Blame it on her roots.

 Celeste Marie Wilson's Debut Album

Celeste Marie's grandmother gave her two clear instructions growing up: don't become a musician, and don't become a professional horseback rider. Celeste Marie did both. Southern American Princess, her debut album, is what you get when a girl ignores the sensible advice and listens to her blood instead.

And the blood runs deep. Celeste Marie comes from a multi-generational Texas family whose story is stitched into the state itself with land held since Texas gained it’s independence and a family that got here when it was still a part of Mexico. Her great-grandmother, Jessie Marie McCullough, was a poet and piano teacher who dreamed of standing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and never got the chance. Celeste carries her name, and, in a way, her unfinished dream. Southern American Princess is the sound of that dream coming back around three generations later.

Before the songs, there were the horses. Celeste grew up in the saddle and rode for the Sam Houston State University equestrian team on an athletic scholarship. The same discipline and quiet nerve it takes to, sit a jump, shows up in the way she sings: composed on the surface with a whole lot going on underneath. Whiskey in a teacup.

That phrase is the key to the whole record. Produced by Jim Reilley and rooted in the tradition of Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Bonnie Raitt, Southern American Princess looks like one thing and turns out to be another. There are the tender ones — "What Else Could I Need," a reflection on gratitude; "Willow," about a girl rescuing her younger self; "Swan Dive," about falling in love; "Jump and Fall," about an unlikely friendship; "One Way Ticket," about being scared of the road she's chosen. And then there are the ones with teeth. "Jesus, Tequila and Whiskey" skewers the people who look down on others for exactly what they do themselves. "You Can't Cage a Songbird" takes aim at the dark side of the music business. "Texas Cowboy" roasts the bar stars of the stockyard, and "Black Gold" turns its eye on the oil industry. Sweet on the surface, sharp underneath.

At the heart of it all is "Marie," named for the great-grandmother whose name Celeste Marie shares. It tells a true story of her great grandparents.  Gale a poor young man who rode the rodeo circuit to earn the money for a ring, and Jessie Marie the only daughter of a landowning family who eloped with him. They loved each other for the rest of their lives. It's the kind of song that explains the whole album in three and a half minutes.

Southern American Princess arrives this August on Celeste Marie’s own Little Dipper Record Company, distributed through Sony Orchard.