Gabby Barrett left Pittsburgh for Nashville, by way of “American Idol,” as a “next Carrie Underwood” kind of a gal, and she’s been richly rewarded for that as a major-label platinum artist and ACM winner.

To her credit, there are countless “next Carrie Underwoods” in those parts and Barrett had to work hard and be special to make her name.

But what becomes of the artist who goes to Music City as more of a “next Loretta Lynn”? It’s certainly a tougher road and a less likely path to fame and fortune.

Angela Autumn left Pittsburgh in the fall of 2019 with those kinds of roots.

The locals here at the Honky Tonk Jukebox knew we lost a gem, and down in East Nashville, they knew they gained one.

Saving Country Music, whose mission is there in the title, described Autumn’s 2021 album “Frontiers Woman” as being “like passing through a time portal…like opening up an old attic trunk, or stepping into an abandoned mill or frontier cabin and beholding its wonders from a place and time distinctly foreign from our own.”

Elsewhere, Autumn, who plays a homecoming show at The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls this weekend, is described as an “Appalachian-born musician,” her slice of it being a Butler County town 28 miles from Pittsburgh.

How did this talent emerge from Zelienople?

If you Google “Angela Mignanelli” (her real name), the first thing that comes up is track and field results from Duquesne University with a photo of a bright-eyed Angela looking nothing like the sad-girl musician.

It was in her, though, going back to her teenage years. Quickly trying to do the math, I ask her if Taylor Swift had anything to do with it.

“I mean, do we have to mention Taylor Swift?,” Autumn says. “She has enough. She has ENOUGH….

“OK, OK, OK, OK,” she continues, “Here's what happened. No. What I wanted to say is when I was 12, I loved everything. That's when I started to perform. But when I was 16, I got my harmonica and I got my old ’60s folk music and bluegrass.

“Write this, write this in the article: I found bluegrass at the Park House, in the North Side. That changed my life. That literally changed my life.”

That was when she was 20, around the same time as the track and field photo. In those years before that, she was record shopping with her dad.

“I was going down to [effing] Jerry's Records and Dave's Music Mine with my dad and getting all this s--t and like collecting it and listening in my basement and practicing to like Hank Williams or Bob Dylan or, you know, like [effing] Loretta Lynn, whatever.

“I was home and when I moved to Pittsburgh, I would go over to the Park House and, to me, that was the best thing that could have happened, hearing that music. I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of like the music that I'm making,’ but I didn't know that.”

Click the arrow on her 2018 EP, “Rascal,” and 20 seconds in Autumn hits a delicate high note with a little yodel, and you’re already sold on her skills. Keep going and you encounter her fluid fingerpicking guitar and banjo work and a gorgeous vocal tone that lays perfectly in that range between trad country and hipster indie-pop.

“Rascal” was recorded at The Church studio in Pittsburgh with producer Dave Hidek and two members of The Commonheart, bassist Anton DeFade and guitarist Mike Minda.

It was released in July 2018, just a few months after she lost her father to pancreatic cancer.

Over the next year, she says, “I was at a crossroads of my life. I had just graduated from college and I was always gigging throughout my school years when I lived in Pittsburgh. I had to kind of grow up and say, ‘Do I want to have, like, a ‘career career’ or am I going to go do this thing that I've always felt like I should do?’ ”

She chose the latter and moved to Nashville, by herself, to conquer Music City — just in time for the pandemic to hit.

“Honestly, I was a complete mess for like the first two or three years of being here. I was just so confused, like, emotionally lost, wading, wading through a bunch of garbage that, you know, comes with being a musician and also my own grief.”

It wasn’t all a mess, though, because she took her talents to the popular Honky Tonk Tuesdays at the American Legion Post 82 in Nashville. There was no moment where some label rep came up and handed her a business card.

“That would give me the heebie-jeebies,” she says.

Instead, she met musician friends, leading to the recording of her 2021’s “Frontiers Woman,” an album that garnered positive press and airplay on Nashville’s roots station WMOT.

In 2022, she followed that with the six-song “My Blank Pages” (which she later rebranded as “Cowboy Jack Clementine” on Spotify) recorded at the Sound Emporium, down the hall from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

“We weren't really supposed to talk to them,” she says, “but I saw Alison and I saw Robert Plant [in the hall] and he was talking about Jimmy Page.”

While “Cowboy Jack Clementine” stayed mostly in the country-folk lane, the single “Dancer” veered more in the indie direction, prompting a review from Aquarium Drunkard, saying, “It’s a bit of a departure from the Appalachian-inspired folk of last year’s excellent ‘Frontiers Woman,’ but the markings of old weird Americana continue to gleam through the sonic development with each note she sings.”

“It’s a tastemaker website,” she says, “ and they liked it, so that was a big honor for me. It definitely keeps me motivated.”

In her first few years in Nashville, Autumn made ends meet with nanny and restaurant jobs. Now, she’s doing music full time, funding some of her releases with Kickstarter, while sharing the rent with three roommates.

Her latest single, “Electric Lizard,” follows “Dancer” into that shoegazey, indie realm. It was inspired by an encounter at Post 82, which she finds to be less authentically country than when she first got there.

“I was in the Post 82 bathroom,” she says, “and there was a girl in there and she looked like a punk and she was talking about her hair, which was dyed banana yellow, and she said this color is Electric Lizard.

“And so, after this weird night is over, I'm processing everything, like just how much everybody was so dressed up, dressed to the nines, and I went home to my little room. I think I was pretty sad about something, and I wrote the song that night.”

Her evolving style, she says, “is about finding who I am because I started playing country music when I was 16 and I started performing when I was really young and sometimes you start to do what other people expect from you and play into an image.

“As I uncover different layers of my identity, even aspects of darker things that have happened to me — and feel safe to do so — I feel like the music starts to reflect that. I'm not hiding anything anymore, so it's a little bit grittier and more indie. I still love traditional music but it's just not what is coming through right now.”

She has about 10 more songs to come in that vein and some of the next ones will be “really grungy,” she says.

Moving forward, she has a new manager who is booking festival gigs for her and moral support from friends like Sierra Ferrell, a like-minded Rounder artist who’s worked with Sarah Jarosz, Billy Strings, The Black Keys and Zach Bryan.

Being in a town teeming with singer-songwriters with eyes on the prize forces you to keep your spirits up however you can.

“There’s a fine line between being confident and having humility,” Autumn says, “because I could have imposter syndrome all the time seeing all these amazing artists and creatives and comparing myself. And I have, I have, but my self-esteem around my art is, like, it trusts that when the cycle for me is out, when I'm no longer supposed to be making music or my life transitions, that will be OK and and it will be graceful.

“But while I'm making music, I'm so happy to do it.”

The show is at 8 p.m. Friday with Dallas Ugly. Tickets are $15 advance; $18 at the door; mrsmalls.com.

Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com

First Published: February 27, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: February 28, 2024, 3:58 p.m.