Shelby Lynne performs at 8 p.m. Friday at the Folly Theater, 300 W. 12th St. Tickets are $29 to $50. The show is part of the “Cyprus Avenue Live Presents” series.
In the 20 years after she cut her first album with famous country music producer Billy Sherrill in 1989, Shelby Lynne wrestled with a music industry that recognized her gifts but could never quite figure out what it should do with them.
“I can only speak for myself, but having my own label definitely works for me,” she told The Star recently. “I create music and I hire people to get the rest done. The difference is I don’t have to ask permission or wait on phone calls or wait my turn behind other artists. I have the freedom to make the art I want to make.
“I’d never have been able to make this kind of record on a major label. Ever.”
Life on the big labels never really suited her, anyway.
She seemed to have all the traits of a mainstream star — an arresting voice and the looks to go with it — yet Lynne spent the first decade of her career in relative obscurity, trying to generate traction in the world of modern country music. In 1988 she recorded a duet with George Jones that went to No. 43 on the country charts.
From 1989 to 1995, she released five albums, none of which rose higher than No. 31 on the country charts.
In 1999, after a four-year studio hiatus, she reinvented herself and orchestrated her own breakthrough with the album “I Am Shelby Lynne,” a lustrous and slow-burning blend of country, rock and retro R&B and soul. The record was produced far from Nashville by Bill Bottrell, a producer and engineer whose resume includes work with Michael Jackson, Madonna and Sheryl Crow.
“I Am” was on many Top 10 lists at the end of the year. At the 2000 awards show, more than 10 years into her career, Lynne won the Grammy for best new artist and seemed primed to fulfill the promise so many saw and heard in her more than a decade earlier.
Instead, she learned yet another hard lesson in the hard knocks world of the major label music industry: What seems right and fair isn’t always what happens.
“That record could have been bigger, but the label just didn’t want to do anything else with it,” Lynne said. “All the changes going on in the industry back then was detrimental to that record. Eventually, I just kind of moved on and didn’t think about it.”
She would move on, but jumped from one label to another. “I Am” was released on Mercury/Island Records. Her next four albums were released on three different labels, including Lost Highway, which, in 2008, released “Just a Little Lovin’,” a tribute to Dusty Springfield. That one reached No. 41 on the Billboard 200 charts, a career best for Lynne for that chart. Again, she had some momentum behind her, it seemed. However, when she submitted the follow-up to “Lovin’,” the label rejected it. She, in turn, rejected the label.
“They didn’t want the record, so I said, ‘(Bleep) you; I’m leaving. Goodbye,’ ” she said.
“They don’t want art. They don’t want anything that has any expression to it. They want to make money. Of course they do. Of course they do. We all want a little cabbage. But my goal is to make good records. I’m not interested in hit records. Hell, I’m 43 years old. … I’m realistic here. I understand what they do. But I did that for 20 years. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
So she started Everso Records and in April 2010 released “Tears, Lies and Alibis,” the record Lost Highway rejected. The All-Music Guide said of “Alibis”: “(It) feels like a destination for Lynne, one she’s sought her entire career: to balance her artistic instincts and ambitions with her talents as a songwriter, producer, and singer.”
“Alibis” bears some of the same charms of “I Am Shelby Lynne”: well-crafted songs with some personal lyrics cast in a variety of styles; her expressive, Southern-soulful voice (she’s a native of Alabama); and a knack for fresh or unexpected arrangements, like the bass clarinet solo that pops up in “Rains Came.”
Lynne followed that with “Merry Christmas,” a collection of Christmas songs. By then she’d been writing the songs for “Revelation Road,” a project she would make entirely on her own — something she could not have done elsewhere, she said.
“The thing about owning your label is I’m the only artist being worked,” she said. “I’m the top priority. If I want to write all the songs and produce it and play all the instruments, then by God, that’s what I’m going to do and I don’t have to ask permission to do it. Then I’ll put it out and sell it. The end. A label never would have gone for that.”
