It becomes immediately apparent that this lady is not for turning. The lady in question is country singer Shelby Lynne and her life reads like a serious soap opera. She was born in Quantico, Virginia in 1968 and raised in Jackson, Alabama. Her real name is Shelby Lynne Moorer (her younger sister is rising country singer Alison Moorer). Jail, family dysfunction, murder and suicide are elements of the background that created a determined, thin-lipped and soft-spoken woman. Sitting in the overly trendy environs of London's Met Bar, she is virtually unrecognisable from the truly sassy, glamorous face on the cover of her latest record, the unequivocally-titled I Am Shelby Lynne.
Reminiscent of a nervy Jennifer Jason Lee - hair clawed back, clipped, Southern-drawl answers, an adamant refusal of eye contact, sucking the life out of cigarettes and continually picking a thread on her frayed jeans - there would be a faded grandeur about Shelby Lynne if it t weren't for the fact that she exudes star quality. Admittedly, following a 10-hour flight from Palm Beach, the star quality might look a little lacklustre, but it's there.
"Of course I'm a star," says Shelby. "It's my job, it's what I do. I have never felt like doing anything else. It's not a conceited thing, however, I've just always felt a little strange like that. Since I was a little girl I always wanted to be a star. I knew there was nothing else for me in the world. I've been singing from the time I was three years old. Standing in front of a mirror with a hair brush - that was so natural for me. It's the only thing in life that I knew I was gonna do. It was inevitable. I was born that way. I sang before I said any words."
Most people in Europe wouldn't even know what Shelby Lynne looks like, let alone be concerned about the tangible matter of star quality. This level of unawareness is about to alter, however. In the US, too, Lynne is about to experience a change in her career. The word is out that Shelby Lynne is set to cross over into more mainstream markets. She has already flirted with crossover success through three albums she recorded for Epic over eight years ago, but defected from the major labels for a quirkier, more independent route. Despite winning the CMA (Country Music Association) Horizon Award for Best Rising Talent in 1991, Shelby Lynne decided she didn't want to be turned into a Reba McEntire clone. Therefore no smiles for the camera, no kow-towing to the media, nothing that didn't come from her heart. Her reputation for not playing the meet'n'greet game followed her around, and when she left Epic, it proved difficult to sign to another major label. She found creative respite in a couple of small labels, Morgan Creek and Magnatone, releasing an album for the former in 1993 (Temptation) and one for the latter in 1995 (Restless). Since then, it has been head-down, taking-stock time.
"I was 18 when I made my first record, Sunrise, for Epic. When you make records in Nashville, it's a completely different process, a certain system and a certain way of finding songs. If you're not a songwriter - which at that time I wasn't - you choose songs that come in and you use musicians that the producer wants to use. You then have recording sessions. That and the subsequent other two records Tough All Over (1990) and Soft Talk (1991) were created and completed in a totally different way compared to the making of the new one. Working in Nashville is a creatively redundant thing.
"That said, I truly respect the time that I spent there. I am a country music fan - traditional country music, that is. I wouldn't say I have a huge collection of what's been out there for the last 10 years, because I don't, but I could not have made I Am Shelby Lynne if I hadn't been in Nashville for 10 years making the other ones. It was kinda like going to school and graduating each year."
Does it take a certain kind of person to remain in Nashville and be successful from there? "I would say so. I have a lot of friends who are very successful in Nashville - Trisha Yearwood, for one. She makes great records and is a killer singer and fits in the way of doing it Nashville-style. I've always bugged the system a little bit - I never liked being told what to do or how to do it. Unless it's a good idea and then I'll listen.
"I haven't been in Nashville since 1995, but I would guess it's still confining. I just couldn't do it any more. I was feeling unfulfilled as an artist, and I didn't want to live in a place where people couldn't accept my honesty any more."
The fact that I Am Shelby Lynne sounds like a first album (and for many thousands of people it will be looked upon as such) is something that the singer had actually planned. "I wanted the record to be a starting over for me, writing my own songs, a different way of production. I wanted to have the freedom that I was never allowed in making records before. I really wanted people to feel like it was the debut, like a rebirth, almost.
"Bill [Bottrell, producer] and I would write a song and cut it within an hour. It was very free and open, with no restrictions in any part of the recording process."
The new album was recorded at Fowl River, Alabama, in a home studio tended to by an assertive singer and songwriter with something to prove, a bunch of hand-picked musicians and a producer who achieved immense success with his former charge Sheryl Crow - a country/pop artist with whom Shelby Lynne shares several stylistic similarities.
Using the philosophy of "if you haven't lived it, don't write about it", Shelby exorcised crucial parts of her past (her father had her jailed on a trumped-up charge; he subsequently shot her mother dead and then killed himself. "I'm so sick of talking about that you wouldn't believe it. The story is told," she says when I tentatively bring the subject up).
Although she says she is not an inward-looking person ("I jus' kinda be" she slurs in a tone that is pure Blanche Dubois), Shelby came up with a handful of sophisticated but defiantly old-school country/pop/soul songs. Evocative and tirelessly emotional, the record draws its strengths from a Southern Comfort languor and an underpinned lyrical tautness that is never superficial.
I Am Shelby Lynne is one of the best country records released this year, one that will mark its creator out as a woman too genuine ever to threaten the likes of Shania Twain. Which, not surprisingly, is not at all what she wants. "I would really love the continuation of the respect of my peers," she says, stabbing a cigarette butt into the ashtray. "That's very important to me. I never ever thought that I might be as big as Shania Twain. It's just apples and oranges, but who knows? All I want is for this record to be heard and for people to grasp my honesty. I tell it like it is and it's what I wanted to do on this record. Have I succeeded? Absolutely."
What, then, about the album's title? Is it really as bold and forthright a statement of intent as it sounds? For the first time Shelby Lynne fixes me a stare. At least 20 seconds pass by before she replies: "Let me tell you a couple of things. Number one - I've made a lot of records and I felt it was time to say I am Shelby Lynne, Goddammit. Number two - take it or leave it. This is what you're gonna get and this as real as it gets. It's me saying to anyone who cares to listen: I have nothing to hide."
I am Shelby Lynne is on the Universal label.
