Belle Frantz’s love of music began in her grandfather’s workshop, where she was given the important job of picking out country CDs to play. Those afternoons spent singing along to legends like Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn helped shape her love for country music, while discovering Reba McEntire as a young girl gave her the inspiration to pursue a career of her own.
At 23, the Mississippi native is carving out a path in Nashville, while staying true to her authentic self. She signed her first major record deal at 20 and went on to release several traditional country songs before finding a new audience on TikTok with gospel hymns that brought her back to her childhood of singing in church with her grandparents.
The positive response she received from fans encouraged her to take the idea further. What started as a few recordings eventually turned into her 17-song debut album, Hymns From A Barstool. The project also brought together two major acts that she has admired for years, Reba McEntire and Wynonna Judd, along with help from Ashley Monroe, Meg McRee, Larry Strickland and Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook and Karen Fairchild.
The album is woven together with moments and memories of Frantz’s story, creating an overall reflection of faith, family and the power of music. Produced by Gena Johnson, Hymns From A Barstool gives Frantz the opportunity to share a different side of herself while staying connected to the country roots that brought her to Nashville in the first place.
Keep reading to learn more about Belle Frantz early influences, the challenges she faced after moving to Nashville, working with her musical heroes, building out her debut album and more.
Can you talk about your early memories of listening to music in your grandfather’s workshop growing up?
So both my grandparents lived on the same land as us. And when my parents went off to work, I’d either go hang out with my grandmother at her house, my grandparents’ house, or I’d go to my granddad’s shop. And I figured out very quickly that the reason my granddad would want to spend his time at the shop is because he wanted to get away from my grandmother because he was retired, he wasn’t working, but he always wanted to find something to do with his hands and work. And so he’d hang out at the shop and do that. But when I was there, I’d go hang out with him. I couldn’t just sit there. He was like, “You got to have a job, so my job was to put CDs in the CD player.” And it was Merle [Haggard], Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Conway Twitty, all these people were so amazing. And I just would take that job seriously. And if I didn’t like a song, I’d skip over it. I’d take it out. As soon as that CD went in, I’d put another one in. I was ready. And I just remember singing along to those songs with him. That was kind of my fondest memory of learning about country music.
Which artist at the time would you say made the biggest impact on you?
He passed away when I was like 12 years old. I was going through my CDs because I coined him as my best friend and I was going through those CDs and there was one that we had never listened to before and it was Reba McEntire, The Last One to Know album. And I put it in my CD player and immediately on the first song and I was like, “I got to do this.” And I lost my best friend, but I gained a new one. And Reba is someone who I’ve just looked up to my whole life. Since that moment, I just am obsessed with her and I love her music so much and she’s really taught me how to be an artist and as a person and I just love it. And a lot of it, once I heard her too, it was just this new sound like, “Oh, I want to do this.”
Can you recall where some of your earliest performances were?
I think my first performance, I could be wrong about this, but I think one of my first ones that was a big thing like solo was the national anthem when I was 18 years old and it was so bad. I mean I thought I did good at the time, but now I’m like delete that video from the internet. I was so scared. When I found out that I wanted to sing around 12, when I heard Reba, I was so scared someone would tell me I was bad at it, and I couldn’t do it. So I would not sing in front of anyone. I wouldn’t sing from my mama or nobody. My brother would hear me sing in my room. My mom would hear me singing anytime they would try to come in or get me to sing in front of them. I was terrified too and so I wouldn’t. But then I learned how to play guitar and I started kind of singing in front of my mom when I was about age 16. I actually think the first performance I had before that…that was me really stepping out and being like, okay, I’m going to do it…in that moment I felt like I was doing it in front of the world even though it was just 30 graduates that we were graduating with and their families. There were a lot of people.
Actually, we had this restaurant where our school was in Hamilton Mississippi and it was called Tags and these old people would get together every Tuesday and this old guy taught me how to play guitar. And so he would take me with him and every Tuesday we would go and sing at this little restaurant. I would be the youngest person there and it’d be all old people in the restaurant and then it’d just be us playing in a little band and I’d get up and sing a song or two but mainly I was just there to play guitar but I did have moments where I’d sing a little bit. That was probably my first time singing though.
