Meg Allison, a Season Five finalist on USA Network's “Nashville Star,” will perform at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College on Monday, Oct. 5, at 8 p.m. in The Lodge, located behind O’Shaughnessy Dining Hall at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. Admission is free, and the public is invited to attend.

A singer and songwriter from Evanston, Ill., Allison also plays guitar and piano.  After listening to her sing, it is evident that she possesses a gift for storytelling with heartfelt emotion. Her writing has the honesty of country and the catchiness of pop. She writes the songs you can’t get out of your head, with the melodies that stick and the lyrics you’ve lived. Her songs are not only inspired by her life, but by the artists she most admires, such as Jason Mraz, Martin Sexton, Patty Griffin, Ryan Adams, and Ray LaMontagne.

She has earned her loyal following since she first started playing out in college bars at Miami of Ohio University, where she majored in mass communications. After graduating, she packed up her car and headed for Jackson Hole, Wyo. It was that summer in the mountains when she realized her passion for singing was no longer a hobby but, inevitably, her career.

“I started playing music as a child,” Allison says on her MySpace page. “While a lot of the other kids were doing sports I was writing songs when I was really young. Eventually I went off to college and got an acoustic guitar, because I had originally trained on piano. I taught myself to play and started writing some more cohesive songs. Eventually I realized this was what I wanted to do…”

Playing mostly cover songs in the beginning, Allison played more and more original tunes as she progressed. She eventually moved back to her hometown of Chicago with hopes of bigger and better opportunities. After playing around the city, she heard of the National Association for Campus Activities from the producer of her first album.

“I submitted on my own and ended up landing all these showcases. It kind of just all fell together.”

And, since then Allison has turned into an exciting new addition to the campus market. In fact, she recently won the award for Newest Rising Star of 2008 in Campus Activities® Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards.

But even with her success on “Nashville Star,” Allison still scoffs at the notion of being able to categorize herself as a country musician.

“I grew up primarily listening to pop music and then when I started playing guitar I began to write songs; so my style took on sort of a narrative form,” Allison says on her MySpace page. “This naturally led me to country music and my voice sounds much more country than anything else. Everyone in Chicago who heard me always told me, ‘You know you should really move to Nashville. You would fit right in there.’ When I finally went, I was like ‘Oh, yeah! This is exactly where I should be. I think I’m still kind of making that transition into country music. It is a craft that you have to learn, study and embrace because the songwriting is so much different and unique from any other genre.

“Now I really just consider myself to be sort of country/pop acoustic singer/songwriter,” Allison jokes. “I know that is five different things, but that is as close as I can get. I am the country singer for those people who don’t listen to country; I hear that a lot.”

Allison’s performance is sponsored by the SMWC Student Activities Committee. For more information, contact the SMWC Office of Campus Life at 812-535-5219 or jmalloy@smwc.edu. For more information on Allison, visit www.myspace.com/megallisonmusic.