BAAM at The Gem welcomes country musician Denitia to Bethel on Friday, May 16th at 7:00 pm.

Texas-born and Nashville-based artist Denitia grew up outside Houston, immersed in school choir and learning multiple instruments. Influenced by country legends, praise and worship music, and alternative rock, she moved to Nashville for college and spent a decade in Brooklyn before returning to her country music roots. Her 2022 album, Highways, is an “alt-country ramble” acclaimed for its tuneful and melancholic nature. Denitia’s return to the genre earned her recognition as an Artist to Watch by NPR, a residency with Black Opry and WXPN, and inclusion in Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Class of 2023. Recently named a 2024 CMT Next Woman of Country and a 2024 Artist to Watch by Nashville Scene, she made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry in June 2024. Denitia’s upcoming album, Sunset Drive, is described as a louder evolution of Highways, weaving heartache, romance, and wanderlust into a bittersweet narrative about life’s journey.

To Denitia, music is a mirror. The songs she sings give audiences an opportunity to see themselves in her and connect over shared experiences and emotions. “We’re all people just trying to live our lives,” Denitia says, “and there’s so much of it that we have in common.” But Denitia also wants her music to give audiences an opportunity to connect with themselves. “If a song of mine helps someone reckon with their own emotional life or their own experiences, or it helps them experience empathy or open their mind or expand, that’s what I’m trying to do,” she adds. “I’m trying to make music I love that moves people while just being myself.”

Learn more about Denitia at: https://www.denitia.com/

Local musican Seth Gallant will open the show. Gallant grew up in a mill town to a family that played music on the front porch on almost any occasion. These traditions of folk, country, and Acadian music would shape the music that Gallant writes and performs today. Gallant is currently writing an album of songs based on the lives of those who came to settle the industrial towns of New England.

Seth Gallant opens at 6:00 pm

Denitia performs at 7:00 pm

Tickets are “Pay What You Can” starting at $0, benefiting future BAAM programming.