A Woman of Raw Truths

Allison Moorer still cringes at the memory of picking up a British pop magazine recently and seeing the headline: “Shelby Lynne’s Little Sister Spills the Beans on Family Tragedy.”

The “tragedy” was the day in the mid-1980s when the sisters’ father shot and killed their mother and then took his own life. Moorer steadfastly refused to talk about that sensitive episode in the flurry of interviews that surrounded the 1996 release of her acclaimed debut album, and the following year when one of her songs was nominated for an Oscar.

But the 28-year-old singer-songwriter has finally come to grips with the murder-suicide, and she shares her feelings in a mournful song on her new album, “The Hardest Part,” which is due in stores Sept. 26.

Don’t, however, look for “Cold, Cold Earth,” in the album credits. In a perhaps naive attempt to keep the song from overshadowing the rest of the album, Moorer added it at the end of the CD as a hidden track. You have to let the album run for about 15 seconds after the last credited song before “Earth” starts playing.

That didn’t stop some critics in England from picking up on the tune when the album was released there in July.

“It made me so mad,” Moorer says of the headline in Uncut magazine. “First of all, the song’s not graphic . . . and I took myself out of the song. I never say ‘I’ or ‘me’ in this song. It’s narrative. It would disturb me a great deal if anyone thought I was trying to exploit the situation.”

Moorer pauses and nibbles idly at her salad during a late lunch at a West Hollywood hotel restaurant, letting her anger subside.

“In the past, I didn’t want to talk about [the deaths] because I didn’t see it as a news story,” Moorer finally says.

“But I realized that I was doing my parents a disservice by not talking about them, because all people ever heard about them was that one incident. I wanted people to know that their lives had a much more profound influence on my life than their deaths did.”

After years of trying to write a song about the deaths, Moorer poured out her feelings in this stark, folk-style tale of a man driven to momentary madness after breaking up with his wife. The final lines: “Now they are lying in the cold cold earth . . . Such a sad, sad story . . . such a sad, sad world.”

The song has the fearlessness of great art, and there are other moments in the album that also capture raw emotional nerves in a way that makes it stand apart from today’s bland, sugar-coated country music.

That’s why Moorer is seen by many in Nashville as a commercial longshot despite all the glowing reviews and the Oscar nomination for “A Soft Place to Fall,” which she co-wrote with Gwil Owen and was in the film “The Horse Whisperer.”

“She’s a work project for us, but she’s worth the work,” says MCA Nashville Records President Tony Brown, who has produced albums for George Strait, Wynonna and Lyle Lovett. “She’s one of those artists, like Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams, who radio thinks is a little too complex maybe to fit their playlists.

“But I think she’ll break through. She’s got a million-dollar voice and I love her songs. We could try to gimmick up the records to try to make them more radio-friendly, but I don’t want to compromise what she does just to get on radio. When you have someone this talented, you don’t want to interfere with her vision. You just want to trust that vision.”

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If interviewers aren’t asking Moorer about her parents’ death, they are probably asking about her relationship with Lynne, her outspoken and immensely talented sister whose struggles with record companies in Nashville are legendary.

But now that’s the topic that is off-limits.

“I don’t talk about my sister in the press because our relationship is private and I prefer to keep it private,” Moorer says. “We have made an agreement.”

The problem with that position is that it has led many observers to assume that relations between the sisters are strained. That’s not a difficult leap around Nashville, because Lynne’s relations with much of the town’s country music establishment were strained for years as she rebelled against attempts to make her fit into an increasingly slick, pop-conscious formula.

After making albums for three labels, Lynne went home to Alabama, determined to either make a record her own way or to just get out of the business. The result was “I Am Shelby Lynne,” a soulful, R&B-; and rock-shaded collection that has been widely hailed as one of this year’s best albums.

Another factor that contributes to the rift rumor is that the sisters come across as so different. Lynne strikes you as something of a wildcat, a two-fisted tomboy who in another life might have been a drinking buddy of Keith Richards.

Moorer seems far more demure than her sister, someone who might rather hit the road with Emmylou Harris or Lovett than the Rolling Stones. Don’t, however, get the idea that she’s not strong-willed. She may have the pinup appeal of such country stars as Shania Twain and Faith Hill, but she has far more artistic depth.

