The roots of soul

A little background on Tift, for fans that are new or may not know about her time in Wilmington:

Still, busy as she is, it says something about Merritt that she's so generous with her time. She's done a half dozen or more interviews with area media outlets for her Sunday show, something that's unheard of for an artist of her stature in a market Wilmington's size.

But then, that says a lot about what the area means to her. Aside from living here in the mid-'90s, Merritt wrote much of Tambourine here in 2003 while living in a friend's Carolina Beach bungalow, where she also refined songs for Another Country. One of her friends from Carolina Beach joined her for the New England leg of her tour this year, and fiance Zeke's brother, Pat, lives in Wilmington.