Demaree

A Journey to Dolly

By Elliot Zwiebach

Demaree Alexander is on an inspirational musical journey that has led her from Broadway to Los Angeles to Nashville and, ultimately, to Dolly Parton.

Known professionally by just her first name, Demaree released a duet recording with the country icon in late January 2025 singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the inspirational Act I closer of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. “This has been just an incredible journey I never knew was going to happen,” Demaree told Cabaret Scenes. “But I always hoped something like this would happen, and I believe God orchestrated it to enable me to share my music and my inspiration as a way to give people hope.”

How Demaree and Parton found each other and made the recording is a very human story. Demaree’s mother, Cheryl Danner, became friends in Nashville with Judy Ogle, a childhood friend of Parton’s who was one of her backup singers and close associates and who came up with the idea of archiving her costumes. During a conversation with Ogle in the summer of 2023, Danner mentioned that her daughter was a singer/songwriter, and Ogle asked to hear some of Demaree’s original songs. Ogle subsequently shared the songs with Parton, and Parton sent Demaree a message saying she had been touched by her songs, especially their lyrics and her vocal delivery.

Demaree was at a Christmas party at Ogle’s house later that year when she heard a familiar laugh at the front door. “I knew that laugh, and I froze,” Demaree said. When the two singers met, Parton happened to be holding a Christmas dish of orange fluff she had brought to the party, “and we spent a few minutes talking about orange fluff before we moved on to other things,” Demaree recalled. “I asked how she plays guitar with her long nails, and she told me she just plays the bar chords. And then I mentioned that I had licensed ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ on a whim because I had always had a vision of doing a female duet on the song—something that had never been done. Dolly asked when I planned to go into the recording studio and said she’d like to do it with me, and the deal was done.”

Over the next month Demaree initiated a Go-Fund-Me campaign to pay for the project, hired a 26-piece string orchestra, and recorded her track. She said she offered the country star “a wish list” on how she wanted her to sing the song. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous, but I love the resonance in her voice, and I suggested where she should sing melody and where to sing harmony so I could make sure my vocals supported hers.”

Parton sent her a couple of alternate vocal takes in which she took harmonies up or down, allowing Demaree to pick the ones she liked best. “Dolly did a vocal trill at one point that sounds like a musical quote from ‘I Will Always Love You,’ and it was important to me to leave that in,” Demaree said.

“During the mixing process I added some low harmonies because I didn’t want to cover up her voice to make sure people would know it was Dolly singing.” Demaree sang the song in a traditional Broadway style while Parton added some country licks to her vocals, but the two soprano voices blend so closely that it’s difficult to determine who is singing what for much of the song. “Dolly told me even she can’t tell most of the time,” Demaree said.

The recording runs three minutes and 56 seconds. The song originally included a 90-second orchestral introduction “that was very beautiful, but we cut it because we thought we should get to the vocals quicker.” You can listen to Demaree and Dolly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFzY_jBVb0U

Demaree worked on the arrangement for the song with Kameron Myers, a Nashville-based musician. Her recording session was supervised by engineer Fraser Watts, and Parton worked on hers with her regular vocal producer Tom Rutledge.

Asked why she chose “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” Demaree said it’s because the song has always had a special meaning for her and her mother. “When my mom was 17, her mother was hit by a car and killed, and that coincided with the time her high school was doing Carousel, and that song brought her a lot of comfort. I hope the inspirational message in the song helps people with big dreams to dream a little bigger for themselves.”

Demaree, in her mid-40s, said her own dream is to make music a full-time career. But as a single mother of two working a full-time office job and side jobs as a nanny and a voice teacher she’s had to put her musical aspirations on hold, leading some people to tell her she is too old to pursue her dream. “But when I shared that with Dolly, she encouraged me to keep going,” Demaree said.

As for the recording, Demaree said she’s trying to get it heard by as many people as possible. She said she’s hoping to book some TV appearances to publicize it and also hoping it might be considered by the Gospel Music Association for the group’s Dove Award.

Demaree has been a performer—and a Broadway baby—for most of her life. She spent much of her earliest years traveling between New York and Orlando, depending on where her brother, actor Braden Danner, was working. When he was hired to originate the role of Gavroche in Les Misérables, Demaree spent a lot of time backstage, “and my heart was set on someday playing Young Cosette, but I was too young so I had to wait a few years.”

She finally tried out and won the part in 1990 and spent that summer in the Broadway production. After seeing Daisy Eagan as Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, “I memorized the cast album because I wanted to do that part, and I finally got the chance when I joined the national tour from 1992 to 1994.” Subsequently she played Cynthia Benson in the national tour of Big.

Demaree took a break from performing to get married and settle down in Los Angeles, where she worked with her husband in a production company they owned. With her music career on hold, she joined the Los Angeles Acting Studio where she was encouraged to keep singing and performing, and she ultimately booked the role of Nessarose in the first national tour of Wicked.

After the birth of her two children and a divorce, she was invited to join Epiphany Space in Hollywood (a creative workspace community) where she said she was encouraged to embrace her vulnerabilities by writing and sharing songs.

She moved to Nashville with her children in late 2020 and released her first song two years later, “Meet Me at This Place,” “which is about someone in a very dark place who asks God to help them deal with their sadness, which was a reflection of how I felt after my divorce,” she explained.

Denaree hopes to continue writing songs; pursue performing, including singing with symphony orchestras around the country; and perhaps to record another duet with another singer. Meanwhile, she said she keeps her musical chops oiled by participating in writers’ rounds in Nashville at The Underground and at the weekly Nashville Jazz Jam, “which is how I get to be creative. And there is definitely hope with the community around me to share my own words through my original music, and that is my biggest goal.”