“Please don’t get the wrong idea about me and Shelby,” she says. “Because I said I don’t talk about her, people go, ‘Oh, there’s a problem.’ But there’s not a problem.

“I talk to my sister at least once a week. I love Shelby. Look at all we’ve been through together.”

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Moorer, who is three years younger than Lynne, was born in Mobile, Ala., and grew up in nearby Frankville, a town so small it didn’t have a traffic light. The girls’ mom was a legal secretary and their father worked at various jobs, including as an English teacher and juvenile probation officer.

Both parents were musical. Moorer describes her mother as a gifted singer with an incredible ear and a love for country and early rock. She says her father played in bands on weekends and loved the country outlaw movement, especially Waylon Jennings. He encouraged the girls to sing, taking them to fiddlers’ conventions so they could get some practice in front of an audience.

Moorer was 14 when her parents separated, a few months before the murder-suicide took place outside the family home.

“Shelby and I were at the house, but we were not standing out in the yard, which is the story I see printed in so many articles,” Moorer says. “We did not see it happen.”

The teenagers then moved in with their mother’s sister, and Lynne soon headed to Nashville in pursuit of a singing career.

After high school, Moorer joined her and sang backup vocals on tour with her. But she didn’t know about a music career. For one thing, she saw how miserable her sister was. She soon moved to Mobile to get a degree in public relations at the University of South Alabama.

Moorer then returned to Nashville and went back on the road with her sister. By this time, she had met her future husband, Doyle Primm, who co-writes most of her material. They started making demo tapes on a four-track recorder in their kitchen.

Her break came when she was invited to perform with a group of stars, including her sister and Lovett, at a memorial tribute to singer-songwriter Walter Hyatt, who was killed in a 1996 plane crash.

Bobby Cudd, a veteran Nashville talent agent who has worked with everyone from Loretta Lynn to Junior Brown, was in the audience, and he recalls the effect this unknown singer had on the room.

“She just killed me with the one song,” says Cudd, who signed her on the spot. “I looked around at some of the other people from [the agency] and they, too, were amazed at her voice. I’ve been an agent for 25 years and you might see someone like this every six or seven years. I’m talking about someone whose voice just elevates you.”

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Cudd took Moorer to MCA Nashville’s Brown, and, he too was enthralled by her voice. He was executive producer of her debut album, “Alabama Song,” and he helped get “Soft Place” into “The Horse Whisperer.”

“Alabama Song” sold only about 50,000 copies, but Brown is hopeful about the new one. He even held up its release several months to make sure the label could devote the proper attention to it. Moorer has already been booked on PBS’ influential “Austin City Limits” TV show and she’s due to appear next month on “Late Night With David Letterman.”

But the most powerful promotional tool may be the same kind of acclaim and word of mouth that “She just killed me with the one song. I looked around at some of the other people from [the agency] and they, too, were amazed at her voice. I’ve been an agent for 25 years and you might see someone like this every six or seven years. I’m talking about someone whose voice just elevates you.”

BOBBY CUDD agent who signed Allison Moorer has helped Lynne’s album reach the 100,000 sales mark this year despite little airplay.

Although Moorer doesn’t describe the album as a concept work, it’s easy to look at the songs as clues in a search through the tensions of relationships. Most of them are about heartache and struggle. In one defining line, she sings, “The hardest part of living is loving/’Cause loving turns to leavin’ every time.”

Despite the convincing ring of these sentiments, Moorer says she’s actually been lucky in love. She describes her five-year marriage as solid.

Asked about the dark tone of the songs, Moorer, who cites Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan among her favorite writers, says, “I guess I get a lot of inspiration for songs through stuff I saw my mother go through.”

Moorer is aware of the challenge of finding an audience for music this personal in the slick, soulless climate of country radio.

“Country radio [programmers] don’t want anything that might distract listeners from whatever it is they are doing,” she says. “But I’m fed up with hearing about how everything’s great, and songs about ‘I love you and you love me, and isn’t everything wonderful?’ Well, everything in life isn’t always wonderful and we need to talk about that too. Wasn’t that what Hank Williams showed us?

“I realize I have to have a certain amount of success in order to be able to do this and I would love to have a hit, but I’m not going to change who I am to get one.” *