From Dell Rapids to Nashville, Julie Eddy strives to make her mark in music

Something clicked for Julie Eddy in 2021. 

The Dell Rapids native and Nashville transplant felt the twitch of a core career memory forming when she found herself in the rotation of a songwriter showcase in her adopted city’s famed Listening Room.

Such showcases are a rite of passage for Music City hopefuls, intimate affairs on small stages where a handful of songwriters play one after the other in a rotation that lasts around two hours. Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift cut their teeth in showcase shows — in their case at another iconic venue called the Bluebird Cafe. 

Eddy saw a show at the Listening Room during her very first trip to Nashville, one featuring artists who’d penned hits for stars like Keith Urban and Kelsea Ballerini.

Now, just a few weeks shy of finalizing her move from Minneapolis, she was on the same stage. 

“I remember sitting on that stool, looking out at the crowd and just feeling like, ‘oh my gosh, I’m doing that thing that I was so impressed by a few years ago,’” Eddy said. “I was like ‘I think I can hang my hat after this.’”

She didn’t, of course. A month later, she played her first full band show at The Basement, another experience that counts as a Nashville rite of passage. This summer, she released the first single from her first Nashville EP. Next month, she’ll come full circle when she takes the main stage at the Sioux Empire Fair to open for Justin Moore.

Five years ago, Eddy strapped on a guitar a few hundred feet from the grandstand to play her third and final set as free fair entertainment on the Front Porch Stage.

“And it’s just wild,” she said. “I’d always gone to concerts at the fair, and I always had this little thing about wanting to move away and do all this stuff that I never really talked about because I didn’t really know how to do it. I didn’t want anyone to be like: ‘Yeah, right. You’ll never do that.’”

Motivation for a life in popular country music was always there, but the guideposts were not. Eddy’s dad played guitar, and her mom “can carry a tune,” but neither were involved in the music business or had any insights on how to break into it. Her choir instructors at church and school offered encouragement and instruction, but they didn’t have record label contacts or lists of talent search competitions lying around.

So Eddy did what made sense: sang and played for anyone who would listen, every chance she got. Her first public performance was the national anthem, belted out before a baseball game at age 10. Three years later, she taught herself guitar by watching YouTube videos. In high school, she excelled in show choir, writing songs like journal entries between rehearsals and studying the phrasing of Miranda Lambert. She studied music theory for a few years at Augustana University, but “I didn’t really want to be a music teacher.” 

By age 21, she had a degree in cosmetology to pay the bills and a growing list of evening gigs in Sioux Falls-area bars, outdoor plazas and other performance spaces. 

There were plenty of those. Eddy looked up to other local musicians on that circuit, people like Elisabeth Hunstad and Micah Wetzel, both of whom remain fixtures in the regional music scene. Hunstad keeps a full schedule of shows; Wetzel owns Amari Studios and performs with Goodroad.

Those early experiences grounded Eddy in the idea that music is a community, not a competition. In Nashville, she’s part of a collective called Song Suffragettes that aims to advance equality in country music.

“I remember going to Elisabeth’s shows (early on) and saying: ‘Hey, how did you get booked here? I want to play here. Can you help me out?’” she said. “And that’s the beautiful thing about Sioux Falls. It’s the biggest city in the state, but it’s still a small town. Everyone’s so willing to help you out.  And I think I’ve just really wanted to take that with me everywhere I’ve gone, whether it be Minneapolis or now down here in Nashville: There’s room for everyone.”

Hunstad remembers those days too. It was clear early on that Eddy’s dreams played out on massive stages, Hunstad said. That she’s coming home with a Nashville EP in tow and a main-stage gig at the fair is proof that a career in music is worth working for, regardless of the shape that career takes. 

“I’m so happy to see her realizing the dream that she’s always had,” Hunstad said. “And it’s cool that we’re all still making a living playing music. Don’t believe anyone who tells you you can’t do this.”

Eddy collected encouragement from her Sioux Falls friends during those bar shows, but the most impactful words came from Dan+Shay at The District. The duo sold out the nearly 2,000-seat venue just before they broke big with their hit “Tequila,” and Eddy was the opening act.

“I remember them sitting with me and saying, ‘We remember when we were where you’re at,’” Eddy said. “And I was like, ‘Damn, I can do that.”’

And so she did. She moved to Minneapolis shortly after that show, playing as often as she could between day jobs as a personal trainer, a barista and a yoga instructor. Those jobs dried up during the pandemic, so Eddy told herself “it’s now or never,” packed everything she owned in a U-Haul and made the drive south with her 10-year-old Shih Tzu-Yorkie mix Nyla riding shotgun. 

It was a big leap. Nashville can be a kick in the confidence for a young artist, given the depth of talent in the city. But Eddy had a strong group of friends and collaborators there by the time she arrived, and it didn’t take long for her to find her sea legs.

“I think you just have to remember that nobody else is you,” she said. “As long as you stay true to what you feel and write what you feel into your music, you’ll find your way. You’ve just got to keep your head down and do the work.”