Shannon McNally’s blues-Americana return, BLACK IRISH will make you dance, break your heart, and save your soul. The album was recorded in Nashville, but its distinctive sense of place lies 210 miles west, where Memphis meets Mississippi.

The primary colors of American music are black and white, and Black Irish displays that hybrid in many shades, mixing country, blues, soul, rock, folk balladry and classic pop.

Black Irish is McNally’s most personal project yet, which is saying a lot, given the Americana singer-songwriter’s deep catalogue. But it speaks to the power of connection, and the power of music to create it and to reflect it. The kick off track “You Made Me Feel For You”, was written by her producer, Americana icon, Rodney Crowell, and serves as a metaphor for their collaboration – how his particular understanding of her unique gifts pulled out the career-defining album many have been waiting for since she came on the scene.

She co-wrote three of the album’s 12 songs – one with producer Crowell, who also penned two more for her; the rest include personal favorites by Stevie Wonder (“I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It”), Robbie Robertson (“It Makes No Difference”), and J.J. Cale (“Low Rider”). The result is an album that stands with the best of classic vocal interpreters like Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Maria Muldaur.

“I just love great songs,” she says. “I’m inspired by Willie Nelson, Muddy Waters, Emmylou Harris, Bill Withers, Mavis Staples. None of them hesitate to sing any song they feel like singing, even if they didn’t write it. I think great songs need to be spotlighted, they need to recycle back up into the consciousness.”

“From our first meeting I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the right man for the job of shepherding the next Shannon McNally record into existence. Now that the record is made, I hope music lovers around the world will come to know what I and many others already know: This girl belongs in the Americana Music spotlight.” – Rodney Crowell

“Only Gram Parsons’ term “Cosmic American Music” begins to touch her mercurial, changeling roots aesthetic, . . . McNally is a Zen-like, post-Beat song poet” —Thom Jurek, All Music

“She has the voice: bruised, smoky and ornery, right at home where country and soul meet. She has the melodies and the timing – she’s irresistible.” — Jon Pareles, The New York Times