Shelby Lynne on Making a New Record When She Thought She Was Done, Working With an All-Star Female Creative Team, and How She Saved Her Own Life

Long before Chappell Roan picked up the nickname of “your favorite singer’s favorite singer,” that was how people thought of Shelby Lynne, the Alabama-bred singer-songwriter who long ago reset the bar for voices that expressively explore the crossroads between country and soul. Her 2000 breakthrough album “I Am Shelby Lynne” helped win her the best new artist Grammy, though in truth she’d had a long career before that, making her way through the Nashville system from her teen years on, and certainly has been active since, pursuing an ever-more-independent career outside of any pop or country mainstream.

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Lynne claims she thought her record-making days were more or less done prior to finding herself in the studio for her new album, “Consequences of the Crown.” She had moved back from California to Nashville after a quarter-century absence to be near her sister, fellow singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, but also to get a songwriting publishing contract. It was at a series of writing sessions with Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, recording artist Ashley Monroe and producer-engineer Gena Johnson that she was basically informed that she was making a record, whether she wanted or expected to or not. The result is an album that finds Lynne boosted and bolstered by the sisterhood but expressing her own strong maverick vision — one rooted in real-time heartbreak, as many of her most indelible songs have been.

She was also facing this lost-love experience without the aid of alcohol, having quit it after feeling like her life was at stake. Lynne got on the phone with Variety to discuss the new album, which touches on everything from the devastation of a failed love affair to her enduring love for her sister to how she got past being “a falling down drunk” as she recalibrated her life.

Nashville is treating her well, she says, after she left on somewhat strained terms back in the day “There’s so many young, cool artists in town, and when I left, it wasn’t like that at all. These young ones are in their twenties and thirties now, and their mamas used to listen to my records when they were little old young ‘uns. And now I’m writing records and producing records with ’em, so it’s kind of strange in my full-circle life. Here I am, writing songs with the babies of daddies that I cut their songs back in 1989. It’s crazy.”

When people heard you had moved back to Nashville and were making a record, the natural question to ask was, will this be a Nashville-sounding album? And it’s not, not in certainly any kind of predictable way. And then you said that sonically what you wanted for this was kind of an intimate R&B beatbox vibe. How premeditated was that?

We knew we had written a bunch of great songs, and I knew that they wanted me to try to make a record, which I wasn’t really prepared for or into. At the time, I just wanted to come back and write some songs and see if I could get some cuts and try to be involved in the songwriting community. So we just started rolling, and then Karen made some calls and wound up getting Monument Records interested and I just was like, “Oh, shit. I just wanted a publishing deal!” So here I am. I’m like, damn, I thought that part of my whole thing [of making records] might be fading into the past.

I’m proud of the record because it’s so completely different. We played everything, the girls and I. And then two days ago I was talking to my band leader, Kenny Greenberg, who’s probably the best guitar player in town, and we will be doing shows together. He’s like, “I don’t hear any picking on this.” I said, “I know, but we’ll make it edgy and we’ll figure it out.” And he’s like, “What am I going to do? Stand around right here?” I said, “Well, you can play something else.” So I knew it was gonna be tricky to duplicate it, but it will have the vibe of the record. It’ll probably just be a little more edgy, on the road.

We knew our vibe was so good together, and we were doing something so fun that didn’t have any rules, and didn’t have any picking or any of that Nashville kind of thing. We just put ourselves into the studio and minded our own business and came up with this record, and I’m so happy with it. It was just full of emotion, because I had been through a really bad breakup last year, and that’s what the songs are about — the horrible feeling about that breakup and all of the heartbreak happening while we were writing songs. And then, at the end of this record, it turns into a bit of redemption with talking to God and all. So it tells the story of what I went through and where I wound up, which is very grateful.

We talked with you earlier in the year about the 25 ^th anniversary of  “I Am Shelby Lynne,” and that being a lovesick record, and you said if we liked that, we hadn’t heard anything yet. Because you’d been through the ringer again, and you indicated you were going to be mining a vein of heartbreak again with this record, which turned out to be the case.

Oh, yes. On one hand, it’s a gift to have such a wellspring to draw from, because heartbreak is like, “Hey, here I am.” It’s your turn to write about it, and that’s what I do, man. I’ve always written about my place in life, and I don’t know how to write what I don’t know. So the girls would see me in pain and we would just take it there… along with Jedd Hughes, this great guitar player, who wrote some of the songs with us. So I went through a process the whole time. Because when they left, I would be in the house by myself, and I would just be so sad. But I figured, well, we got a good song out of it. So I’m gonna let the thing play out the way it’s driving itself.

