Every night on Thomas Rhett’s Soundtrack To Life Tour, the first voice the crowd hears belongs to Emily Ann Roberts. The other openers rotate in and out. She plays every show, from Nashville in July to Omaha in October.
Her set runs about 25 minutes. That is not much time, and most openers spend it on the loudest songs they have. Emily does something different. Halfway through, she slows down, tells a stadium full of strangers where her strength comes from, and sings a song called “The Building.”
It is a song about a church. She tells the crowd she hopes it reminds each of them of a special place of their own. For her, that place is very real, and so is the man who stands at the start of its story.
A Little Church in Knoxville
The church is West Lonsdale Baptist in Knoxville, Tennessee. It began as a Sunday School in the spring of 1922 and became a church that October. Its first wooden building went up in 1924, paid for in part by the ladies of the congregation, who sold eggs, butter, milk and home-baked goods to raise the money.
That is the kind of place it has always been. Small, stubborn, and held together by ordinary people who kept showing up.
The Preacher From 1942
In 1942, a new pastor stepped into the pulpit of that wooden church. He was Emily Ann Roberts’ great-grandfather.
She never got to meet him. But his faith and his years of service shaped everything that came after, for the church and for her family. When she talks about the song, she puts it simply: “It’s where my great-grandfather pastored.”
The family roots only grew deeper from there. Her grandmother served as the church secretary. Her parents met there as kids, at vacation Bible school. And it is where Emily first found her voice.
“The first place I ever sang in front of anybody was my church.”
Writing “The Building”
In the fall of 2022, West Lonsdale Baptist turned 100 years old. Emily wrote “The Building” as a tribute to it, and to the great-grandfather whose ministry started so much of her family’s story there.
When she first played the song for her family, they were moved to tears. She later debuted it on the Grand Ole Opry stage, and the music video includes footage from the church’s 100th anniversary celebration, with Emily leading the congregation in worship.
She has described the church as the place where she met Jesus and everything changed. She has also said something every church kid will understand: that the building has been there for her on her best days, and “on my very worst, it’s there for me too.”
From a Church Pew to The Voice
That voice from the church pew did not stay small for long. In 2015, at seventeen, a video of Emily singing led her to Season 9 of NBC’s The Voice. She sang on Blake Shelton’s team and went all the way to the finale, finishing second.
Since then she has moved between country and Christian music without ever picking one over the other. Her first album was a gospel record. In 2019 she opened for the Christian band Rend Collective, and told that crowd that with so many voices telling us who to be, “the only voice that matters is the Lord’s.”
Why She Still Sings It
Now she is opening for one of the biggest names in country music, night after night, city after city. She could fill those 25 minutes with anything. She keeps making room for a song about a little Baptist church in Knoxville, and a preacher she never got the chance to know.
Maybe that is the whole point. A great-grandfather she never met built something that raised her grandmother, brought her parents together, and gave a little girl her first place to sing. Every night, in front of thousands of strangers, Emily Ann Roberts carries that building with her.
Do you have a building like that in your own life? A church, a porch, a kitchen table where it all started? We would love to hear about it.