Newest Member Is Opry Old Soul

For Mandy Barnett, membership has been a long time coming

When Mandy Barnett was told while performing at the Grand Ole Opry on Sept. that she would become the institution’s newest member, the invitation came from one of the Opry’s longstanding veterans, Connie Smith, who was inducted in . But Barnett can just about go toe-to-toe with Smith as an old soul.

As someone who’s been performing at Opry shows for the past € years, Barnett (who starred in the long-running stage show “Always … Patsy Cline”) has been one of the under-ˆ crowd’s foremost standard-bearers for traditional country music.

“It’s a wonder I didn’t just go backward,” says Barnett, who thought the Opry was going to make a big deal out of her birthday that night, and not ask her to join the hallowed ranks. It was especially sweet, she says, getting the news from “Connie, just one of the greatest singers that ever lived, and such a sweetheart — she’s everything you want her to be.” But, she admits — as someone who was a regular guest of Porter

Wagoner’s and beloved by the Opry’s elder statesmen — “it’s kind of a lonely feeling … I think part of what made me cry was thinking of how a lot of the people who were supportive of me aren’t around anymore to see it.”

But, she also confesses, Opry membership had “just kind of been looming in my head for many years, as you could imagine. Now that I can start to think about some other things, I’m just tickled,” she laughs.

She enjoys having a duty: “Hopefully I can be a reminder of the past. Because there’s room for everyone at the Opry; if you like country-rap or bro-country, that’s fine. It is difficult to try to maintain the past when you’re moving forward and making progress for young people. But there are so many great songs that should be sung and cherished for years to come. So if I can get up there and sing one that people haven’t heard in a while, and it brings back a good memory or makes them feel something, I’ve reached my goal.”