She was told to smile and hide the chaos. Now Leah Blevins is singing her truth

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Those first few acoustic guitar chords on Leah Blevins’ “All Dressed Up,” a mid-tempo saunter, rise like the swelter off the black top of Bobbie Gentry’s Tallahatchie Bridge in 1967’s seminal Southern goth pearl-clutcher “Ode to Billie Joe.” But where the blazing redhead star turned recluse’s mystery came from something thrown into the water, the copper-tressed, genre-blurring songwriter’s own mysteries are contained within.Blevins, whose Dan Auerbach-produced and co-written Easy Eye debut was released last month, has a throwback soprano that dissolves time with its innocence and crystalline tone, which suggests Gentry, Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark, as well as the more modern Kacey Musgraves, Sierra Hull or Alison Krauss.Her roots are pure Appalachia; growing up in Sandy Hook, Ky., as the daughter of a dentist turned local politician and a mother who played piano for gospel quartets.Though both parents looked good on the outside, her father would go on to abandon the family and her mother sank into addiction.

Counseled by a grandmother to look like a lady — “don’t go out without lipstick on” — Blevins ultimately moved in with an older sister, choosing cheerleading over the school band.Not that music was abandoned.Instead, she played in local bars.“My sister and her husband had a band, and I got to sing backup.

It was the Judds, who’re from Kentucky, Bonnie Raitt, Patty Loveless always, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Sheryl Crow some.Just getting up there and singing.”Studying communications at Minnesota State Moorhead, Blevins left college for Nashville with Elliott Collette & the Articles.

Limited success followed, including exposure on cable networks CMT: Country Music Television and Great American Country, though it was not enough to break through.Collette left the band and headed to California.Blevins stayed in Nashville.

A ...