Whoever came up with this album title was way too modest. It should have read Christie Lynn REALLY Sings Country, Gospel & Bluegrass. After all, here’s a lady who’s equally at ease on stage with Porter Wagoner and the Southern Rock Allstars—a vocalist who can match Dolly Parton and Ralph Stanley lick for lick and not give an inch. It all started at Opryland on a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1995. A crowd had gathered at the bustling Nashville amusement park to soak up the old-time melodies of Bashful Brother Oswald and Charlie Collins, both alumni of Roy Acuff’s world-famous Smoky Mountain Boys. Near the end of their set, “Os” asked if anyone wanted to come up and sing with them. With a nod from her parents, Lynn raised her hand and stepped forward. She whispered briefly with the musicians, then turned to the audience and belted out a soul-stirring version of “Amazing Grace,” The audience roared its approval. Clearly impressed, Collins told Lynn, “There’s somebody else we want to hear you sing.” That somebody else, as it turned out, was Porter Wagoner, the man who’d made Parton a star. “After Os and Charlie got done playing,” Lynn recalls, “they walked me over to where Porter was signing autographs and said, ‘Boy, you’ve got to hear this girl sing.’” Wagoner invited Lynn and her family to be his guests at the Grand Ole Opry that night. Once he heard Lynn’s remarkable voice, it was just a matter of weeks until he hired her to sing with him on the Opry, as well as record and tour. She would remain a part of Wagoner’s troupe for the next seven years. “I have sung with so many people on the Opry stage,” Lynn says proudly, “some of the biggest stars in country music. I even sang with Garth Brooks once. It wasn’t just me and him—a bunch of us were up there doing a gospel medley—but I was standing right next to him and singing with him. And that’s what mattered to me.” Wagoner still takes a keen interest in Lynn’s music, as his production of Christie Lynn Sings Country, Gospel & Bluegrass demonstrates so powerfully. “Porter called me up one day this past spring,” Lynn explains, “and we got to talking about me doing a bluegrass album. I loved the idea—so we started gathering up songs.” Because they found so many great ones, they decided to incorporate a few gospel and country tunes into the album’s overall bluegrass sound. Lynn’s reputation as a singer—and Wagoner’s as a producer—attracted two of the most distinctive and revered vocalists ever to grace popular music: the effervescent Dolly Parton and the ageless Ralph Stanley. Parton joins Lynn and Wagoner on “Beneath The Sweet Magnolia Tree,” a picture-book love song that Parton wrote and first recorded with Wagoner years ago. Stanley takes the lead in “Model Church,” a majestic old hymn, and, backed by Lynn’s heavenly harmonies, delivers one of the finest performances of his storied career. (It bears noting that Wagoner, Parton and Stanley are all multiple Grammy-winners.) Nashville’s top composers contributed some of their most moving songs for the album. Award-winning Larry Cordle (“Murder On Music Row”) and Carl Jackson (“Little Mountain Church House”) proffered such spellbinders as “Lonesome Dove” (earlier recorded by Trisha Yearwood), the heartwarming “Down Home” and the wild and forlorn “High Lonesome Stranger.” Wagoner, a fabled tunesmith in his own right, chipped in with “Bluegrass Boogie,” a bubbling musical gumbo of “Cajun pickin’ with a bluegrass sound.” His sister, Lorraine Wagoner Hall, tendered “Closest Neighbor,” a hymn that visualizes a placid neighborhood in Heaven. With her mother and brother, Lynn co-wrote the album’s closing number, “We’re Gonna Miss You,” a tribute to her paternal grandfather. "My grandpa—the one who had the big farm next door to my mom and dad’s that I grew up on—died last August 2,” Lynn says, “and my birthday was August 1. I really believe he waited until I’d had my birthday to go.” This is the second album Wagoner has produced for Lynn. The first, Dixie Girl in 2001, paired her with George Jones and Patty Loveless. Although it was released on a private label and sold only at her shows, Lynn says, “I will always treasure that album because it gave me the opportunity to sing with two of my idols.” With her mentor’s blessing, Lynn left Wagoner’s camp in 2002. “I wanted to do my own thing,” she says, “and I was more into songwriting at that time. That’s also when I started singing with these other bands that were made up of some of the original members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot.” For the better part of three years, she sang “on and off” with the band, which variously called itself Brave New South and The Southern Rock Allstars. “Those were great guys,” Lynn remembers. “It wasn’t country, but it was always interesting.” It was only natural that an Alabama girl growing up in the ‘80s would have an affinity for southern rock. Lynn developed her musical tastes in and around the small town of Samson. Her grandparents there told her that the locals called it “Snuff City,” a reference to the boxcars of snuff and chewing tobacco purchased by a local company. “Folks used to spit tobacco on the sidewalks so bad that you couldn’t walk on them,” Lynn reports. “And if you didn’t get out of the way, they’d spit on you.” But Lynn’s happiest days were spent on her grandpa’s farm, where she fished, rode horses, cuddled baby chicks and feasted on boiled peanuts and tomato sandwiches. “Every time I go back home,” she sighs, “I come back to Nashville ten pounds heavier.” Like many of her peers, Lynn found her voice by singing in church. She showed an early talent for the piano, picking out her first tune—“Happy Birthday”—by ear. By the time she graduated from Samson High School, she was a skilled enough vocalist to win a music scholarship to the local college. Always, though, there was that urge for a larger stage and a bigger crowd. So one day she went to Opryland. |