Adrienne Young is mindful in her music-making

In the music industry, the notion of virtue can seem as anachronistic as a 78 rpm record. Yet, guided by such moral tenets as industry, thrift and sincerity, Adrienne Young is crafting a stellar career without the financial or promotional support of corporate Nashville.

Two years ago, the talented Florida native won first place in Merlefest's bluegrass songwriting contest with her composition "Little Sadie." The song became the name of her band, and she released her first CD, "Plow to the End of the Row," on her own Addiebelle label. The album included a pack of garden seeds and earned a Grammy nomination for best album package design.

Young and Little Sadie perform Saturday at Raleigh's First Night celebration.

Expect to hear tunes from their June release, "The Art of Virtue," also on Addiebelle. Spanning the musical landscape from Cajun to bluegrass and old-time fiddle tunes, the album draws its inspiration and title from Benjamin Franklin's "The Thirteen Virtues," and it's one of the year's most creative and thoughtful recordings. Young wrote or co-wrote nine of the album's 15 songs, which extol moral values.

"I had been reading a lot of Ben Franklin's works and came across a passage in his autobiography where he offered an idea for the United Party of Virtue," Young says. "It would be a new political party where there wouldn't be any kind of affiliation other than anybody who was a member would have to exhibit a character that was the highest quality and had ... devoted his or her life to the greater good.

"Thematically, the record is loosely designed around that. The box holding all the goodies together is scripted with the idea that, as individuals, we hold tremendous power with our daily choices, our words and our actions. And we form our collective reality with the choices we make as individuals."

Young shares Franklin's message musically by presenting old tunes that sound fresh and new ones that draw from the wellspring of American musical tradition. Alongside such standard gospel fare as "Farther Along" and the Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace," Young's own "My Sin Is Pride," "Hills and Hollers" and "Ella Arkansas" emphasize the virtues Franklin believed essential for the good life. Banjos, fiddles, guitars and pedal steel carry the messages along in tempos that range from slow and pensive to lively and bold.

Young was born and raised in a musical family in Florida. In the late 1990s, she moved to Nashville, where she graduated from Belmont University with double majors in Music Business and Spanish. She worked for two years in temporary jobs on Music Row while trying to get her career off the ground.

Disheartened by her struggles and by four surgeries on a broken foot she suffered while studying Spanish in Costa Rica, Young considered returning to Florida and pursuing other goals. A friend helped to change her mind.

"For two years, I worked on Music Row and as a waitress," she says. "No one was interested in my music. I was working in the music business offices, and everyone around me was doing what they wanted to do. It was driving me crazy because I knew I could do it, but you can't save up the money to do a record when you're making seven or eight bucks an hour.

"I e-mailed [my friend] one day and said I was going to move back home and go back to school. He e-mailed back and said, 'Do you really want to do music? Then you've got to plow to the end of the row.' "

The friend loaned her the money to record "Plow to the End of the Row." She recorded it in her boyfriend's home studio and named it in honor of her friend's sage advice. It was all the break Young needed to unleash her creative powers.

The packaging idea for "Plow," the thematic brilliance and artistic integrity of "The Art of Virtue" are touches that reflect Young's commitment to providing a quality product she hopes will endure. By starting her own record label, marketing through the Internet, providing quality music and constantly touring, Young is trying to fashion her career according Franklin's fifth and sixth virtues: frugality and industry.

"My advertising budget for 'The Art of Virtue' was a whopping $500," she says, laughing. "There was nothing left after making the record, and I just said I hope people are going to write about it. Otherwise, we're screwed! But it was 20 weeks on the Americana chart."

Young is motivated by "a real desire to live in a time, or at least contribute to the acknowledgement of a time, when you bought something that lasted a lifetime, and quality was a given. A hundred years ago, things weren't made to be broken. Now, companies construct things so they can't be fixed by the consumer, and that they will need to be replaced in a few years. ...

"I just feel like customer service and providing something of high quality is ongoing -- where every time you know you're going to get your money's worth. That's how I want to build a career over a lifetime, that people equate our brand with the highest caliber of creativity and service."