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Greensboro country music artist Lisa Dames would be the first to admit that she owes much of her singing career to late Nashville legend Patsy Cline.

When Dames first became acquainted with Cline and her work in 2001, Dames wasn't even a musician. She was an actress who landed the lead role in a Triad production of "A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline." The musical biography features Cline's greatest hits to tell the story of her career before she died in a plane crash. Dames went on to reprise the role in seven other productions during the next four years.

"And what happened after the show is that we would always do a meet and greet, where I would stand out in the lobby and shake hands, thanking people for coming to the show," Dames says. "That's when people started asking, 'Do you have a CD?' and I would say, 'No, I'm in musical theater, we don't have CD's.'"

Dames eventually caved in to the demand. She was 38 at the time, an age in which few people attempt to start a career in country music, but she pressed ahead and did so anyway. She started commuting from Greensboro to Nashville to collaborate with songwriters and music producers. Now that she's released her first album, "No One Like Me," (released in 2006), Dames will once again pay tribute to the iconic musician who re-shaped her career in "Lisa Dames Sings the Music of Patsy Cline," a show she will be performing as part of the Eastern Music Festival Fall Fringe Series.

"What fascinated me about Patsy Cline was that she had balls," Dames says. "She was not afraid to fight the good ol' boys in country music.

"There were a lot of rules when she was playing and she was out to break them or change them."

Dames recalls a now famous story wherein Cline rebuked a shifty concert promoter who tried to stiff her out of money as well as the management at the Grand Ole Opry because they wouldn't let her perform while wearing pants, insisting that all female performers at the time had to wear dresses.

"She hung out with the boys. She didn't necessarily hang out with all the female singers at the time," Dames says. "That's how she got a lot of her good songs, too, was that she was hanging out with these songwriters who were trying to make a mark at the same time."

Noting that it is physically impossible to wholly imitate Cline's singing voice, what Dames attempts to recreate while singing the late musician's greatest hits is her spirit and emotionality. Cline was never a songwriter. But even if other people might have written all of her lyrics, she didn't just merely recite them. Dames adds that what made Cline so famous is that she sang other people's songs in a way that made it sound as if she felt each of them personally.

"(Cline's song) 'Faded Love' has this big sob at the end of it, and she just sang everything very truthfully, very much from the heart," Dames says.

As of right now, Dames, mother of two, has no intention of ever leaving Greensboro for Nashville permanently. And since turning 41 recently, she also believes that because of her age, the chances of landing a major record label are slim to none. She says industry insiders in Nashville have told her she would never be able to sell her album in department stores or gain national sponsors without the backing of a major recording company. However, she persevered and has since managed to persuade Walmart to sell her album, plus she's landed sponsorship deals with Waffle House and Wrangler.

"It's when people tell me that I can't do something because I don't have the record label or because you're too old, that I kinda look at it and just say, 'Really, now? I'll see about that!'" Dames says. "Patsy would have told them where to stick it, too, and she would have gone and figured out a way to make it happen."

Joe Scott is a freelance contributor. Contact him at movieshowjoe@gmail.com.