The Honky Tonk Girl is coming to the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her arrival on the music scene.
Loretta Lynn was introduced to listeners with her debut single, I'm a Honky Tonk Girl and since then has made over 160 songs, 60 albums, 10 No. 1 albums and 16 No.1 singles on the country charts. She is coming to the SOEC on Oct. 22.
Lynn plans on a night you won’t forget. She will celebrate by looking back at her 50 years in the country music industry.
“To make it in this business, you either have to be first, great or different,” said living legend Lynn in a press release. “And, I was the first to ever go into Nashville, singin’ it like the women lived it.”
Lynn’s instantly recognizable delivery is one of the greatest country-music voices in history, and no songwriter has a more distinctive body of work. As millions who read her 1976 autobiography or saw its Oscar winning 1980 film treatment are aware, Lynn is a coal miner’s daughter who was raised in dire poverty in a remote Appalachian Kentucky hamlet. She was honoured at the Kennedy Center in 2003, was inducted into the national Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008, and she also was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
One of the most remarkable things about Lynn is how she renews her creativity time and again. Two years after she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983, she was back on the charts with the hit, Heart Don’t Do This to Me. In 1988, the year she entered the Country Music Hall of Fame, Lynn recorded with K.D. Lang. She earned a Gold record in 1994 with Honky Tonk Angels, a trio CD with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette.
Lynn’s life is still a work in progress. She’s still out there on the road, still writing songs and still recording them as only she can.
“I ain’t a star — a star is something up in the night sky,” said Lynn. “People say to me, ‘You’re a legend.’ I’m not a legend. I’m just a woman.”
Tickets go on sale Friday, June 28 at 10 a.m. and can be purchased at www.ValleyFirstTix.com by telephone at 1.877.SOEC.TIX (763.2849) or in person at the Valley First Box Office (at the SOEC) and Wine Country Visitor Centre. Tickets for Loretta Lynn 50th Anniversary Tour are $34, $44 and $54 (plus applicable taxes and service charges/fees).