Born in Princeton, New Jersey, singer-songwriter, DODIE PETTIT started her love affair with country and pop music the moment she picked up a guitar as a child. Her earliest influences were as diverse as Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Hank Williams, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Patsy Cline and the Beatles. These influences became the foundation for a rich tapestry of musical ideas and a special love of lyric writing.
Recognizing her musical talent as a child, her parents availed her of piano lessons, violin lessons, and finally a guitar. On her thirteenth birthday, Dodie was given her first electric guitar, and from there it was no turning back.
She formed her own (all girl) band, “The Untouchable” and eschewed the normal dating and high school dances, to gig on weekends. Soon the girls were playing gigs almost every weekend at college campuses such as Princeton University, Rider College, University of Pennsylvania, and Villanova and opened for such groups as The Lemon Pipers, The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. Not content just to play “cover tunes” Dodie and friends wrote much of the material that they played and of course, dreamed of the day that they might get “discovered” by a talent scout. They did just that when they signed a management contract with Koppelman/Rubin Management in NY, who managed such groups as The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Turtles. Sadly, that relationship was short lived and the group dissolved shortly after their first recordings in New York.
Dodie was a charter member of The Princeton Regional Ballet Co and later a founding member of Princeton Ballet’s professional company in 1977, now known as American Repertory Ballet. There she performed many leading roles including The Nutcracker, Coppelia, and Cinderella among many others, which included a ballet, choreographed to her music entitled “A Country Love Song”.
Always missing her beloved first band, Dodie persevered in her music endeavors, and just out of high school she signed song publishing contracts with Screen Gems and Sunbury-Dunbar. She had her first songwriting credit, “Wonderland of Love” on Vicki Sue Robinson’s Billboard Top Ten Album, “Turn the Beat Around”; as well as being a Semi-Finalist in the American Song Festival.
Over the next several years she supported herself mainly by gigging several nights a week with “bar bands”. But soon her passion to find her own musical identity took her to New York and Los Angeles, where she performed her own music at such places as “The Bitter End”, “The Electric Circus”, “The Troubadour” and “The Palomino Club”, and recorded song “demos” for 20th Century Music and Epic Records. But there was always a deeper calling to Nashville, and soon Dodie arrived there like so many others with not much more than a guitar and a backpack full of dreams. Almost immediately she started working with record producer and pedal steele legend, Pete Drake, at his studio on 18th Avenue South. There she met and worked with other well-known and up-and-coming writers as Linda Hargrove, Pam Rose and MaryAnn Kennedy, as well as performing in such local haunts as “The Exit Inn” and “The Great Southeastern Music Hall”.
From 1982-1984 she was principal dancer with Garden State Ballet under direction of Fred Danielli.
Later she worked for several years at Blank Tapes Recording Studio in New York with former husband and recording partner Richie Vetter, writing and recording songs for RCA, Salsoul, and BC Records, hitting the Billboard charts with “Sweet Temptation” by Gem. Two more of her songs, “Power of the Night” and “Leather” appeared in the feature film, “Critters” in 1986 and that same year she underscored Shel Silverstein’s Grammy Nominated “A Light in the Attic”, and the CATS video “Rum Tum Tugger” in which she also appeared.
For the next several years, Dodie continued her songwriting while appearing on Broadway in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s CATS and the original cast of “The Phantom of the Opera”.
In 1990, she wrote and recorded “The Right to Choose” which received Honorable Mention in the 1991 Billboard Songwriting Competition. Later that year she joined the U. S. National Touring Company of “Phantom of the Opera” as the role of the Princess as well as the understudy for the leading lady, “Christine”. Dodie was part of the original cast of Phantom. She toured with that company for three years to almost a dozen U. S. cities, performing for nearly ten million people. During her tenure with “Phantom” Dodie met and later married Kevin Gray who played the roles of “Raoul” and later “The Phantom” in her company. And yes, they did get to play the roles of “Phantom” and “Christine” together. Who says the Phantom never gets the girl!
While on tour through 1992 and 1993, Dodie wrote and produced “Voices of Broadway, Songs of Conscience and Hope” as a benefit for Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights Aids which features over 80 vocalists from many of Broadway’s biggest hit shows, including Phantom of the Opera, CATS, Miss Saigon, Showboat and Five Guys Named Moe.
After leaving “Phantom” in 1994, Dodie returned to her songwriting roots and traveled to Nashville to record her first CD entitled “Songs from the Journey” which was released on Landfill Records in the fall of ’95. Two US and three European singles were released and her video “The Flame” received airplay on Canada’s NCN and CMT Europe’s “Jammin’ Country”. In 1998, she recorded and released her second CD “Playin’ With the Boys”.
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From 1998 to 2000 Dodie and Kevin appeared in the first National Touring Company of the Tony Award winning show “Titanic”. It was on that tour that she composed the music for “Dracula… The Covenant” which was co-authored by husband Kevin Gray. The demo CD of Dracula… the Covenant was recorded in New York during the spring and summer of 2000, after which the pair decided to mount their production. Beginning with a concert reading in Westport, CT sponsored by the Westport Historical Society in October 2002, the show subsequently premiered at The Stonington Opera House, in Stonington, ME in July 2003.
In May 2004, Dodie was honored to receive a lifetime achievement award for “commitment to the arts and excellence in the field of dance” from the American Repertory Ballet and ARB’s Princeton Ballet School.
Dodie has recently been living in Connecticut and has worked locally as a teacher of voice and dance, as well as appearing in regional productions of “Footloose” “A Chorus Line” and “Singing in the Rain”.
From 2002-2004 she wrote 6 children’s musicals for MMM Productions in Greenwich CT. She also Produced Kevin’s sols CD Entitled “It’s My time to Shine” Subsequently she and Kevin wrote a children’s Musical Book entitled “A Frog’s Tale A Musical Fable”, Narrated and sung by Kevin. Other current projects include her third solo CD and a new Musical version of the classic “A Christmas Carol” written with Kevin.
Since Kevin’s untimely death in 2013, Dodie produced A memorial Cd in his Honor “Kevin Gray, Forever Always- Broadway’s Tribute CD”
and has release two more solo CD’s “Long Road”, and “In my own Voice”. She is currently finishing up a cast recording of “Dracula… The Covenant”.
