Martie Maguire - Early Career

Early Career

By 1983, Maguire was touring with her sister Emily and school friends; siblings Troy and Sharon Gilchrist. The sisters showed an "almost obsessive" interest in busking at small venues and attending bluegrass festivals. The four students formed the teenage bluegrass group "Blue Night Express", playing together for 5 years, from 1984–1989, while still attending private Greenhill School (Addison, Texas). "We'd drive down to the west end of Dallas and open our cases, and that was our job", Maguire said of it in a later interview to 60 Minutes II correspondent Dan Rather. "That's how we made money in high school". In 1987 Maguire(then known as Martha Erwin), was awarded second place for the fiddle in the National fiddle championships held yearly in Winfield, Kansas. Upon graduation from high school, with Emily still in high school, she spent a year attending college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, from 1988-1989. She performed in the school orchestra there and again competed in the National fiddle championships at the Walnut Valley Festival, in Winfield, earning third place that year.