MOULTRIE — For Brandi Thornton, being the performer at the Spring Fling and Backyard BBQ Festival concert kickoff gives her a chance to return to where everything started.

“I’m just a South Georgia girl coming back home,” Thornton said. She was born and raised in Folkston but currently calls Nashville, Tenn., home, and she was in concert Friday on the courthouse square to kick off the sixth annual festival.

“We’re going to rock it out tonight,” Thornton said Friday afternoon.

Thornton said she and her band have performed everywhere from Key West, Fla., to Minnesota to Nevada, playing as many as 200 shows a year. She began singing at First Baptist Church in Folkston when she was 4 years old, and has performed across South Georgia growing up. Among her performances have been at the Rose Festival in Thomasville and the Peanut Festival in Sylvester.

“I’ve been performing as long as I can remember,” Thornton said. She also inherited a Blue Sky Grill T-shirt her lead guitarist, Hunter Carmichael, a Tifton native, was given from a performance there and also remembers playing a private show herself here when she was in college.

Playing music across the country is a labor of love for her and the band, Thornton said. She really enjoys seeing the reaction of the audience to her songs, especially her own songs from her CD “New Place to Start.”

“It’s really cool to get paid to do what you love,” Thornton said, “and it’s very rewarding to be able to see the audience genuinely enjoy the music. We’re out here doing what we love to do.”

The music for the show was mostly county songs, but Thornton said they were also going to mix in some old favorites. She had songs from her current CD and also planned to add in a couple from her upcoming CD, currently in the works.

Thornton said country music appeals to her because it focuses on love and real life more than any other music genre. Most country songs, in fact, talk mostly about love, losing love or finding love, and the songs also allow her to discuss things that are hard to simply talk about. An example of this is her first single, “Battle of Jackson,” which discusses divorce and its affect on children.

“Well-crafted songs speak and address things which are uncomfortable to bring up in casual conversation,” Thornton said of “Battle of Jackson” in the liner notes of her CD. “There are several issues that have impacted my life very deeply, simply because music brought the subject matter home to me. This song moved me to think about the little people often forgotten.”

The new CD will give her a new perspective on music, as Thornton said she has been writing songs for it. She said the songs become even more personal to her because she created them.

Along with Carmichael, Thornton said she is joined on stage by bassist Tracy Goode of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., keyboardist Patrick Riddle of Franklin, Tenn., and drummer Corey Hughes from Summertown, Tenn. She also gives praise to Moultrie Community Planning and Development Director Daniel Parrish, who does sound for her band when they play in South Georgia.

“He makes us sound good, even when we really don’t,” Thornton said.

For more information, visit Thornton’s Web site at www.brandithornton.com or on MySpace at www.myspace.com/brandithornton.