On a winter night in northern Minnesota, a young woman encounters a stranger at a dive bar. The older woman senses she’s struggling with something and sits her down to tell of her own hard-scrabble life. Shit’s not gonna get any easier, her story implies, but grit and perseverance can carry you through just about anything.

So goes Molly Brandt’s “Old Northern Woman,” an anthemic power ballad that starts with gritty storytelling and grows into a thrilling wall-of-sound crescendo that leaves you breathless.

Brandt gives you that same feeling live on stage and in her studio recordings. You’re pulling up a stool next to her and she’s got tales to tell you—her own, other real-life stories, and fictional fables that ring true no matter how much melodrama and poetic detail they contain. Like the storyteller himself, Tom T. Hall, Brandt knows just what to tell and what to hold back to fire up the listener’s imagination.