Chelle Rose - Blue Ridge Blood (2016)

If great art comes from adversity, Nashville singer-songwriter Chelle Rose figured she was ready to paint her masterpiece when she recorded Blue Ridge Blood, releasing August 5, 2016 on her own Lil’ Damsel Records.

Singer and songwriter Chelle Rose (her first name is pronounced "Shelly") didn't pick up a guitar until she was 25 years old, but blessed with a sharp sense of character and narrative, and writing out of her childhood growing up in Appalachia (she was raised in Lenoir City in east Tennessee), she developed an intelligent, Southern gothic style that is somewhat reminiscent of Bobbie Gentry crossed with Lucinda Williams. Moving to Nashville in 1996, Rose further honed her considerable songwriting skills watching and listening to that city's many fine songwriters and singers. She released a debut album, Nanahally River, in 2000, but it would be nearly a dozen years before she released a follow-up, 2012's Ghost of Browder Holler, which was produced by Ray Wylie Hubbard and issued on Lil' Damsel Records. ~ Steve Leggett