I love the fact that there are some spoken-word bits on here, because I think people love your speaking voice as well as your singing voice. Was there any reason why you felt like, “I’m just gonna speak to the people right now?”

Ashley calls it the talking blues, because I’m definitely not a rapper, but I do love old R&B recitation stuff. There’s several records by Shirley Brown, like “Woman to Woman,” that I’ve always loved. And I believe if you’re honest in delivery, and you’re really feeling it and you’re not trying to put (something) on, I can communicate well that way. Some things I just didn’t think needed singing,and they were important to me to just say ’em. And that’s the truth, because there was no way to sing “Dear God,” because it was like a prayer. And then “Gone to Bed” was a poem I wrote about the person who left me, and it was something that was a reminiscence of last summer when I was with that person. The first talking blues song was a total accident and live on the mic. A lot of those things happened, making parts of this record live on the mic, because I am one of those that’s emotionally and inspirationally driven. And if I’m not having those feelings, I just lay there like a dead snake. So any time I was uplifted enough to get on the mic and feel my feelings so hard, as hard as it was — and I’d be crying — it was what mattered to make the record a communicative project.

Although there’s a lot of sadness on the album, the last stretch of three songs feels a redemption arc, starting with “Good Morning Mountain,” which sounds like it’s about depression or some kind of other hurdle to get over.

You’re right; that’s where it starts getting redeeming on the record. “Good Morning Mountain” I wrote with Jedd Hughes and Ashley Monroe at my dining room table. And it’s about having a personal conversation with the mountain — the mountain being life and all its obstacles — and going, “Look, this is your last sunrise with me.” It’s kind of funny, talking to the mountain as if it’s a person that can communicate. But that mountain’s always in the fucking way, and you have to make peace with it.

Then, “Dear God” is your version of a gospel song, maybe. You sing, “What a fool I’d be / If I didn’t become the fabulous beauty you meant for the world to see.”

It is honestly a prayer. And another one that went live on the mic. I had a sketch written down and Ashley put the beat on and it was one of those off-the-cuff things, because I’m an immediate, inspirational singer. It hits me and we better be ready, ’cause that’s one take. And I love that tune because I think it’s a little bit odd and a little bit brave to put that out in the world. But that’s how I feel. I am grateful, and whatever God is gave me another chance. Because I didn’t have any records planned.

You put a couple of lines in “Dear God” about how you quit drinking… but not smoking. So you’re laying it out there, what you’re doing and what you’re not doing.

Absolutely. Yeah, man, if I hadn’t quit drinking, I’m not sure I’d be here. But smoking weed, I love it. So, we need to make that legal. Get on with that.

Drinking was something you had to cut out of your life, and you didn’t mind admitting that on a record?

Terrible drinker. For years I could have been so much better in my work if it hadn’t been for liquor, and I admit it. It was just a big something that had to get out of my life, and finally I got some help and figured that out. Because first of all, we are gonna be dead. I made peace with myself about it and said, “OK, you are a drunk. So there. You’ve said it, it’s done. And now just stop it.” It was a choice, but it was a mandatory thing. It had to happen. And, you know, now I like some good weed. That’s a fact. It’s kinda like Willie… You can look back in the archives at pictures of Willie and he might have a beer in his hand, and he had his drinking times, but I don’t think he ever really drank a lot, and just smoked weed his whole life… I understand it now. Liquor puts you in a place that’s kind of dark, and weed will make you giggle and act the fool.

A song that comes earlier in the album, “Regular Man,” is very striking, in being filled with dark references to alcohol, and even specifically the Maker and Jim Beam, and how these are harming somebody. Can you talk about what went into that song?

Well, the first verse talks about “flying on the airwaves, Mississippi made him mad that way… I fell in love with his boy, I put color in his hair.” I’m talking about his boy, who I was in love with several years ago, and I colored his hair red one night, because we were drunk as shit and having fun on the road. And “flying on the airwaves, Mississippi made him that way” is talking about his father who was a flyer in the Air Force way back, and he died a drunk — and then his son died a drunk. And then the second verse is about (Lynne’s own) Daddy: “a thinker, Alabama Jim Beam drinker” — that’s about him. And the third verse is about me: “singer and a song, Bronco going long.”

