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Add these singer-songwriters to your playlist to support the all-women collective of local artists

By Jade Neptune

It was a warm, cloudy day in the summer of 2022. Fat drops of rain spattered against the pavement as the crowd at The Starling huddled together beneath the cover of the building, waiting for the show to begin.

CAROLINE LEMLEY has been singing for as long as she can remember—from a girl group with her friends (“Flygirl”) to the church choir, music has always been a constant. But when she stepped up to the microphone that night at The Starling, it was her first time singing in front of a crowd in years.

“One of my friends manages The Starling, and we were out sharing drinks one night. They were hosting a fundraiser that weekend, a bake sale, and they needed live music. So, a couple of PBRs in, I reluctantly agreed to play,” Lemley says. “I remember waking up the next morning being like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don't know that I can do this anymore.’”

On the day of the show, she remembers being a “mess,” fighting off a sickening combination of shaky nerves and self-doubt. There she stood in front of a crowd, wondering if she had what it takes to put on a show, when Mother Nature stepped in.

“My very first song, ‘Carolina in My Mind,’ first song I’ve played for anyone in years, and the wind blows and takes my paper away,” Lemley says, recounting the embarrassing experience. She stopped playing, grabbed the paper with her guitar chords written on it, and started again before the paper was whisked away once more by the mounting storm.

“Luckily, there were nice people there. They helped me pin my papers down,” Lemley says. “I said to myself, ‘Well, it can't go any worse than that.’”

And it didn’t—by the end of her set of eight songs, Lemley didn’t want to leave. This was the beginning of her blossoming career as a singer-songwriter based in Wilmington, a place where she has found community among other creative women who have built Wilmington’s sound.

One of these women is her friend and occasional collaborator, RACHEL GORE. Gore and Lemley have known each other since they met at John T. Hoggard High School, where they won the talent show for their joint musical act. Since then, they have performed together several times locally and often attend a female collective for songwriters called For the Roses, a cohort that strives to increase the visibility of women artists in Wilmington.

“The community in Wilmington of female musicians is so refreshing,” Gore says. “I think coming from living in a place like Nashville, where everyone moves there to do the same thing, to do music, it's highly competitive and can often be very cutthroat.”

Gore attended Belmont University in Nashville, an institution known for its music program. Since returning, she has been welcomed back to Wilmington with open arms.

“I knew in coming back to Wilmington that I wanted to be a part of a music community that was not like Nashville,” Gore says. “I wanted a community that was collaborative, encouraging and uplifting. The female musicians in this scene are exactly like that. They’re all just cheering each other on, coming to each other's shows, promoting each other's gigs on social media and sharing each other's music when it's released, playing with each other for gigs.”

For Gore, this was exactly what she needed.

EMILY BURDETTE, another local singer-songwriter, left Nashville looking for the same thing.

“There are a lot of people who want to sing and write songs and play music, but in Nashville, it’s kind of challenging to do that,” Burdette says. “I want to be able to stand out, to be able to get as many gigs as I need to.”

In Wilmington, Burdette has been able to do just that with the support of other women in the community, largely due to her own songwriting circle that she hosts with friends.

“I was trying to bring something [collaborative] to Wilmington because Wilmington is a very creative film town. So I had this thought—why can't we have that in the music?” Burdette says.

Now, this dream is a reality.

“Every second Sunday, people come in my living room and share music and share stories, just as a way to drive that community and get more women connected with each other so that they can write together or start bands together or just have someone to bounce ideas off of when it comes to writing music,” Burdette says.

They have each other, but if they ever get stuck, they know where to go.

“It’s the beach,” Lemley says. “It’s something you can take for granted, especially when you grow up here, but it's really the quiet moments. It’s the moments in early spring and late fall where you can go sit in the lifeguard tower at a sunrise that’s most conducive to my creativity.”

Find Caroline Lemley, Rachel Gore and Emily Burdette on social media (or the lifeguard tower at sunrise) to get more information on where to see them live.