Shelby Lynne

“Anybody can make records, but you’ve got to be able to communicate with the people one-on-one and bare your soul,” Lynne told POLLSTAR. ” I didn’t make a record that was about my true life experiences to go out there and try to fake people off. I want to tell the real deal. And if I feel like falling down on my knees, I will. That’s entertainment, and it’s real.”

Lynne should be an authority on real entertainment by now. She spent a decade in Nashville, recording five country albums, before she decided it was time to break out and make her own music. Appropriately enough, her latest record is titled I Am Shelby Lynne.

“I started writing my own material really started writing it. I had fooled around on a couple of my records but not seriously on my own,” she said, explaining how writing her own songs was a natural progression.

“I just decided I wanted to do a different kind of music. I still wanted to do country music but I wanted to have some soul in there and a little rock ‘n’ roll, too,” she said. “I think country music is soul music. It’s just a different method. To me, Hank Williams was a soul singer.”

Delving into her own life experiences some of them terribly tragic has provided for a truly moving work that has brought a new respect and a new freedom to Lynne’s career. The payoff comes in the media frenzy over her music, her ability to touch audiences and her new homestead in Palm Springs, Calif. It may have taken a decade to find her niche, but she has no regrets about the time she spent in Music City.

“My time in Nashville helped in making me who I am and I’m very proud of the records I made there,” she said. “No, I don’t regret one thing in my life, in my world. I don’t have time.”

Her honesty is refreshing. Lynne’s been through enough B.S. to find true happiness in making music for herself and sharing it with those who want to listen. If critics and radio come along, that’s fine. But she’s certainly not waiting around. She’s got shows to play.

“I’ve made six albums without radio play. If they play it, that’s wonderful and I’ll embrace it. If they don’t, that’s not why I made the record,” she said. Her label, Island Def Jam Music Group, was scheduled to release the album’s first single, “Gotta Get Back,” last week.

It’s interesting to see a country artist pop up on a label that is known for its roster of urban artists. Lynne loves the association.

“I made this record hoping to change and merge different musics together and I’m on my way to do that,” she said. “It’s about Jay-Z and Shelby Lynne getting to meet as artists and talk about two different worlds, and making music one thing instead of keeping it so separated and enclosed all the time. So I’m very happy where I am.”

It’s a far cry from the current Nashville formula system that has more traditional country artists like Johnny Cash giving the industry the bird. In fact, Lynne proudly dons the T-shirt with the picture of the country legend giving the finger when she plays sometimes.

“I don’t like systems in any walk of life,” she said. “I just like to go day-by-day and sometimes, flippin’ the world off is about all you can come up with.”

Fortunately, there’s no one formula for touring, which is Lynne’s favorite thing to do. “I rely on it for my soul,” she said. “I love doing shows and playing music for an audience that really is interested in hearing it. … I try to be the audience first. I try to figure what I would like to see.”

Lynne’s challenge is to thrill audiences with nothing but herself and her band no bells and whistles.

“I still believe in the old-school show thing no frills, no fancy equipment just a guitar and some amps and some drums, and throw it out there and do it the best you can in a live sense, because it’s easy to make records. But the live show is where you really show if you’ve got the balls to do it.”

Seeing Bruce Springsteen for the first time recently drove that idea home for Lynne.

“I was moved by not only how good he was, but how the audience supported him and how he supports them. It was like having sex with 50,000 people,” she reminisced. “It really opened my eyes to know that I’m on the right track when I stop in the middle of the song and just say, ‘I want to talk to ya. I want to let you know where this song came from, if you don’t mind. It’s for you. And I’m gonna do it for me too. So let’s enjoy this thing together.'”

Lynne begins headlining clubs this week and opens for k.d. lang later in the summer.