Music Review: Shelby Lee Lowe, ‘The Fame Sessions’
The Tennessee native’s new EP is straight-up honky-tonk at its finest.
Shelby Lee Lowe’s The Fame Sessions album artwork, 2022.
Here at Adventures in Americana, we have a “big tent” concept of what Americana music is. We started with a heavy focus on alt-country, folk and bluegrass, but we’ve come to include everything from blues and roots rock to sometimes even pop, R&B and alt-rock. If your music has American roots and you’ve got 1) real (non-synth) instruments, 2) real (non-autotuned) voices and 3) a story to tell—or even two out of the three—chances are you could fit in our definition of Americana.
And I love it. I love finding those threads in all kinds of music and broadening my musical horizons, connecting with sounds I never would’ve considered before we started on these adventures. But, as with real-life adventures, sometimes it’s so nice to come home.
Shelby Lee Lowe. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The Fame Sessions from Nashville-based Shelby Lee Lowe brought me home. Heck, it practically sat me down at the kitchen table and poured me a glass of sweet tea. The three-song EP, recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is a “country as cornbread” (in Lowe’s words) delight, steel-drenched and unvarnished and anchored by his deep, authentically twang-filled vocals. It may be a short record, but Lowe makes the most of every second, covering some of the most essential and iconic themes of the genre.
The first track, “Where There’s Country,” paints a sentimental picture of country culture with details like bluetick hounds and glass-bottle Cokes that took me right back to my years spent in West Virginia, Virginia and Georgia. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with those big city lights, lotta folks love livin’ that kind of life,” Lowe sings magnanimously in the chorus, and it’s true, but it doesn’t stop me closing my eyes and remembering wading in a creek with tadpoles around my toes, or walking a gravel road to a country store for a popsicle from an ancient cooler.
As someone raised on a strict diet of Hank Sr. and Jimmie Rodgers, it’s not really a country record without some flirting and hell-raising, and the honky-tonk song-length come-on “Good at It” delivers both with a wink and a grin. “Girl I’m sure you probably heard about my reputation,” the narrator boasts; “Let me be your next bad habit / I’m no good but I’m good at it.” With bluesy electric guitar and staccato drums, it’s a party of a song tailor-made for a roadhouse jukebox.
Shelby Lee Lowe. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The next track, “Loving You Is Killing Me,” flips that theme on its head. “I know you ain’t thinking about forever / I know that for you I’m just a fling,” Lowe sings, comparing the object of his affection to “things that hurt me … whiskey, cocaine, cigarettes.” Of course, knowing that doesn’t change a thing (this is a country song, after all): “Loving you is killing me, but it’s one hell of a ride.”
Lowe worked with seasoned and lauded pros like hit-making songwriter Rivers Rutherford to write and produce The Fame Sessions, and the songs have modern Nashville flair as well as deeper roots that give them a throwback feel. Altogether, it’s as pure a distillation of neo-traditional country music as anyone could ask for.
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
