Georgia singer Willow Avalon returns home with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson

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Willow Avalon is a country singer from Carlton, Ga., who is making a splash with her songwriting and style.

Credit: Jesse DeFlorio

The Outlaw Music Festival arrives at Ameris Bank Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Ga., today, headlined by two living legends: Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.

Dylan and Nelson have performed in Georgia often throughout their seven-decade careers, and both were favorite musicians of former President Jimmy Carter. Now they have a new fan in Georgia, their opening act, Willow Avalon.

Avalon (née Martin), is the daughter of singer Jim White. She left Georgia a decade ago to chase her music dreams. Now, the 26-year-old country star is relishing her unusual homecoming in the Peach State amidst rock icons.

"It's always whenever you do a show of that kind of magnitude with your idols, it's always so nerve-wracking," the Carlton, Ga., native told GPB. "But then you also throw in having your whole crazy Southern family also be there, at that point. It's going to be something!"

Known for her frilly feminine style and cheeky lyrics, Avalon says her set list draws from Southern Belle Raisin' Hell, her debut Americana album released earlier this year.

The cover of that record features a mug shot from an old super-speeding arrest in Emanuel County. And inside are the pop melodies autobiographical stories like "Tequila or Whiskey" and "Homewrecker" that are boosting her profile globally.

"I would say 'Homewrecker' is verbatim, word-for-word something that I went through," she said of her popular single. "And then I would say my favorite song that I've ever written, that is very autobiographical also in a way of where like I was kind of the person that was not in the right, is my song called 'Baby Blue.' It was — it was about somebody that I, I hurt in a that I could have avoided, and you know, when he wouldn't answer my calls, I put a song on Spotify just to kind of explain to him and say I was sorry, and that was a perspective that I don't usually write from a lot."

Avalon said country songs sometimes write themselves, based on life experiences and choices like dropping out of high school to leave tiny Carlton, Ga. (population 300); sleeping in her car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot in Atlanta; and living on the edge in Los Angeles.

"I also had to like, kind of join the real world and start working when I was really young," she said. "And it got to a point where I was working, I would wake up at five o'clock in the morning, go and open a breakfast diner, bake the pastries, make the coffees, leave at 8:30 a.m., go to high school and leave high school early to go open my neighbor's Italian restaurant. I'd work there until 10 or 11 p.m., go home, sleep for three, four hours, wake up, do the next thing. The same day, over and over again.

"And it got to the point where I was just sleeping all day during school. And it was like, 'If they're not gonna cut me check for being here, like, I can go and I can drop out and I can work. And I did. And music was never something that was like a real thing, but it was something that I did in my bedroom, you know, at one o'clock in the morning to like de-stress."

Avalon said she has yet to fulfill her childhood fantasies of being a NASCAR driver, becoming a mother and playing the Ryman auditorium in Nashville. But singing for audiences at Outlaw Music Festival in sheds across the South is a dream come true. For today, at least, small town Georgia is on her mind.

"I think that a lot of times Georgia gets a bad rep because just people haven't gone," she said. "They haven't spent time there. They've gone to Atlanta or, you know, the other big cities. And I just would hope people would know how much kindness is there, and how much love and how the people that will give you the shirt off their back. And I was raised in it and it's my favorite place to come home to."

Willow Avalon performs at the Outlaw Music Festival on July 25 at America Bank Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Ga., at 4 p.m.