“You gotta go through it to write about it.” That’s Shelby Lynne‘s approach to songwriting, and she knows it. She’s been through it.
Lynne recently returned to Nashville “to lay low and write some songs” after spending the last 25 years out west in Palm Springs, California. Initially just looking for a publishing deal, Lynne was soon back in the studio, working on another album. “It was a surprise,” she admits by phone, the day before she was to be awarded the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award at their annual Honors and Awards Ceremony (along with other honorees Dave Alvin, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Rev. Gary Davis, Don Was, and Dwight Yoakam). “It was a moment in time, which is what I really love about it.”
Consequences of the Crown finds the Alabama-born singer-songwriter in peak form. Working with country artists Ashley Monroe (Pistol Annies), Karen Fairchild (Little Big Town), and co-producer Gena Johnson, Lynne crafts an album that undoubtedly builds on what came before but is unique in her discography.
“Working with” doesn’t quite do justice to Lynne’s collaboration with her self-described “sisterhood”. Lynne, Fairchild, Johnson, and Monroe produced and performed all 12 tracks. They all joined forces in the typical Nashville way.
“Nashville is just a songwriting community town. That’s what it runs on,” Shelby Lynne explains. “Everybody knows somebody, who knows somebody, and then it just kind of starts rolling, if you’re lucky.” As she collaborated with other songwriters, singer-songwriter Waylon Payne introduced her to Ashley Monroe. “He said, ‘You got to meet Ashley.’ And then we wrote one. Then, next time, Angaleena [Presley, also of the Pistol Annies] came, and we wrote one, then Karen came by, and we wrote one … so it just builds. And everybody that comes to the party has something to add to it.”
Restless
Shelby Lynne first hit Nashville in the late 1980s, just a couple of years after her father shot and killed her mother, then himself. She was just 17 at the time, and her younger sister, singer-songwriter (and now a writer-editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame) Allison Moorer, was only 14. Both sisters have worked through the tragedy in their own ways over the years. (Moorer published the acclaimed memoir Blood in 2019.) At first, however, as Lynne made her way through the Music City machine, the sensitive subject was two-stepped around as her record company, Epic, attempted to mold her into a mainstream star.
After a couple of mid-level chart showings (including a duet with none other than George Jones, produced by none other than Billy Sherill, who also helmed her 1989 debut, Sunrise), she started slowly pushing toward her own vision: a mix of country and old-school soul with a contemporary pop edge. (Her 1995 album on Curb, the appropriately titled Restless, pointed toward that direction.) She hit her stride when she moved out west and worked up 2000’s landmark I Am Shelby Lynne, which acts as a prequel of sorts to Consequences.
Therapy for the Pain
Upon moving back to Nashville, she realized that many of the artists she began surrounding herself with were the same age as when she left. “It’s totally different. It’s almost like it skipped a generation,” she admits. “Everybody’s, like, 30 or less. It’s crazy. I left (Nashville) when I was 30!”
As the songs came, the idea formed in Fairchild’s mind about Lynne making an album. Pretty soon, they all agreed, and Shelby Lynne went from seeking a publishing deal to securing a record deal from Monument after Fairchild made a call to the label. “I just wanted to come back and write some songs,” Lynne admits. “I wound up surrounded by good people who wanted to help me make a record. I wasn’t even thinking of such a thing. I just wanted to move back south after being in California for 25 years, and here we are. You just can’t make any plans, I guess.”
Lynne found the inspiration to write the songs that form Consequences of the Crown in an age-old way through the hurt and pain she was still feeling after a devastating breakup. Although she remained guarded about it, she did reflect on her general outlook on relationships. “I think I’m always in love and falling out of love,” she says. “I think it’s the way we all are. We can’t help it, and then we do it, and we wish we hadn’t, and then we write a record about it.”
