Being lonesome isn’t usually celebrated, but songwriter and musician Becky Schlegel is getting ready to do just that. She was 14 when she joined her mother’s country band. Since then, she’s gone on to create many beautiful country-flavored songs.

Her song “Lonesome” is one such that looks back at her small-town musical roots, and she’s getting ready to release a music video for it featuring one of the area’s most iconic small-town bars: the Douglas Saloon & Social Club. Schlegel wrote the song “Lonesome” years ago on a gigging trip to Ohio. “Even back then, it had a very special place in my heart as it talks about playing music in the small-town bar scene back in the late ’80’s and early 90’s and what an impact that has had on my life moving forward,” says Schlegel.

She recalls fondly singing into “a thick cloud of bar smoke and looking at the faces of folks listening...

” Schlegel recorded “Lonesome” at the Reverb & Echo Studio in Hugo, Minnesota. “It was a dreamy September day,” says Schlegel. “I went to the studio that day with an open mind to what the song might become.

” ADVERTISEMENT The musicians recording Schlegel’s song “Lonesome” included Clay Hess (guitars, bass, mandolin and vocals), John Niemann (fiddle), and Larry Beem (steel guitar). She describes them as her dream line-up. Schlegel’s husband, Rochester native and banjoist Heath Loy, introduced her to the Douglas Saloon & Social Club.

Schlegel lives just down a .