While she wasn’t exactly sure what a music career would look like for her, whether it would be in the church where she helped lead worship for the youth group, or with a more national platform, she was determined to use her gift for something. So Bethany continued to sing in area churches and eventually made an independent disc in a living room studio in Maryville, Ohio.

“We got a great offer for recording, so we recorded that whole year,” Bethany recalls. “I recorded 12 songs that I had written — just to be able to remember them. He [Mark, at the recording studio] knew some people in Nashville who worked at Gibson Guitars and told them about what we were doing. “My parents actually told him, ‘Please, please do not pursue anything like this. She’s so young. We don’t want her to get her hopes up.’ They were really discouraging Mark. But he was like, ‘Let me send it to them. I just want them to enjoy it.’  So Mark sent it down. I guess a lady from Gibson didn’t just listen; she shopped it around, showed it to labels and stuff.”

One of those places where the demo ended up was in the hands of the execs over at Sparrow Records. But even when a meeting was arranged with Bethany and her family, no one was really sure about her chances. “The whole drive down to Nashville, the six or seven hours, I was just beside myself. My parents were like, ‘Beth, don’t get your hopes up. They’ll probably just say that you’re a nice little girl and that you should stick to what you’re doing.’ Yet, I was so excited that I didn’t care if I’d be playing for the janitors at Sparrow.” And of course, the 13-year-old garnered a whole lot more than just the janitors’ attention that day as Peter York, president of  EMI CMG Label Group, president of publishing for EMI CMG Eddie DeGarmo, and EMI-CMG Label Group Vice President of A&R Brad O’Donnell were all in attendance.

The Future’s So Bright …

Now, more than a year after the release of her acclaimed self-titled Sparrow debut, which has sold more than 110,000 copies and landed several Dove Award nominations — including Female Vocalist of the Year and New Artist of the Year, a No.1 hit with “All I Need,” two top-10 hits “Beautiful” (which she wrote at age 13) and her cover of the Amy Grant classic, “Lead Me On” — Bethany has once again teamed up with producer Ed Cash (Chris Tomlin, Bebo Norman) to record her sophomore effort.

Ed and Bethany have an easy camaraderie,  something that was quickly discernable when they recently unveiled several songs from the new album for CCM’s editors at Ed’s Franklin, Tenn., home studio. The two first met during the search for producers for Bethany’s debut. “Sparrow had never worked with Ed Cash before; all he had done at the time was work with Bebo [Norman]. So they were like ‘Well, I guess she can meet him,’” she recalls. “I remember when we were waiting for him at the restaurant. I see this guy walking down the sidewalk with holes in his jeans and stains on his shirt — like he’d just rolled out of bed. I was like ‘That’s him. That’s a kindred spirit.’ It was pretty obvious; God made it really clear.”