And that’s exactly what she did. “Redemption” comprises 11 songs, and it sounds like the third installment in the “I Am”/“Alibis” series. Reviews of the album call “Revelation” her most personal album, and it is filled with stories rich in details from her life. From the ballad “I’ll Hold Your Head,” which recalls a car ride to school: “Four bald tires on an old Impala / Seventeen degrees, South Alabama / Mama needs money, and we’re late for school / Picking out the parts of a Bob Willis tune / I got a scrambled egg sandwich and a Folgers can / Daddy says he’ll never work for the man.”
The mention of her parents in “Head” would be even more significant if “Revelation” didn’t include “Heaven’s Only Days Down the Road.” Any biography of Lynne will include two significant personal elements: Her sister is Allison Moorer, a country singer/songwriter married to Steve Earle. When they were teenagers, their father killed their mother and then himself.
The tragedy is something Lynne rarely, if ever, talks about publicly. But in the country-blues rocker “Heaven’s Only Days,” she recalls it from her father’s perspective: “Lost all the faith a man can own / My hopes are empty and so is my soul.” Then: “Can’t blame the whiskey or my mammy’s ways / Two little girls are better off this way.”
Other songs address themes of loss and sorrow, heartbreak and regret with the same kind of poetic candor, but none registers the gravity and resonance of “Heaven’s Only Days.” Lynne insists she had no blueprint in mind when she wrote the songs assembled for “Redemption.”
“They are just songs that came to me,” she said. “I don’t like themes. They put me in a box. If somebody said, ‘Here’s a million dollars. I need you to write a song about “this,” I would have to walk away. I can’t plan (things). It doesn’t work that way. I store up ideas and work them a little bit at a time. I have no schedule. When I decide I’m gonna work on something, I go into my quiet room with the dog, turn the TV on with the volume down and hash out a tune, if I really feel the power of a song coming on. But that’s about how intense it gets.”
And without a label person giving her feedback, does she solicit opinions about her songs or just trust her instincts that they are worthy of recording?
“You know, I might play it for my most trusted and very close (friends), but at the end of the day, I know,” she said.
Friday night, Lynne will perform songs from “Revelation” and others in her catalog, going back as far as “I Am Shelby Lynne,” during a solo/acoustic performance at the Folly Theater. Even on the road, she is doing everything herself, keeping in mind that less can be more.
While she was in the studio alone, she said, “I kept it simple. I’m not great at any of it. I just want it to be really soulful. I wanted to keep the boundaries tight.”
And as for being on the road alone: “There’s no stress, no worry about anyone else,” she said. “I walk on stage and sing. Then I leave, hit the next town.
“I like it all — writing and recording and performing. I don’t prefer one thing over another. It’s my job. It’s what I do.”
It is who she is.
| Timothy Finn, The Star
T.F. - Great column on Shelby Lynne. One question: is the album titled Revelation Road or Redemption Road?
BTW... if you enjoy her music, check out her sister Allison Moorer's albums. She is terrific as well. She has a live album entitled "Show", that contains a couple of duets with Shelby Lynne that are amazing. Notably, the one about their mother, entitled "Is Heaven Good Enough For You?", is beautiful.
Posted by: who-fan | January 12, 2012 at 07:56 AM
good article, tim.
Posted by: fiddler | January 12, 2012 at 01:28 PM
Yes I also noted you seemed to begin referring to the record as "Redemption" instead of "Revelation" mid-article
Posted by: C Urich | January 13, 2012 at 09:16 AM
Thank you for the article published, a great help to me
Posted by: yiyad123 | January 17, 2012 at 12:57 AM
Good,I like the information.
Posted by: TaylorMade R11 Driver | February 22, 2012 at 09:34 PM
It is a nice post,i learn more from u,thanks for sharing!
Posted by: R11S Driver | February 23, 2012 at 12:53 AM