The sky’s the limit on fun!
2008 Pellissippi State Hot Air Balloon Festival
‘Countrypolitan’ Laura Bryna takes stage Friday
 If you haven’t heard of country artist Laura Bryna yet, you’ll soon get an opportunity.
One of the newest singing sensations to come out of Nashville, Bryna will be the Friday headliner at the 2008 Pellissippi State Hot Air Balloon Festival. This year’s event is Friday and Saturday, September 26 and 27.
The festival runs 4-10 p.m. both days. Admission is $5 per person, per day; children 5 and under are free. Bryna’s 9 p.m. performance follows the Friday night balloon glow.
The petite singer with the big voice recently enjoyed one of the splashiest debuts in country music history when her first album, ”Trying to Be Me,” was introduced with much fanfare at the Luxor Hotel’s celebrity-studded LAX nightclub in Las Vegas earlier this year.
A Maryland native, Bryna calls her style “Countrypolitan,” a combination of funky and chic, but with the glamour and style of a Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette.
“I’ve always loved what country music stands for—simple, beautiful melodies and strong lyrics about life,” she said. “It’s so relatable.”
The first single from “Trying to Be Me” is “Make a Wish,” which Bryna co-wrote. It’s partly autobiographical, she says. At 13, her brother was in a coma for six months, the result of an aneurysm.
“My mother and I spent hours listening to the sounds of Patsy Cline and others on country radio as we drove back and forth to see my brother in the hospital in D.C.
“Country music really got us through some very rough times. The songs are about real-life experiences, similar to what my family was going through.”
Bryna has had extensive training as a performer to develop her powerful, crystal-clear voice. While still in high school, she was tapped to join the Kennedy Center’s Summer Drama Workshop, traveled with renowned African a cappella singing group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and graduated from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, studying acting, singing and dance.
After graduation, she packed up her car and headed for Nashville, where she enrolled in music classes at Belmont University while working at Sony Tree Publishing and later at DreamWorks Publishing.
The unprecedented multimillion-dollar multimedia and publicity campaign in Las Vegas included two 20-story images of Bryna on the Luxor and Excalibur hotels. Her appearance at the LAX was the first by a country artist in a venue dominated by entertainers like Britney Spears and Usher.
As if Bryna’s vocals aren’t impressive enough, she’s also quite the “fashionista.”
“Singing is fun, performing is fun,” she said. “Part of that fun is being able to dress up, blow-dry my big head of hair and put on a pair of Jimmy Choo’s. It doesn’t get much better than that!”
In a world where new artists seem to roll off a cookie-cutter assembly line, Bryna and her promoters feel she breaks the mold. She speaks fluent French, dabbles in archaeology and dubs herself “the crazy bird lady of Nashville,” thanks to the three exotic parrots who live with her.
“There are a lot of good things coming up, so this has all been really exciting for me,” she said.
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