During an August show at 3rd & Lindsley, Mandy Barnett introduced a song from her forthcoming album Strange Conversation, due Sept. 21. “This album is completely different from anything I’ve ever done,” she told the crowd. “But I’m really proud of it.”
One of the best singers in a town filled with exceptional ones, Barnett had just delivered the kind of song performance she has long excelled at — an aching, intimate rendition of the classic pop and country ballad “Love Hurts.” Though her voice is a formidable, rangy instrument, she approached the tender Felice and Boudleaux Bryant song with restraint, underplaying the song as a skilled actor would approach a complex role, teasing out the emotional nuances.
She followed “Love Hurts” with a cut from her new album, a brash, strutting version of Sonny and Cher’s “A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done.” Her keyboard player, Chris Walters, handled the Sonny duet part, which John Hiatt contributed on the album. It was a quirky song choice, but Barnett tackled Cher’s part with gusto, even throwing in occasional Cher-like vocal tones and bits of vibrato for good measure.
That’s not the kind of material we’ve come to expect from Barnett, a smooth torch singer who built her reputation on more sedate, retro country-pop fare. But Barnett is at a career crossroads. She has released five studio albums since 1996, all of them marketed as country music. None of them has sold very well.
She’s still best known for originating the role of Patsy Cline in the stage musical Always … Patsy Cline at the Ryman for a two-year run in 1994 and 1995, starting when she was 18. It’s a role that she has reprised a few times since then, due to strong demand. But her uncanny ability to imitate and inhabit the powerful but smooth vocal sound of Cline — the ultimate country-pop diva who made standards of “Crazy” and “I Fall to Pieces” — has led to Barnett getting typecast over the years. Most music fans who have heard of her think of her mainly as a gifted Cline impersonator.
What does a singer’s singer, who has been pigeonholed for years, do for a career reset? In Mandy Barnett’s case, she connected with two roots-rock producers and went to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to reinvent herself. Strange Conversation, her first album in five years, is very much a collaboration with her two producers — drummer Marco Giovino (Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, Buddy Miller) and guitarist Doug Lancio (Hiatt, Patty Griffin). It’s being released by Barnett’s own Dame Productions, in conjunction with the hip Thirty Tigers group.
Asked what sets this album apart from her previous releases, Barnett is forthright: “Well, it’s not country, number one. Number two, it’s not as polished. I wanted to show another side of me that’s not pristine, where everything sounds really lush and pretty. I wanted to be a little wild and woolly.”
Most of the tracks, she says, were cut live on the floor as she sang with the full band. The sessions at the NuttHouse Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals-adjacent Sheffield, Ala., were completed quickly, in about a week, and overdubs were minimal. Musically, it’s a gamble that pays off. Strange Conversation sounds worlds away from Barnett’s previous albums, touching as it does on classic R&B, ’60s girl-group pop and rockabilly, as well as smart covers of ’90s and Aughts songs by edgy songwriters like Greg Garing, Ted Hawkins, Tom Waits and Sam Phillips (not to be confused with the late Sun Records legend). Amid this rootsy fare, the loping, tongue-in-cheek Sonny and Cher cover with Hiatt fits seamlessly into the track sequence.
Instead of Barnett’s usual accompaniment of strings and polite countrypolitan guitars, the mix prominently features muscular electric guitar leads from Lancio, Hammond B-3 organ licks, R&B horns, and soul-drenched backing vocals from Ann and Regina McCrary of The McCrary Sisters. The tracks aren’t at all sedate; for the most part they groove.
It’s different vocally, too. Instead of relying on her soaring soprano ability, Barnett often explores the lower part of her vocal register, sounding mysterious and alluring on uptempo songs like “More Lovin’ ” (a smoldering duet with background vocal pro Arnold McCuller), the classic soul of “Strange Conversation” and the feisty “Put a Chain on It.” She comes across as strong, sassy and sexy in a way she hasn’t on previous recordings.
