A long way from home
Singer-songwriter Mindy Smith finds her roots inside
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Time was you had to be born below the Mason-Dixon Line to be taken seriously as a country music singer.
The greats of classic country were, nearly to a person, products of the Deep South United States. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Lefty Frizzell were born in Texas. Hank Williams got his start in Alabama. Loretta Lynn? She hails from Kentucky.
Mindy Smith, whose Nashville-produced debut album, "One Moment More," is attracting a lot of critical attention in country circles and beyond, doesn't share those roots. She's from Long Island, New York, a place about as far removed from the Deep South as any.
Smith is part of a new class of female singer-songwriters from out of town who are blending the old Nashville style into a mix of literate, folksy pop just as the popular country charts leave those roots behind.
Country music comes out of the rural South -- it derives from the traditional folk songs of the Appalachian Mountains. The songs are simple, about work and God and love. Classic country draws authenticity from the lingering vowels of its Southern accent, a sure sign that a singer knows the hardships of the hardscrabble rural life about which she sings.
Writing as therapy
Smith -- like the Be Good Tanyas (a bluegrass trio from Canada), Alison Krauss (from Illinois) and Gillian Welch (California) -- doesn't have a Southern accent to rely on, so she draws authenticity from other sources, such as experience and raw emotion.
Smith's songs are deeply personal, spare reflections. " 'Raggedy Ann,' for example, is reflective of my childhood and feeling inadequate as an adult," she says of one of her album's tracks. "I think a lot of people are walking around feeling that way, but I am really fortunate that I get to put it to music."
On one of Smith's most touching songs, the album's title track, "One Moment More," she wrote about her mother, who died of cancer when the singer was 19.
"I guess I tend to write about things I am coping with emotionally, spiritually. ... I tend to incorporate all of that into my songwriting in order to sort things out," she says. "I guess that's how I have always approached writing."
Smith left New York when her mother died, traveling around before finally landing in Nashville, where she has spent the past six years honing her songwriting skills. "Nashville's a good city, it's a good place to learn how to write music," she says.
Music City, USA
It's also a good place to run into record producers. Smith got a demo tape into the hands of producer Steve Buckingham just before he began work on a tribute album to legendary singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. Buckingham apparently liked what he heard and signed Smith on to contribute a track to "Just Because I'm a Woman: The Songs of Dolly Parton."
Smith's haunting but deceptively powerful vocals convey all the bitterness and fear of Parton's 1974 No. 1 hit, "Jolene." She shortens vowels where Parton's twang stretches them, delivering the line "Please don't take him just because you can" with a terse confidence that reportedly impressed even the songwriter herself.
Of that praise, Smith says, "Yeah that's over the top. ... She's an American icon in addition to being able to hold her own as a writer and as an artist. ... She really is an extraordinary person to support young artists like she has. ... I just think that if somebody like her can find the time, we all can find the time to help somebody out along the way."
