Americana Singer-songwriter Shealee releases new album Head to the Stone. This is Shealee’s first full-length solo album since coming off the road touring with her former band Henry River Honey. Head to the Stone is Shealee’s musical torrent with straight-to-the-heart writing that flows over the rough edges of love, loss, and life.
The 8-song full-length album was self-produced by Shealee in collaboration with Musician’s Hall of Fame Inductee and Bonnie Raitt’s former Guitar Player, Will McFarlane (Bobby Blue Bland, Little Milton, Etta James and Johnnie Taylor).
The album was recorded at the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Head to the Stone blends country, folk, soul, with a little jazz and blues thrown in for good measure.
Shealee’s lyrics show her ability to use phrases and words that dramatize a feeling or redirect the emotional flow of a song; Head to the Stone also carries us over the sharp corners of our emotions and delivers a pop-inflected “oooh” to distract us momentarily and add a joyous element to a string of depressing reflections. It’s about “accepting who we are with all of our imperfections internally and externally,” Shealee tells Henry Carrigan from No Depressions.
Opening with her first song on Head to the Stone is “Susanna”, a poignant tribute to songwriting. The second song leads the listener into the galloping and cannily minor chord tune of the title track “Head to the Stone”, a story about gravediggers. The following songs then move through the album breathlessly like a slow-burn, shuffling through her bright and brisk guitar lines that explores the theme of constancy and loyalty especially on her second to last song “Constant Lover”. Shealee changes it up by delivering an up-tempo country folk tune on “Gnome Song,” a story that looks at the ways we deal with our shortcomings and disappointments in life.
Shealee’s debut album Head to the Stone takes the listener on a journey through life’s ebbs and flows, moving through the trials and tribulations to the delicate joyous moments in time.
Tracklisting for Shealee:
1 Susanna
2 Head to the Stone
3 Gnome Song
4 Red Dirt Girl
5 Saigon
6 Too Hot (To Get Married)
7 Constant Lover
8 World Outside My Window