Hailey Whitters has an endearing habit of suggesting she’s perennially late to the party. “I’ve always just felt like a late bloomer,” she says, with a sigh that turns into a laugh.

She’s awfully hard on herself.

Whitters grew up in Shueyville, Iowa, population just shy of 600. “It’s such a little town. It’s getting bigger, but we don’t even have a post office,” she says. “We have two bars, a wine cellar, and a church.”

“I took my first trip to Nashville when I was 16 and fell in love,” Whitters continues. “I immediately knew I wanted to move here.” A year later, she did. She also enrolled in college, and paid her proverbial dues as a nanny, waitress, and salon receptionist before signing with left-of-center lighthouse Carnival Music in 2012.

“When I was younger, I just mimicked people that I admired,” Whitters says. “I learned how to tell a story.” With an arresting voice effortlessly rooted in honky tonk’s long tradition of angelic sopranos who are equally comfortable mourning and raising hell, she has spent the last several years discovering that she has something of her own to say -- along with a unique way to say it.

In her late teens and early 20s, Whitters performed almost exclusively around Nashville, starting with dive bars and storied Lower Broad honky tonks, singing cover songs for tourists and tips. At local writers’ nights, she began ditching others’ songs in favor of her own. The town noticed: Music Row critic Robert K. Oermann praised her, urging, “Keep your ears on this newcomer,” while the Nashville Scene declared Whitters “summons the space-country aesthetics” of 90’s Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson.

Winning over a crowd delivers an inimitable high for Whitters, who relishes connecting live. “I love performing ‘One More Hell,’” she says. “You think no one’s listening, and then the middle of that song, you see them raise their beer glasses in the air and know that they’re listening and that you’re all on the same page.”

Lately, Whitters’ taken to gigging all over the country. She’s opened shows for a broad range of acts ranging from Randy Houser to Chris Knight, and is sincerely grateful for every opportunity. “I will play just about anywhere,” she says with a laugh. “There’s something about getting out on the road and traveling that I just love.”

When she’s not touring or writing, Whitters is in the studio, hard at work on her debut album.

“I’m a risk taker,” Whitters says. “My friends always laugh because I’m kind of one extreme or the other. I’m not really a middle ground kind of person. You take these risks, and then the reward is just…” She trails off for a moment. “I feel like the part that feels so awesome about it afterwards is knowing that you were scared to do it, but then you did -- and it paid off.”