Country maverick Lillie Mae takes the spotlight
Los Angeles Times
NASHVILLE — Two middle-aged women eyed Lillie Mae as she strolled into Rotier’s family restaurant in Nashville, her head shaved on both sides with a shock of short, dark hair on top, nose ring and tattoos on both arms easily visible.
“Well, aren’t you just darling?” one of the observers said on her way to the cashier to pay her bill.
Singer, songwriter and fiddler Lillie Mae smiled back and demurely thanked the woman for the remark.
“That’s better than what I get a lot of times,” she quietly told a visitor as they sat down for a late lunch on a recent afternoon in one of her favorite hangs.
Lillie Mae has dazzled increasingly larger audiences over the last decade with her elastic and colorful vocal aplomb, her technical command of the fiddle and her charismatic presence as a performer.
Those traits took center stage in her biggest career step yet as Jack White’s Third Man Records released the 26-year-old musician’s new solo album, “Forever and Then Some,” last week. [Week of April 16]
Lillie Mae doesn’t sound like most of the carefully groomed nascent stars roaming the streets of Nashville, but that’s one of the things that caught the attention of indie rock kingpin White — who recruited her for the all-female band that supported him on his Lazaretto tour in 2014.
“What isn’t interesting about her?” asked Stacy Vee, director of festival talent for Goldenvoice who oversees the talent bookings for the promoter’s Stagecoach Country Music Festival, which Lillie Mae played in 2008 with her family band, Jypsi.
“Seriously, the way she’s singing, the way she presents her art, I haven’t seen it performed like that. … It’s completely fresh, it sounds way older and way newer, masculine and feminine at the same time.”
Her album spans the melancholic Americana breakup song “Over the Hill and Through the Woods” to the sprightly country twostep “Honky Tonks and Taverns.” Elsewhere, there’s the country-gospel lope of “Wash Me Clean” and the folk bluegrass sway of the title track. The album closes with the haunting mantralike minor-key lament “Dance to the Beat of My Own Drum.”
Lillie Mae’s voice comes out of the Dolly Parton school of high, quavering emotionalism, bringing a tinge of sadness even to her more optimistic lyrics. One of the most distinctive facets of her singing is her ability to swoop up to some notes, gracefully fall off others and register hop with the ease of a great yodeler.
The album features instrumental and vocal contributions from several members of her large family: her brother, Frank, on guitar; older sister Scarlet on mandolin; and younger sister McKenna Grace on vocals. For years, they sang together as a family band that also included another older sister, Amber Dawn, who now lives in Canada.
Nearly a decade ago, they were making the rounds as Jypsi.
Lillie Mae was 16 at the time, and she quickly rose from her role supporting to the band’s lead vocalist.
Jypsi persisted, mostly at Layla’s Bluegrass Inn on Broadway along Nashville’s central tourist thoroughfare. The band would play several nights a week, four hours a night for years, honing the siblings’ chops across a broad range of material from country and bluegrass to rock, soul and R&B.
That provided Lillie Mae with a diverse range of tools in her musical kit. As a songwriter, she leans toward heartbreak, which she concedes sometimes limits her opportunities to flash her expertise on the fiddle.
“I just don’t write those kinds of [uptempo bluegrass] songs,” she said. “I wish I did.”
Now the big challenge is stepping up yet again: from frontwoman in a family band and featured support player to a bona fide rock star to focal point of her own show.
“It’s kind of scary, in a way. But I’m really ready to just get out there and play and play and play.”