The resulting record pulses with beats, snaps, samples, and voices—double-tracked, layered, and harmonized—by Lynne, Fairchild, and Monroe. Johnson contributed percussion and programming while Lynne handled guitars and bass, Monroe brought keys and synths, and Fairchild percussed and howled. While the focus remains on the lyrics, the music weaves calmative soundscapes throughout, vaguely acting as therapy for the pain.
“It Has to Have Something to Say”
Consequences of the Crown is deeply rooted in both 1970s and 1990s-era R&B. “That’s always in my influences,” Shelby Lynne agrees. “I listen to a lot of R&B and a lot of the new R&B, too. I just dig it. I love soul music. I think country and soul are complete first cousins. You know, this all depends on a really good song. The song gets to have the most say. It has to have something to say. I believe in good songs and good messages. The rest is just a fun time.”
The opening track, “Truth We Know”, has plenty to say. It acts as the setup for what follows. It’s all recitation: talking to her ex-lover, grappling with that phone call you get from them after it’s over after you’ve tried to move on, but you realize there is no moving on. “I can’t forget your number / ’cause that means I might be letting you go,” she recites. “Might not ever be ready for that.”
“Truth We Know”, “Gone to Bed”, and “Dear God” all have moments of recitation mixed with singing as if Lynne is expressing herself the best way she can, depending on the lyrics. These moments recall the R&B of Shirley Brown’s “Woman to Woman” (also covered by Barbara Mandrell, who had a country hit with it). The result is hypnotic and entrancing. “I was encouraged by my partners in this record to [use recitation],” Shelby Lynne explains. “And it made me discover that sometimes it can be a little more poignant if you really have something you want people to hear. Some things are just made to be (spoken), and that’s the only way I can say it.”
For “But I Ain’t”, Lynne reached back to the I Am Shelby Lynne track, “Dreamsome” and, in the spirit of songs such as Robert Plant‘s “Tall Cool One”, sampled herself. “Somehow, we wrote it in the same key,” Lynne explains. “I didn’t say anything at the time, but I had it in my head, ‘Hm. Sounds like ‘Dreamsome’. So, we got ready to cut ‘But I Ain’t’, and we were talking about sampling something, and I said, ‘You know, it’s not often you get the owner of the master and the writer of the song in the studio, and I say, let’s do it.'”
Full Circle
Now, with an Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement award added to her CV (which also contains the 2001 “Best New Artist” Grammy), Lynne has come full circle to the town that once tried to pigeonhole her. The lessons she’s learned since? “Never do anything you don’t want to do. Period,” she stresses. “If an artist does something they don’t want to do, everybody’s going to pay in the end.
“As an artist, whether you’re signed or not, you have to do what you’re inspired to do. You can’t wait on anybody. Otherwise, you’re not an artist. You’re just a doer of things.”
Consequences of the Crown has been receiving rave reviews all over. As for what’s next, will she follow her sister into the memoir arena? “I go off and on it,” she admits. “I haven’t decided. I just feel like every time I live a little bit longer, I’m like, I ain’t ready to write a book!”
She admits that she writes when she has fits of inspiration, just don’t expect anything anytime soon. “Sissy wrote a fine book,” Lynne gushes. “She pretty much nailed it. So, I wanna write about rock ‘n’ roll in my book. But I gotta figure out my stories because, in most of my rock ‘n’ roll stories, I was shit-faced. So, I’ll have to remember who to call to remember ’em.”
Asked if “writing through the pain” helps; if it’s cathartic in any way, she’s even more blunt. “No, I don’t do it for that reason,” she explains. “Nothing helps. You do it because it’s just what you do. I have something to write about. It doesn’t matter how bad it hurts. You use it.”
Shelby Lynne concludes, “I just write because it’s a beautiful wellspring of information to write about as a writer. I think living life is hard as hell for everybody. But I get to write about it because that’s just what I do as a poet. I write poems and stuff. That’s how this kind of stuff works. It doesn’t have to make any sense to anybody else… unless it really does resonate with them.”