer Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Over My Head,” Jim Croce’s “Hard Way Every Time,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” Seals and Crofts “Summer Breeze” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee.”
In 2018, Dale Ann was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, joining many people she looked up to including Bill Monroe, Keith Whitley, Sonny Osborne, and Sam Bush. “It was such an honor for me to be welcomed into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame with so many of my heroes,” says Dale Ann. “Being a member of the Hall of Fame reiterated how important Kentucky stories and Kentucky artists are in the world of music,” says Dale Ann. “Receiving the award was such an honor.”
The singer is a six-time winner of IBMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year 2021, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, 2007), and took home the Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year in 2021 for “After While.” She has been named Female Vocalist of the year by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America three times. She was a participant on two albums that received Collaborative Recording of the Year honors from IBMA, Proud To Be A Daughter of Bluegrass in 2019 and Back To The Well in 2006.
In 2018 Dale Ann unwittingly became a founding member of the all-girl group Sister Sadie. When Sister Sadie first sang together in December 2012 at the historic Station Inn in Nashville, original members Dale Ann, Beth Lawrence, Tina Adair, Deanie Richardson and Gena Britt thought it would a one-time performance. Before the night was over, people were praising them for their beautiful harmonies and asking when there would be an album. The group also had several offers for performance bookings. “We had to make a quick decision as to whether this was a one-time thing or the start of a new group,” Dale Ann remembers, adding “I am really pleased to be one of the founding members of Sister Sadie.”
Their debut album, Sister Sadie, was released in 2016 on Pinecastle Records, and the girls soon made their debut on the Grand Ole Opry. They received their first IBMA award for Vocal Group of the Year in 2019, the first time an all-girl group received that award. The group was named IBMA’s Vocal Group of the Year again in 2020 and 2021, as well as Entertainer of the Year in 2020. They released their sophomore album, Sister Sadie II, in 2018 and received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Bluegrass Album that same year.
In 2021 Bradley was featured in the American Currents: State of the Music exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville as part of Sister Sadie. The exhibit honors artists, musicians and songwriters who shaped the broadly defined genre of country music in 2021.
“Bradley has built an impressive career by delivering solid songs fueled by excellent musicianship and her clear, pure voice,” says music journalist Deborah Evans Price.
“Dale Ann Bradley is one of the most gifted vocalists that bluegrass and country music has ever heard,” says musical peer Allison Kraus.
Dale Ann’s upcoming album, Kentucky For Me, is a very special one for the singer, as it is dedicated to her home state. “This is my love song to Kentucky,” Dale Ann says. It was such an honor and a milestone in my career to get to work with these Kentucky artists.”