by Jeff Clark, Staff Writer
BILOXI (GG) — Louisiana Music Hall of Fame member Amanda Shaw is no stranger to Coastal Mississippi. She’s been playing shows from Bay St. Louis to Ocean Springs for years. Shaw returns to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for a 7 p.m. show Saturday at Ground Zero Blues Club in Biloxi. Tickets start at $22 and are available at TicketWeb.com.
Shaw has been making records since she was 15. After six years away from the studio, she recently released “Rhythm of My Roots,” an album that feels closely tied to her New Orleans home. The record leans into the Louisiana sounds that helped shape her while giving her room to explore a wider mix of styles, as Shaw has always mixed pop, rock, country, and traditional Louisiana music to create her unique sound.
Produced by Kent Wells, a longtime collaborator of Dolly Parton, and recorded in Nashville, the album moves easily between Cajun rhythms, New Orleans funk, country, rock and pop. It features the legendary New Orleans funk band Cha Wa, and Louisiana music royalty Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and accordionist Anthony Dopsie.
“I feel so lucky that I even met Kent,” she said. “I was just excited to shake his hand because I’ve been a fan of Kent Wells for a long time. He produced several of the first Dolly Parton albums I had. He produced ‘Jolene,’ the entire album, not just the song. We had some really cool days in the studio. While we did all of the main sessions in Nashville, we had a lot of features on the album, and they did those sessions in New Orleans, and we brought the New Orleans studio in over Zoom.”
Another featured artist on the album is renowned fiddle player Jimmy Mattingly, who appears on a cover of “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” the Dennis Linde-penned song originally recorded by The Oak Ridge Boys and a huge hit for Garth Brooks.
“It’s so special because it’s not just a cover of ‘Callin’ Baton Rouge,’ it’s a duet with Jimmy Mattingly,” Shaw said. “He was Dolly’s longtime fiddle player and Garth Brooks’ fiddle player. He plays the fiddle on Garth Brooks’ hit. It’s another thing where I was bonding with Kent over music and things like that, and I found out he was good friends with Jimmy Mattingly. I thought it would be so cool to play a fiddle duet with the guy who plays fiddle on ‘Callin’ Baton Rouge.'”
You can hear the complete interview with Amanda Shaw on the ClarkCast Podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/
Courtesy Photo By Libby Danforth
