Bright Star is an ode to Americana, with lyrics from Edie Brickell and book/music by Steve Martin (an award-winning banjo player as well as an actor & writer). It tells the story of Alice Murphy at two points in her life: the first when she is a wild, barefoot girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the second when she is a well-to-do magazine editor 22 years later.

As a girl in the 1920s, she falls for handsome Jimmy Ray, the mayor’s son. Their love falls victim to ambitious parents, and their newborn son is whisked away against Alice’s will. Twenty years later, staid Alice meets an aspiring young writer named Billy and finds that they share a mysterious connection that will deliver them from the past.