So it’s just about how alcohol makes you regular . It’s just so easy to get, and that’s why it’s so hard to quit. I mean, it’s probably more difficult to get some heroin or whatever. You know, as somebody who’s done some drugs and had to make some drug runs, it’s nerve-wracking. [Laughs.] It’s easy to go to the corner and get a bottle. So, it’s regular. It’s common. We all have done it.

And in the song, I’m saying that I’m as common as my daddy was, as [the boy she fell in love with] was, as his daddy was… just a common drunk. Everybody’s the same when you’re a drunk. If you go to the AA meeting, I’m not “Shelby Lynne.” I’m Shelby Moorer, and I’m a drunk. Shelby Lynne doesn’t want to announce — well, I am announcing it to you — but you know, I’m a singer and I don’t want everybody to know that I used to be a fall-down drunk, but I was. And when I went to an AA meeting, it was refreshing to be around a bunch of fucking drunks. You know what I mean? There’s no distinguishing a man from another man or a woman from a drunk. To me that was the most important thing, because I had already decided to stop drinking. But I believe what I got out of an AA meeting was, I could let down now. I didn’t have to be Shelby Lynne for a minute.

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From the outside, your fans think of you as a very strong-willed person, in your art. And so we can imagine that, if you decided to quit that, you could be very strong-willed about that too. But at the same time, that’s a powerful pull. So I don’t want to assume that you didn’t need help in that.

I did, and I put it off a long time. And I could have been so much better in my earlier records had I not been drinking and miserable. And you know, behind all that drunkenness, there’s some reasons. Of course we all know that. So I’ve been dealing a lot of years with the reason. And it’s just life and traumas and shit that catches you up. And I think if we’re going to have any kind of lives, we have to be honest with ourselves and just go, “You’re not really doing yourself right.” More than anything, you have to talk to yourself. And I don’t think a lot of us take care of ourselves enough on the inside of ourselves. That’s the hardest thing to do. Most everybody can take care of everybody else, but they don’t do too well with themselves. I meet people like that every day. I’m certainly one of them.

The new song “Butterfly” is about your sister Allison. We just interviewed Allison recently when she took a job with the Country Music Hall of Fame. That was such an unusual career turn for a singer-songwriter of some renown that we had to ask her about that, and share some of the happiness she’s found in doing that.

Oh man. If anybody was ever meant to be some place, it’s Sissy in that place, because she just adores it. She walks in the door as an artist, which is highly unusual, and she’s also an intellectual, and a deep researcher, and of course an author and a writer and a great editor and all those things. She has a natural curiosity. And we were born and raised on country music. So every day I’ll say, “Send me a picture of something cool,” and she’ll send me a little snap. But she’s got all the archives of every picture that was ever made of me. Of course, I can’t remember shit, so she’ll send me something with me and some hairdo from the past, and I’m like, “Oh good lord, I don’t even remember that.” So it’s awesome. She’s over there and we’re doing a thing [at the Hall of Fame] on the 21st of September. She’s going to sit down with me in front of an audience at the theater there, and we’re gonna go through a 34-year career, I think.

You’ve written songs about Allison before, but “Butterfly” was obviously a special song to you. What drove you to write that?

Well, living close together is just such a relief for us, because it’s been a long time coming. We always wanted to be old ladies together. And here we are, in our fifties, and we’re starting off that whole third chapter in our lives. And it’s so cool to be close. We have coffee together a lot. She was saying one day, “I’m stretched at both ends. I can’t do everything I need to do and it’s too much.” And I said, “Well, Sissy, I don’t know what to say, but everybody loves butterflies. And you’re like a butterfly. Everybody wants to be around a butterfly.” It just kind of fell out. Sissy is very beautiful and very put together; as we know, she’s a gorgeous woman. Anyway, I got with Ashley and Karen and said, “I got this idea,” and we just wrote it that day. I had written down a little poem, and it was a little abstract, the lyric, but it makes sense about the butterfly because it’s “tears turn into swimming pools, pearls are dreams coming true…” And then Ashley says, “Yellow rose in bloom.” So, we all contributed to the lines and the feelings, because they could understand what I was saying, because they love her too.

Speaking of that group of women you made the record with. You’ve done some pretty stripped-down records before, where it really felt you were at the helm. But the fact that you had this core group of collaborators…. Does it make a difference when it’s all women in the writing room? I know there were guys who came in who contributed to some of the songwriting, but when the core group is all women, does that make a difference in the vibe that is helpful, or was that just kind of a nice coincidence this time?

