MADDIE LENHART

Undiscovered Nashville’s ‘Pre-Famous’

Saturday July 15, 2023

@ The Clubhouse at Sonny’s in Nashville, TN

(Review By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

A snapshot of any given weekend in Nashville will show you a picture of the entire Lower Broadway district hopping with a heaping helping of excited tourists, all soaking in the jukebox covers spewing out from the neon dreamers who play the many bars that litter the famous strip.

But for the locals and the true music aficionados who are clamoring for original compositions, the stories behind the songs, and more of listening room type of experience, then the quaint Clubhouse inside the Germantown hotspot Sonny's Patio Pub & Refuge is arguably the place to be.

Nearly two months into their Saturday night summer residency, Undiscovered Nashville continued to bring the strongest talent you need to know to their stage with a lineup this past weekend that included (amongst others) Tanner Cherry, Revie, Ryan Boey, Katie J, and Maddie Lenhart.

Lenhart, who is widely recognized for songwriting expertise and incredible work with the very popular Song Suffragettes, expertly used her three selections as a bold showcase that offered a look into the different sides of who she is as a songwriter, while intriguingly teasing what will be her first foray into an artist spotlight.

"This first one, Instagram has seen but Nashville has not," told Maddie as she opened with "Shooting Stars," poetically crying through the emotional impossibilities of trying to move on from a broken heart, cleverly bringing her voice into its higher register to capture the frustration punch at the perfect moment of the chorus while craftily making sure to keep her vocal edges soft enough to fully grasp the hurt embedded into the lyrics.

"Overthinking," her second selection of the night, then saw Lenhart shift away from the soft touch of “Shooting Stars” and gracefully move into a toe tapping tempo drive, putting on a pure vocal display as she injected a touch of confident sass into a lyric which saw her transparently facing the mirror to move on from a toxic relationship while re-finding herself in the process of letting go.

"This last song is really special to me because it's going to be the first song I'm putting out as an artist," Maddie excitedly shared before playing "Sober," which saw her pouring the unbridled emotion of her show stopping voice into the soft melody as she pulled us through the heart tugging lyric of a moment when a shared kiss meant everything to her, only to have her heart crushed when she painfully found out that it was nothing more than a drunken mistake to him.

Maddie Lenhart is one of those talents on the songwriting scene who’s been doing everything right as she’s continually working her craft, getting stronger as a writer, performer, and vocalist. The raw power of her voice and her extremely impressive know-how of using the proper tilts within it to fully grasp the emotion of the lyrics allows her to consistently strike the listener in the feels and hold their attention.

Couple these very strong attributes with the tease of her first single as an artist, and a buzz of excitement is about to surround Maddie Lenhart as heightened anticipation will continue to blossom within the songwriting community and surround her with the mystique of being one to watch.

FULL SET LIST
1) Shooting Stars
2) Overthinking
3) Sober

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