Mount Airy native Laura Bryna may soon join the ranks of Reba, Martina and Wynonna.
“I fell to the floor crying when I got the call,” Bryna said about the life-changing winter day in 2005 when Mike Kraski, president of Equity Music Group, signed her.
One album later, Bryna returns home from Nashville to open tonight for the visionary and 12-time Grammy winner Emmylou Harris. At the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the budding country singer will perform “grab your heart and squeeze” ballads as well as upbeat, sassy songs, she said.
The lyrics to the song “Country Roads” by John Denver remind Bryna of Maryland, where her mom still lives.
“It feels like every road in Howard County will bring me home no matter which one I?m on,” she said. “I miss my Old Bay and hard shell crabs. I ask my mom ?Can you FedEx them down?? It?s great to talk about home. It makes me cry just thinking about it.”
Tragic events in the rising star?s childhood could become classic country lyrics. When Bryna was 3 years old, her father perished in a car accident.
“As a result of the shock and trauma, my brother had an aneurism and was in a coma for six and a half months,” she said. “My mom and I would drive to the hospital listening to country songs about hope and pain. We were really going through a hard time and country music saved our lives.”
Bryna recently wrote and recorded a song for the Make a Wish Foundation, where she has volunteered for over a decade. The organization grants wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.
“[The children] have such a strong will, and deserve to have a dream,” she said. “I?m living my dream, they should be living theirs too.”
“Laura was always very concerned about others and wanted to make sure everyone was involved and included,” said Ryland Chapman, headmaster of Glenelg Country School in Ellicot City, where Bryna went to school. “She wanted all the girls to get along and feel like they belonged. That?s a trait you don’t find often in teenaged girls.”
All proceeds from tonight’s concert, sponsored by United Cerebral Palsy of Central Maryland, will fund the construction of a UCP facility in Owings Mills, UCP Chief Development Officer Debbie Daskaloff said.
Black Tie & Blue Jeans Concert with Emmylou Harris
» Saturday
» Fundraising dinner at 6:30, concert at 8 p.m.
» Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
1212 Cathedral St., Baltimore
» $50 to $300
» 410-484-4540, ucpdreams.org
