Music Nation is a Music Video Competition for Independent Artists

Theres not much thats very usual with KREE HARRISON. Call her an old soul or, even better, a 30 year-old trapped in a 18 year-olds body and you will get a very gnarly teenage denial. But theres no denying it aint your average kid-next-door story. It is a path already with enough rocks in the road and heartbreak for any good 30 years of life. In a singers Manifest Destiny she was born in the same hospital as Janis Joplin. By age three her remarkable talent was plain to more than a biased family. But by age six it had her onstage in a regular gig. In Beaumont, Texas, about 45 miles from her hometown of Woodville, there is a multi-room club called Main Street with the every-town country bar, the Broken Spoke Saloon. Here she reeled off the hits of her heroes-among them Percy Sledge, Stevie Ray Vaughn & Pasty Cline-once a week. At eight a friend-shot video of a weekly Spoke installment got her on the Rosie ODonnell show. She notched four appearances on Rosies show by the time she was 12. It led to Rosie singing a Christmas duet of "Do You Hear What I Hear" on a compilation along side Rascal Flatts, SheDaisy and Sonya Isaacs. At the same time the treks to New York for Rosie started, so did the assault on Nashville. In her first trip she met with power management and producers and by age 10 she had landed a deal with Disney upstart Lyric Street Records. "It was very exciting," Kree recalls. Not for long, though. "They very quickly started talking about a Disney sitcom to launch a pop singing career for me. It really helps to hear her drawl this: Suddenly I was singing music that wasnt the sound I wanted to make, which was traditional country. Thats why I came to Nashville to begin with." Fate works in mysterious ways. As her first brush with career confusion set in, her world was rocked by news that would crush the dreams of any 30 year-old: her dad has been killed in a plane crash. That October of 2001 she did what no aspiring pre-teen singer with a deal would do; say bye-bye to Nashville and the record-deal-in-hand. "I just shut down, she states matter-of-factly. "I went back to Texas to figure it all out. There was going to be plenty of time to do that other stuff. I needed to heal." Two years on, then a well-seasoned 14 year-old girded by a new inner strength, Kree returned to Nashville. She was introduced to Trey Bruce, a musical troubadour whom she had met in the late stages of her deal with Disney. He had recognized her smoldering dissatisfaction with the off-kilter corporate destiny being wrapped incongruously around her. He politely opted out knowing nothing sustainable would result. "I could tell she was incredible but I wasn't convinced she was doing the music she came here to do," Trey explains. Immediately they started writing which naturally evolved into recording that has blossomed into a record deal. The new music is a high-def reflection of what Kree came to conquer those many years ago. Arguably its the "Book of Kree-ation." There is a sweet-yet-swaggering, heart-honed determination of lifes reckoning & rewards. The titles say it all: Home Follows Me, As Young As Me, (Gonna Have To) Cut Me Loose, Im Blue & Room Full of Roses. They sing the story of life shed in the soul of the exhilarating and the excruciating; tempered as steel, soft as silk; guided by a North Star of wisdom she shouldnt be tall enough to see yet but moving resolutely forward in commanding possession of the path it has charted for her. In the end perhaps the range of conversation with Kree is less surprising than it would first seem. She chose to put the first brass ring down only to pick up another. She is more for the loss of someone she loved the most. And this time she is singing music she loves and writes. She may still be too young to vote but not too young to know when the time is finally right. Check your watch. Its Kree Time! John Dotson