Calgary country singer Alex Hughes will be playing the Coca-Cola Stage at the Calgary Stampede on July 5.

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It was a week before Calgary country-pop singer-songwriter Alex Hughes was to hold her first album release party at the historic King Eddy when she got the distressing news that the vinyl versions of her debut EP, Take Me Home, may not be ready on time.

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There were problems with one of the plates being used to manufacture the album. Good luck prevailed and the required plate was delivered just in time. Still, Hughes decided she needed to take a hands-on approach and travelled down to Calgary’s Canadian Vinyl Records to see for herself.

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“I hit ‘go’ on the printing of my very first vinyl and got to see it drop from the machine,” says Hughes. “I totally had full tears in my eyes. It was pretty surreal.”

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The six-song EP is available in various formats, of course. But there is something refreshingly old-school about an artist witnessing the birth of her first vinyl creation. Like most artists these days, Hughes had released singles and even had a 2013 self-titled EP made up of songs she wrote when she was still a teenager. But she was keen to put out a collection of songs that showcased her maturity as a songwriter and vocal chops.

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She sees Take Me Home as her true debut. Hughes had a hand in writing five of the six songs on Take Me Home and all were the product of another rite-of-passage for young country songwriters: A trip to Nashville to take advantage of Music City’s famous writing rooms.

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“I booked a Nashville trip and went down and wrote with a bunch of friends and some great writers down in Nashville and we worked on this project,” she says. “It kind of spans a coming-of-age moment of love songs and breakup songs that all live in this time frame of young adulthood.”

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Writing coming-of-age songs as part of a music career that is nicely coming of age is also a bit a tradition in country music. This may be Hughes first multiple-song collection, but she has been steadily on the rise for a few years now. She had collaborated with British Columbia producer Dan Swinimer on the 2023’s Until This Fire Dies, a country-pop ballad about infatuation. She was pleased with the results creatively, but it also took her to the next level in her career. The song

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It landed on the cover song of Apple Music’s Canada’s Country playlist and also had a strong showing on Spotify, Amazing Music and YouTube.

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“It was definitely something that was on my radar as a bucket list thing to do and I wasn’t really expecting to get it for that single, so it was a huge surprise and a big boost that we were headed in the right direction,” she says.

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Recorded in Vancouver, Take Me Home features six songs that would not sound out of place on mainstream country radio. But there is also a refreshing variety on the songs, from the moody mid-tempo title track, the Lucinda Williams-esque bluesy ballad You Got Me, to the poppy Break All the Way. The latter is the only track Hughes didn’t co-write on the album. It was written by Canadian country-pop artist Madeline Merlot and Nashville pros Jason Saenz and Todd Clark, and pitched to Hughes through Swinimer.