When she was 16, Crystal Shawanda dropped out of her final year of high school, packed a truck, left the Wikwemikong Native Reservation where she grew up and made a beeline for Nashville.
“My whole life I used to get bullied at school and didn’t always fit in. But walking down [Broadway] Street it felt like I found all these other people who were just like me. We need the music, it’s not like we want it, we need it,” she said in an interview June 5, recalling the first time she visited the city, on a trip with her dad when she was 12.
Today Shawanda is an established artist and producer who calls Nashville home. But she still remembers when she first arrived, determined to hone her craft
“Every free minute I had I was downtown on Broadway at the honkey tonk bars. I would either go down there and watch other singers, watch how they worked the crowd and what songs they chose,” go to songwriting clubs for feedback or set up on the street corner and busk for tips.
Eventually she landed a gig at Tootsies Orchid Lounge, and one day, when she was in the back room rasping out Muddy Waters and B.B. King tracks, RCA offered her a record deal.
The label wanted a country singer, and even though Shawanda grew up sitting at the top of the stairs listening to the blues blasting from her brother’s stereo, she was thrilled.
“For me, I was kind of excited at the opportunity, so I didn’t go kicking and screaming. I was like ‘hey, this is a great opportunity for me to challenge myself.’ Could I be this refined? Learn how to smooth out my edges?”
Her parents had been country music people, and she even had a country-singing uncle who passed away before making it big, so she also felt like she was chasing those dreams for her whole family.
Shawanda had success as a country artist, but blues kept finding its way back into her music.
In the studio her producer had to keep reining her in. He told her to sing cleaner and cut back on the trills. He was worried she would scare away her audience. At live shows she would sometimes bewilder her fans with her high energy and raspy vocals.
“When I’m playing live, I can’t hold back: what comes out comes out. If I’m feeling a moment and I feel like jumping up and flipping my hair, then that’s what I’m going to do. And if I feel like hitting a note higher than I’ve ever hit it before that’s what I’m going to do. When I’m on stage there’s no way to tame me,” she laughed.
So finally, after nearly a decade on the country circuit, Shawanda left RCA, started a record company with her husband—Dewayne Strobel—and now she’s just about to release her first blues album.
She’s recording songs now, and said that when she first heard some of the new tracks, she cried.
“It was the first time I went into the studio and I didn’t hold back—I got to be as gritty as I wanted to be,” she said. “To hear the music it’s almost like I’m hearing myself for the first time, like, this is Crystal Shawanda.”
Shawanda is playing at the De’d Dog June 17, headlining for a fundraising dinner aimed to raise money to help train Jasper’s doctors to use their new ultrasound machine.
Forty tickets to a lobster dinner, and more than 100 for the show, will be on sale for the event, which will also feature a Keith’s beer tasting. Tickets are available at the front desk of the Astoria Hotel.
Trevor Nichols
[email protected]