No, it’s completely different. When women are in a group… I don’t know how y’all figure that out as dudes; I don’t know what y’all think about that. But when women get together and they have a goal or an idea that they wanna get finished, it usually gets finished. There’s something about the natural instinct to just be like, boom, boom, boom . “Oh, well, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s get some coffee and nail this to the wall.”

And then making the record, we just were so comfortable together and decided it wasn’t really a picking record, because of the beatbox and everything. You know, we could have called any one of our favorite dudes in to pick, because we know that the best on the planet; they’re all here. But we just decided, “I don’t think it’s that record.” There’s so many holes, and we loved being able to let the lyrics breathe, and allow for all of us adding our vocals and stuff, and no flashy picking just to fill up all the spots . That was really the simplicity of the decision.

With Karen Fairchild, this seems like maybe the start of a different chapter for her. People think of her as a star and not necessarily somebody who’s in the studio writing, producing, and managing and doing all the stuff she’s done with you. Musically it’s a ways away from Little Big Town, and so it’s nice to find out when somebody has a different side to ’em that you didn’t necessarily know about.

I’ve always watched Karen and the town from afar, because I literally left town when they started making records, right? So when I would check out what was going on in Nashville, because I always had friends here, I would always see Little Big Town and always thought Karen was so hot, and the band’s so great. Ashley and Karen were tight, but I didn’t know who was tight with who when I came back to town. I didn’t know anybody, really, because the tides had turned and the generations had changed. A lot of my people were dead, and I was 55. So I roll back in here and Ashley and Waylon and Angeleena and I wrote a big bunch of songs, and then she goes, “I’m gonna bring Karen over. You know Karen?” I said, “I know of her, and I’ve met her.” Then Karen walks in and it was like, “Been watching you from afar. Love you.” Then the songwriting was just clicking, because Karen’s been writing for all those years and making her supergroup fucking huge.

And she’s got a business head. She made the calls to Katie McCartney (at Monument) and stuff with the label. She’s like, “No, we need you to be doing this.” And then boom, boom, boom . She kind of took over, and we’ve decided to do it together as a partnership, all the management stuff and details, until some sparkly dude or woman comes and walks in the door, which we’re not really expecting.

Ashley Monroe is a great talent.

Oh my God. She’s a monster. I call her Tennessee Lightning because she’s just a spark, man, and she’s country as I am, from over there in east Tennessee. We hit it off crazy because she’s funny as hell and she laughs at me. I’m funny. So we get that same kind of dark-ass sense of humor. You know, her daddy died when she was young, so we had that in common. And we’re both kind of spiritual creatures — that was an instant friendship. Waylon Payne brought her over and it was an instant comfort zone. And you talk about fearless —I always thought I was fearless, but I learned a lot from those girls. If you’ve got the comfort, and you’ve got the confidence, you can just dig it out of there.

You’ve talked before about how you believe that, when you’re writing out of pain, you believe that everybody can insert themselves into your songs, and maybe it helps makes them realize why their pain is okay and natural. But then you do have that kind of redemption arc toward the end of this album, as well as the real painful songs. So do you have any thoughts about what you hope people most relate to?

Oh my God, the broken heart part, for sure. I don’t know anybody’s personal redemption but my own. But I had to bear everything on this record because this one was in particular happening in the moment of all the pain. So, writing was not only good to use for my personal thing, but, at the same time, we crafted the songs so everybody could be like, “Wow, man, that’s me, and it sucks.” So that’s really the approach we took, to take my heart, and then our hearts, and put it out there so all the broken-hearted people can hear it and go… [she makes an indistinguishable, muffled sound].

And go, sorry, what?

And cry . [Laughs.] I was crying there.

Your records have helped some of us through some things over the years, so it’s nice to have another one to identify with.

Oh, I’m so glad. See, there you go. That’s the only reason I’m doing it. Because I had no plans. The songs said, “Here you are. Now get to work.” I believe in it that way.

You’re doing the Ryman with that band you’ve put together that you mentioned includes Kenny Greenberg. You said “shows,” plural. So where do you sort of stand with playing live?

I’m sussing that out. We’ll do the Ryman first and see how we feel. Then I’m going to do a really special thing and go over to London and open for Chris Stapleton at O2 Arena, and it’s just blowing my mind. I’m excited about that. Then after that I’m gonna see what comes up. I’ve gotta do a lot of rehearsing with my band, which is new, and I’m kind of excited about it, but I’m gonna take my time and see what can happen after the first of the year, man.

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