Lee Brice

The rugged feel of steel guitar and fiddle, the images of growing up in a world of fields and farms, of heartbreak and hard work … You can’t miss the fact that Lee Brice is country all the way.

It’s in his voice – think of it as honey trickling through lines of melody etched in leather – and in the images it conjures, of “country girls and redneck boys” anticipating the night to come in the sunset glow of a Dairy Queen (“Sumter County”), of growing up “on the edge of a cornfield” (“Picture of Me”).

And that makes one detail in his dream seem especially surprising.

“Ten years from now,” he says, smiling at the idea, “I’d love to hear my songs on the radio – on the rap stations, not just country.”

This sounds absurd, but only until you remember what makes Picture of Me one of the strongest debuts in any genre over these past several years. That’s when you realize that if anybody can make this happen, it’s this young man from backcountry South Carolina. His voice, his sound, even his wide-open grin are as country as they come – but his view of life is much broader than that.