What were the next steps you took towards pursing music full time?
It was definitely crazy. After I did the anthem, I really started putting myself out there. I went to college and I realized I did not love college. I was like I do not want to be here. The first semester I did it in person but then I finished college online. When I was there at college I did this thing called I Could See the Voice that was at Itawamba Community College in Mississippi. I won that and then it gave me a newfound confidence to go play out in front of people. I was like okay, I feel good. And this guitar player that I knew from back home, he lived on the same street as me. I was like, “Hey, I’m not that great at guitar yet. I can’t play four-hour shows. Can you come help play with me?” He’s like, “Well if you book the shows and you learn to pick these songs so we can play for four hours, I’ll do it with you.” And so I did all that and we were playing in Mexican restaurants, any bars I could find. And then when I was doing that after I moved home and was doing college online, I was also working as a receptionist at a hospital and then I was a maid as well cleaning people’s houses. I was doing all that to save up money to move here in 2023 when I was 20.
You were just 20 when you signed your first major record deal. What was that transition like, and how did you navigate such a big shift in both your personal life and your career?
I started going live on TikTok and posting on TikTok and that’s how that record label discovered me. And so when I came up here and I met with them a few times and I was like, I’m going to sign with them. I moved up here in that timeframe and…I thought it would be easy because I was like, oh it’s fun. I’ve always wanted to do this. I came up here and consciously I was so fine. I was like I’m so excited to dive into writing and all the things. But then I think somewhere in me my life was just flipped upside down so it was all new and I wasn’t coming to terms with it that it was new. I was just excited to get going and I started getting very bad panic attacks. It was freaking me out and I didn’t know why I was getting them but after a few months of me living here they went away. I was so excited to move here. I think just my excitement moving here probably freaked my body out but it was definitely a huge change, whether I like to admit that or not, but I love Nashville so much and now it’s home.
What inspired you to explore gospel music on your debut album, Hymns From A Barstool?
To be truthful, it’s not that my listeners didn’t expect me to go in this direction. It was more so what I was afraid of was Nashville being like, “What is she doing?” And that’s kind of how it’s been. I love Nashville so much, but it’s that just like, “Oh, this is uncharted territory kind of thing because it was really last year when I was sitting at those roadblocks. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, “Well, I can’t really make music right now so I’m just going to, in my mind, go back home. Growing up to seeing those hymns in church with my grandparents, I love to sing hymns and that’s the time I felt closest to my gift and closest to God. But I was never singing in front of church. I was just always singing in the back pew and I loved it. And then I started to sing them on TikTok last year, not thinking anything, but the video started doing really well and people were commenting like, “This put me back home. This reminds me of my grandparents. I don’t even believe in this, I felt something from this and I felt like I was taken back home.” I was like, “Oh, that’s all we want to do as singers.” I was like, there is an audience for this it seems like. And then that little thing in my head was like, “You got to do gospel.” I was like, “No, I can’t do that because I’m a country music singer.” I want to sing about country music and the life that comes along with it. Then I was really thinking, it wouldn’t leave me alone.
What made you decide to take the leap and fully lean into that gospel sound for this project?
I went to this place in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. It’s this beautiful place out the middle of nowhere. I was sitting in this restaurant called Country Boys and I ran into a few people that had known in the industry. I told them about my circumstance and how I wanted to do this, but I was kind of holding back from it. They were like, “Oh, well next door they used to do this thing at Fox & Locke, which is a bar. After church, every Sunday they would go sing hymns and drink beer. I was like, “I love that.” I was like, “Okay, I’m convinced that I can do a gospel.” “Hymns From A Barstool,” I wrote that with Roger Springer, who’s one of the best songwriters in town, and went just full-fledged into the idea of doing it because I was like it’s so everyday people because I am not a poster child to do a gospel record. I love to drink. I love to have fun. I’m not always at church on Sunday, but I do talk to the Lord every day and I love the Lord. But I also don’t think that you have to be perfect for God to know you. I think that my whole intention with this album is I want everyone to feel welcome, everyone to feel like God meets them exactly where they are because I believe that.
How were you able to land a voice as iconic as Wynonna Judd on this album?
