Photos by Erica Techo
Anna Grace Beatty performs at the 18th annual Mt Laurel Spring Festival in April. Beatty’s debut EP, “Burn You Up,” was released Oct. 12.
For 16-year-old Anna Grace Beatty, unearthing her sound took some time — and some serious commitment to developing her voice and recognizing her roots where she was born and raised: Birmingham.
“[My sound] definitely now absorbs a little bit of everything that I listen to and everything that I am exposed to,” she said.
Since the Mt Laurel native figured out her “southern pop rock” sound, she’s hit the ground running with it.
Beatty’s debut EP, “Burn You Up,” was released Oct. 12 and features five songs, including her hit single “Ain’t No Man,” which has been played on Birmingham Mountain Radio since the beginning of the summer.
At their core, the songs on the EP are rock, both in terms of “instrumentation and in the spirit of them,” she said, but they're also pop songs as far as melody and “ear wormy” quality. Plus, her hometown roots “peek in,” she said, in how much her voice was influenced by southern culture.
Michael Abrams, who began teaching guitar to Beatty in March 2016, said she learned the basics of chord structures quickly. Instead of seeking to play other artists’ songs, he said “she expressed an interest of writing songs of her own.”
“I was struck by her talent in this area and her ability to write meaningful and relatable lyrics,” he said, adding that she displayed a commitment to making music long-term.
Locally, she’s played at the downtown Art Walk, the Magic City Art Connection, Mt Laurel Spring Festival and other nearby cities like Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. For her EP release show, she performed at Workplay Theatre with fellow singers and song-writers Rachael Roberts and Chelsey Whild.
“It’s really been kind of overwhelming for me, to see the people that come and talk about how they enjoy it and they want to hear the music,” she said. “That means a whole lot to me, and I’m excited to finally have something tangible for people to have and go find online and listen to.”
For the last couple of years, Beatty has been homeschooled and able to work on finishing school early, as well as her dual enrollment courses in college. This December, she hopes to graduate high school and then take two years of online college classes — a deal she struck up with her parents — as she tours across the Southeast playing her EP songs and trying out some new ones.
Previously, Beatty said, she had a very different sound, one that was more pop-based with songs that weren’t about her personal life or the southern culture she grew up in, which are both aspects she now incorporates into music.
“It’s been really interesting for the last 18 months” since her first recording attempt, Beatty said.
It was “life-changing,” she said, after they did the first session and determined that she loved recording like she loved writing and playing music.
“I knew I had wanted to do this before [recording], but after that, it was a full-on obsession,” she said. “I couldn't think about anything else.”
Beatty, who has been writing songs and playing guitar for almost 11 years, in addition to having a classical piano background, said writing has always been “kind of an obsession” for her. When she first fell in love with it, she used to write for almost three hours every day.
A couple of years ago, Beatty was introduced to her current producer, Brad Lyons, and they worked for a while writing together and then tried out recording in a studio. When he suggested she make an EP, Beatty got to work.
She spent months getting a new body of work together, but after she returned to the studio and did a couple of sessions, Lyons wasn’t convinced the songs represented her sound amplified to its potential.
“So, we pulled the plug on the EP for the first original plan,” she said.
Instead, she would go into the studio every other week for over a year with Lyons and practice work tapes with just her acoustic guitar or keyboard paired with raw vocals.
“You see everything when you do that, and you hear everything,” she said. “It taught me a lot about my own voice vocally, and as a writer and as a guitar player and as a keyboarder, too.”
Beatty is candid — this part wasn’t always easy. She described it as difficult and revealing.
“You learn that you're not as good as you think you are once you have to hear it there, exactly how it is once it comes through the monitor. … So that took me back to the drawing board in all aspects of it. My songs got to where they were really different. I kept writing,” she said.
While she practiced, she worked to expose herself to different styles of music, and her producer continued to teach her more about what can happen in the studio. Beatty said her influences ranged from Jason Isbell to Paramore to Waxahatchee.
“Your voice starts to develop like crazy once you're under that microscope,” she said. “I kept doing that for a few months, and in January [of] this year, I took on ‘Ain’t No Man,’ my new single,” she said.
When Lyons heard it, he said it was time for them to restart the project.
“I think this is it,” he said — the sound she was looking for.
Beatty combined some tweaked versions of her older songs with some new ones and finished the five-song record in May, satisfied with her first step into the music industry. Even though she might have a long way to go, Beatty said, she is proud of her first finished product.
As she recorded her music, Beatty also got to know more people in the industry, which she said led to a lot of new relationships in the business and eventually influenced a lot of songs written for this record, as well as her next record.
Music changed everything in her life, she said, combined with “general growing up.” In the past, Beatty said she’s struggled to make friends, especially when she was in public school before homeschooling.
“But since I started making music, I have been lucky enough to make some friends that are like-minded, and I’ve been very, very fortunate to have some friends like that,” she said.
Additionally, her parents have always been very supportive of her, she said.
“That’s the only way I could have done anything that I’ve done up until this point,” she said.
She hopes to start recording a longer album next year. Beatty’s EP is currently available on Spotify. For more information, go to annagracebeatty.com.
