Shannon McNally is a musical lifer — a singer, songwriter and performer who can’t help but express her love for tradition-rich musical genres (mainly country, folk, blues and rock) through a voice rife with authentic ache and gritty urgency. The Long Island native has released nine full-length studio albums and a half-dozen EPs over the course of a nearly 30-year career that continues to move in intriguing directions. Then there are the various and wide-ranging projects with other artists, the most recent being a tour with a host of performers celebrating the music of The Band (dubbed “Life Is a Carnival: Last Waltz Tour ’24”) and Don’t Ya Take It Too Bad, an album of duets she recorded with Son Volt’s Jay Farrar that drops April 25.
And, of course, there is McNally’s ceaseless commitment to performing live, whether it be for thousands at a place like Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium or dozens at an old-school hole-in-the-wall joint down the street.
“As an artist, the most important thing to me is the freedom to pick and choose based on how something hits my gut,” McNally wrote in a recent Instagram post about her approach to projects. “As a musician, tone is the color palette. You don’t have to be a great instrumentalist to have an incredible tone. You just need ears for that. However, the more you become an instrumentalist the wider your whole pallet becomes. It’s a sum total gain. In this celebrity driven age, tone seems to be the first thing that goes. No one has time or money for depth.”
McNally brought an evolving creative and emotional palette to her most recent full-length solo effort, 2021’s The Waylon Sessions, an album of Waylon Jennings covers that nods to the original creator’s intent without sacrificing her own unique sound and vision. Expect a Jennings tune or two in her current solo-tour set list, along with songs from her recently independently released EP, 2024’s Special Edition, which moves from swampy roots rock to slow-burning folk with uncommon ease.
Shannon McNally plays the Southgate House Revival on March 26 at 7 p.m. More info: southgatehouse.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s March 19 print edition.
This article appears in Mar 19 – Apr 2, 2025.