Search - Chalee Tennison :: Chalee Tennison

At a time when teenage girls flock to Nashville to sing bland pop music packaged as country, newcomer Chalee Tennison is a rarity, a bona fide throwback to the days when the hillbillies ran Music City. A former drywall hanger and guard at a maximum-security women's prison, Tennison is also a single working mother of three who writes and sings about, as her press material puts it, "everyday dreams of life and the heartbreak of romances gone sour." If that doesn't sound like Tammy Wynette, the album, laced with a prominent pedal steel, surely does, and not in a manufactured way. With a sob in her voice that even Wynette would have saluted, Tennison also comes naturally to Wynette's Deep South enunciation, and she seeks out the same kinds of woman-to-woman songs of pain, neglect, and personal strength ("Just Because She Lives There") that secured Wynette's legend. So what if the midtempo rhythm numbers seem forgettable? The album's sturdy ballads and Tennison's soulful performance make this a debut to remember. --Alanna Nash