HunterGirl aims past American Idol, Lower Broadway success while seeking country stardom

Hunter Wolkonowski is a hard-working and God-fearing country music enthusiast born 90 minutes south of Nashville on the banks of bass-filled Tims Ford Lake near Winchester, Tennessee.

Finding the Middle Tennessee State University graduate seated in a Music Row conference room as a 19 Recordings/Wheelhouse Records-signed singer-songwriter who has crisscrossed America multiple times playing alongside Luke Bryan, Tracy Lawrence and Lainey Wilson tells just a fraction of her story.

She's also a 2022 American Idol runner-up and Nashville Songwriters Association International contest-winning songwriter. Her artistic development includes two decades of live performance experience, ranging from her grandfather's church at the age of three to roughly half the bars on Lower Broadway during her college career.

As a daughter and relative of those with Armed Forces service experience, she's worked with Freedom Sings USA. The nationwide program aids veterans in transforming their stories into songs.

"I put in the hard work by playing wherever and for whoever would have me," Wokonowski, 25, told The Tennessean.

"You can't plan for perfect timing, but working in Nashville prepares you to know the mechanics of live performing to be able to excel when the moment comes that you're faced with Luke Bryan and Katy Perry on national television," she said.

Growing from listening to Bryan's decade-old album "Crash My Party" on the CD player in her mother's Acura to standing before him, undaunted, at an American Idol tryout less than ten years later speaks to the trial-by-fire-type atmosphere of Lower Broadway's burgeoning entertainment scene.

"Prayer," said Huntergirl when asked what the other secret part of the process was that put her over the top and onto Wheelhouse Records' artist roster.

At the mention of religion's influence on her passionate creativity, a fuller picture of Hunter "Huntergirl" Wolkonowski comes into focus.

"I've talked with God about so much," she said. "Like, about how I love being exhausted after a long night of playing , wondering if I'm making the right life choices, everything -- and God always has the right answer for me."

Her new single, "Ain't About You," isn't the result of taking a hyper-analytic and scrutinizing eye to choruses and hooks. Instead, after a "45-minute conversation with Jesus," Huntergirl "peeled back her soul" and the song -- a soulful tearjerker of a ballad questioning if "tomorrow's the day those closed doors will open up" poured out of her, she said.

Mention that she's already a chart-topping artist via her American Idol-era single "Red Bird" (No. 1 on iTunes All-Genre and Country) and she's quick to note that it opened her to a more seasoned level of Nashville songwriters willing to aid in her desire to improve at her craft.

"I've worked for this my entire life," Wolkonowski said. "It doesn't matter if the words rhyme or the hook is good. To achieve the ability to write songs every day, you have to cherish -- before anything else -- making people feel honest emotions."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: HunterGirl aims past American Idol, Lower Broadway success while seeking country stardom