As a kid, Brandy Clark went to a few concerts. Clark loved them and connected quickly with live music. But she also recognized that in-person performances can be rough and raw. So when, as a high schooler, she saw a touring Broadway company do “Phantom of the Opera” at a Seattle theater, she was floored.

“I’d never seen live music that was so perfect,” Clark told the Herald. “It was exactly like the cast album and I was so impressed by that.”

In fact, Clark was impressed by everything — the score, the scenery, the spectacle. She had performed in musicals already (notably a community theater version of “The Music Man”). She had watched plenty of movie musicals with her family. But seeing it live made her want to write her own Broadway show.

Decades later, Clark made her dream come true with “Shucked” — April 8 – 20 at Citizens Opera House. But she took a roundabout way to get to Broadway.

Through her own solo career and as a songwriter for others, Clark has built an astounding catalog of music. She has scored 16 Grammy nominations, won the Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year, and written hits with or for Kacey Musgraves, Jennifer Nettles, and Miranda Lambert.

“Part of what made (co-writer Shane McAnally) and I right for ‘Shucked’ is that we had written a lot of story songs,” Clark said of the crossover between country music and Broadway. “The part that was challenging was that, we had learned how to tell full stories in three and half minutes, now we had to do a two and half hour musical where we needed to tell only a little bit of the story at a time.”

That story is a “farm-to-fable” that follows Maizy as she travels from her home in fictional Cob County to get help after the town’s corn starts dying. In the big city, Maizy meets “corn doctor” and possible con-man Gordy making “Shucked” somewhere between “Hee Haw” and “The Music Man” (a nice nod to Clark’s first foray into the world of musicals).

“Our director, Jack O’Brien, really pushed us to make it something more than funny, but not too much more than funny,” Clark said. “He said, ‘This is like a feather, we have to keep it floating.’”

“I love ‘Les Mis,’ it might be my favorite top-to-bottom score, but I learned through writing ‘Shucked’ that I could never write a musical like that,” she continued. “I don’t think I could work on a musical that wasn’t a comedy in some way.”

“Shucked” certainly isn’t “Les Miserables” — see all those songs packed with corny puns. But it has found an equally devoted audience. In 2023, “Shucked” nabbed eight Tony Award nods and 11 Drama Desk nominations. The show’s success made the nearly decade-long process of writing and rewriting (and COVID interruptions) worth it for Clark.

“It felt like we made ten albums over ten years, and one of them got to come out and the rest were shelved,” she said. “But I don’t know a much bigger high than having a show on Broadway.”

Hopefully, she will feel that high again. Between writing for other stars and making her own music, she is already at work on a second Broadway musical.

For tickets and details, visit boston.broadway.com

“Shucked” co-creator Brandy Clark has scored 16 Grammy nominations and won the Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year. (Photo courtesy Broadway in Boston)