“I was definitely the instigator for the project,” says Giovino in a phone interview that also includes co-producer Lancio. The music director for Tom Jones’ recent tours in addition to his work with roots musicians, Giovino is also a record collector with broad tastes. When he first met Barnett in 1994, while backing her on shows to raise money from investors in order to stage Always … Patsy Cline, he wasn’t a big country music fan. But he became a Barnett fan, and over the years he would frequent her Nashville shows.
“I had all her records, and I knew that for the most part they put her in the mold of being the next Patsy Cline,” he says. “That was kind of stuck on her when she was just a kid. But each time I’d hear her sing, I’d think, ‘Man, she’s got a lot more depth than people realize.’ ”
Once Giovino won over Barnett with inspired roots-music suggestions for songs to cut, he brought in his buddy Lancio as co-producer. The two had been experimenting with recording at Lancio’s Nashville studio over the past few years and liked the sounds they were getting. Lancio recalls saying back in those days, “Marco, we just need a singer.” Now they had one of the best.
“She’s just got so much character in her voice,” says Giovino, explaining that what sets Barnett apart from other singers in his opinion, “and I think that comes from your life, what you’ve dealt with and how you process it. That’s part of why her voice has as much depth as it does.”
Barnett has had years of disappointments to build the character that’s in her voice. Raised in Crossville, Tenn., she was signed at age 12 to Capitol Records, then under the direction of music impresario Jimmy Bowen. Six years of “artist development” work followed, with Barnett learning her trade while cutting dozens of demos with top L.A. and Nashville session musicians. But all of that work came to naught, and Bowen and Capitol unceremoniously dropped her right after she graduated from high school. Auditioning and winning the lead role in Always … Patsy Cline at 18 rescued her from a minimum-wage job and kept her professional singing hopes alive. It also led to a deal with Asylum Records (yielding her 1996 self-titled debut album), and then the Sire label where she recorded under the direction of Country Music Hall of Famer Owen Bradley, who had produced Cline.
Sadly, Bradley died after only four songs had been recorded, but Barnett completed the album with his brother Harold Bradley according to Owen Bradley’s design. Like her first album, 1999’s I’ve Got a Right to Cry achieved well-deserved critical success, but it was lost on the wider listening public. Since then, her recent albums (a Christmas release, a collection of Cline covers, a Don Gibson tribute) have focused rather narrowly on the countrypolitan type of music she’s known for.
Asked about being typecast as a Cline imitator, Barnett acknowledges the double-edged nature of her connection to the singer.
“I definitely think that [typecasting] has happened,” she says. “If you do something well, that can happen. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do the new album. It’s unfortunate. It’s just that people tend to want categorize you and put you in a box. It’s something I’ve had to deal with. But I want to say that does not diminish any of my feelings for Patsy.
“I still love her. She still breaks my heart. I think her recordings were magical, and what makes me sad is I feel like at the time she died she was just starting to spread her wings. I think that she was starting to open her mind to maybe getting out of country and rockabilly, and going pop. She could have done a lot of things, but she didn’t get to. And that makes me sad.”
The parallel with her own career is palpable, and Barnett still loves country music. “It’s a huge part of me,” she says. Still, other than getting occasional guests spots at the Grand Ole Opry and acceptance from veteran Opry stars, country music hasn’t really loved her back. She’s taking a chance with this new roots-leaning album — that she may alienate the small but loyal country fan base she has. But in her opinion, it’s time to seize the day.
“I got into the music business because I get an emotional payoff singing songs that thrill me,” she says. “If I’m just gonna be going through the motions with music, then I’d rather get a damn job.”
Plans call for the album to be serviced to Americana and noncommercial radio stations, and she will be touring to promote the album over the next several months.
“What I think is great about this album,” says Lancio, “is that it’s opening up another door for her. She could follow this record with a lot of different music now.”
If fans of Americana music embrace this album as it deserves, more beautiful surprises from Mandy Barnett may be in store.