Wynonna was really the first one that got started to be on this record, and it was only going to be an EP because I just went to Elvis Presley’s childhood church, which is my great grandfather’s church. I just went there and recorded two songs in that church, and I just randomly got invited to a bonfire one day, and it just happened to be at Wynonna Judd’s house. I was like, “Okay, perfect.” Wynonna didn’t invite me herself, but someone that just knew her invited me and they invited me about two hours before I even came…So I saw her just across the land when we were all hanging out and people were just bombarding her, of course. When she sees me. she starts beelining towards me, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what do I say? What do I do?” I was like, “Hi, I’m Belle.” She’s like, “I know who you are.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, you do?” She was like, “What are you working on? I love your music.” I told her what I was doing. Then the girl that I came with she said, “She’s doing the gospel record and she just went to Elvis Percy’s childhood church and recorded there. You should be a part of it.” She looked at me, “Can I be a part of it?” I said, “Yes, you can.” We went and recorded in April, but after she said that she was going to do that, I was like, “We’re doing a full-blown album with this. This ain’t going to be an EP no more. I have a bigger idea for this now.”
The other big collaboration on this album is Reba McEntire. How did you go about asking her to be on “Reading Of Scripture”?
I was like, “I have Wynonna now I can ask Reba.” When I told Wynonna, when I was talking to her…I was like, “Let’s try to get Reba on here too.” I’d already gotten that idea after Wynonna said she was going to be on it. I was like, “Oh, now I got to ask Reba.” Then I asked Reba and she was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” She did it and it was just, I don’t know. It’s just been crazy. Larry Strickland from The Stamps who sang background with Elvis is on there. And that’s also Wynonna’s stepdaddy, basically. He was married to Niomi Judd. It’s just a really cool record and I love it so much.
“He Walks With Me” was the first song you recorded for the project, and it was also your grandmother’s favorite hymn. What was that experience like for you, knowing how much the song meant to her?
Well, that was all my producer, Gena Johnson, because I told her I wanted this album, and she took no time to be like, “Alright, let’s go. I’m going to book this girl to play keys. Her name is Jen Gunderman. She’s a great piano player.” And she played on this whole record. She’s like, “I got the girl booked. We’re going to go in these days.” I’m like, “Oh, here we go.” It was just that easy…Also, we had all the lights on and I was just thinking about my grandmother because that was her favorite song. Then “The Old Rugged Cross”, that was the first two songs recorded for this record. It was so surreal that it was happening and I was happy. I just thought about my grandmother because my grandmother, my granddaddy were the ones that brought me to church to sing those hymns, and it was really special to me. All of these songs in this record, they’re all so meaningful and so special and they all have their own little story behind them. Even the prelude and the reprise, my mother’s playing that and it’s really special. I always say, and I will forever say that this record is like my childhood record because it just was part of me. I think it is for a lot of people, whether they grew up in the south, whether they grew up in Chicago, whether they grew up wherever, I think a lot of people grew up going to church with their grandparents.
Even if they didn’t, they probably were sitting around with their grandparents and those songs were playing or something because I just had so many people connect with that and it’s just kind of been a universal story.
While out on the road with Carly Pearce this year, have you received any kind of good advice from her?
For sure. I think the best advice I received from her, we actually had dinner the other night because we had an off night and she took me to dinner and we had a few bottles of wine. But the advice she gave me was to just continue being myself throughout my career and to do what my heart tells me to do as an artist because we were talking about my gospel album and how I always wanted to do a hymn album, but I want to be a country artist. And the timing I chose for it, some people would say it’s bad timing. For me, it felt right. And she would always follow that feeling of what feels right to you and not what you think other people feel right.
Has it been hard at all to keep that mentality as an up-and-coming artist with so many opinions being thrown at you?
It’s really what you see is working. It’s always a constant thing of everyone’s like, “Okay, that works.” Industry people, but even artists are like, “How do we do that because that is working?” And I think if it’s something that’s not authentically you, it’s only going to work for a minute. But this career is so hard and it’s such a small percentage of an artist making it. So I just think I’m just going to do what I can as who I am for the longest I can and hopefully it works.
Fans can keep up with Belle Frantz on Instagram.