Shannon McNally

Thom Jurek at All Music said it best, "Only Gram Parsons' term "Cosmic American Music" begins to touch her mercurial, changeling roots aesthetic, ... McNally is a Zen-like, post-Beat song poet.” For those who have followed McNally’s twenty plus year career the thing that most sticks with the listener about her, is the timeless effortlessness that she brings to all she does. With a long catalog and longer list of peers with whom she has written, recorded and toured, McNally continues to turn out great music that defies blatant genre-fication. The great Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John once commented that she sings like Patsy Cline and Otis Redding at the same time. McNally’s talent lies there, in the seemingly disparate wide flung ends of the spectrum, landing somewhere in the warm whirlpool of good music delivered well. She is at home on any stage anywhere from Lincoln Center to the juke joints of Mississippi.

At home across the American (Americana) music spectrum, the Grammy nominee whose live music career began on the jam band circuit of the 1990s with bands like Derek Trucks and Railroad Earth, writes as well as she interprets the songs of others, has a top tier musicality to her craft, a soul stirring, honest and at times elegant voice that immediately grabs one by the heart strings and a troubadour’s wanderlust, not to mention as it turns out, she is also an excellent electric guitar player. 

With fourteen albums to her name, after a string of single self-releases on her personal label Queen Maeve Records (Magnolia), her latest album Live At Dee’s is a career retrospective songlist that was captured over four nights in September of 2022 with a revolving band of Nashville musicians. Showcasing McNally’s wonderful storytelling and sense of wry humor, the 18 song disc captures her at her most relaxed in her natural habitat of neighborhood Honky Tonk. 

Like her friends and heroes, McNally knows who she serves. She serves the song. Her quiet but steady plodding through the many layers of the business of music, hasn’t yet been rewarded with massive fame and fortune but in time that slow burn has become the treasure in and of itself.