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Former Clydesdale singer Paige Overton embraces her solo muse

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Paige Overton
Photo: Christopher DeVargas

Las Vegas singer-songwriter Paige Overton has the kind of voice that brings people together, and on her debut EP, the singer hopes to empower listeners to have more compassion.

“I wrote and recorded this thing a couple years ago, but I was kinda stuck in my life,” Overton says of her new release, Already Long Gone. “I’ve really been working on myself for the last two years, really overcoming some hurdles and getting to a really good place in my life of wanting to move forward with music.”

Overton is a well-known name on the Las Vegas music scene, having spent more than a dozen years fronting cowpunk quartet The Clydesdale. “After The Clydesdale, I felt a little stunted,” she says. “It’s like being in a marriage for 13 or 14 years and figuring out how to date again.”

Overton’s EP puts the musician standing in her own spotlight for the first time, with her signature stirring vocals at the fore. And while the four songs might not have a unifying theme, they are bound together—by a country twang and a humble openness.

“I just write from my experiences,” Overton says. “Writing has always been cathartic for me, and at the time I was just out of a relationship and had a couple of not-wonderful dating experiences and was searching for myself. I was married at one point, and after I got divorced. … I just wanted to figure out who I was and what I wanted.”

Overton says the track “Wife Boy,” about pining after a married man, was controversial when she began playing it live before the pandemic.

“People were like, ‘He had a wife; why were you talking to him?’” Overton recalls. “I want these songs to open people to being vulnerable. I’ve totally been in that situation where I was like, ‘I’m a good person, and yet I feel attracted to this [unavailable] person and I’m kind of dancing on the line of things—maybe I just need attention or maybe my hormones are raging.

“Sometimes we lose our sense of self,” she continues. “I just wanted to say, that’s so normal, and it’s fine and I celebrate it. I celebrate all the steps I take in life, whether they look good or they don’t.”

In owning her stories, Overton turns the mirror back on her audience. We all make mistakes—it’s how we acknowledge and grow from them that matters.

“I believe that music heals and art heals,” Overton says of that growth, which is palpable on Already Long Gone. “We just need more love, and that’s what I’m hoping for—more compassion and understanding in this world.”

PAIGE OVERTON instagram.com/paigeovertonmusic, facebook.com/paigeovertonmusic

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