Artist Caroline Jones performed at the Country Chrysler Performance Stage at WXCY on September 24 for one of the country concerts the station puts on each year.  10 minutes before her performance, there was a line looped around the building and through the door to fill up the space.

Three guitars were propped up on stage next to a harmonica and a couple of other instruments, but there were only three microphones. Jones has a three-person band, and she intended to use each instrument at least once.

When the audience found their seats, the popular country radio host Tyler Daniel introduced the artist with a little background and her growing list of accomplishments.

Caroline Jones is an up-and-coming singer/songwriter and musician who just recently went on tour with big names in the country genre. She has traveled and performed alongside The Zac Brown Band, Kenny Chesney, and Jimmy Buffett.

With a huge grin and acoustic guitar in hand, Jones took to the stage with her band. Her confident expression and casual vibe put the audience at ease as they sat back to enjoy her show.

At just 17 years old, Caroline Jones made the trip from her hometown in Connecticut to music central: Nashville, Tennessee. How does a girl from Connecticut end up in Tennessee singing country music? Jones explained that her father’s Southern roots introduced her to the sounds that called her to singing.

She started writing poems describing just about anything at an early age. She wrote about fishing with her dad and sisters and how he would joke, “Do you want to be a country girl or a city slicker?”

Jones explained that she wanted to be a writer, but when these poems became lyrics and later songs tied together with notes of her many different instruments, they formed a story like no other. It was the culture of storytelling that drew her country music. The genre’s casual, home-like feeling felt relatable and real to her.

After growing up listening to Classic Rock, R&B and artists like Jewel, Willy Nelson, and the Zac Brown Band, Caroline was hooked on becoming a musician, whether the world wanted her to or not. “My parents are supportive, I mean they would have been fighting a lost cause,” she joked.

She then set out to began her career by playing her music live and expressing her passion to much bigger audiences. Fast-forward to this past summer, and Jones had reached a multitude of personal goals, including some she did not see coming.

She stressed the importance of staying focused on “her craft” and going with the flow of where her career takes her, hopefully, to much bigger stages.