by Chuck Dauphin
Hang out with Alabama beauty Leah Seawright for any amount of time, and you just might be reminded of one of Country Music’s all-time greats, Loretta Lynn. Just like the “Coal Miners’ Daughter,” Leah says what she thinks.
“I know, and that gets me in trouble, especially on radio tours,” she says with a smile. It’s not something she worries about too much, though.
”I’m the type of person that once the thought goes in, I try to fix it. I’d be better off to leave it alone, but I keep digging myself further and further,” she says.
She’s not digging too many holes lately, though. Her current single release “On The Backroads,” has done well, rising to the top-40 on the Music Row Country Breakout Chart.
“That’s the second single, and we did a video back in April for it. We had A.J. Allmendinger, a NASCAR driver in it. He drives for Richard Petty Enterprises.” If you look real closely in the video, you will see “King Richard” strumming the guitar.
The record is a perfect showcase for her expressive voice, complete with a tempo just made for radio. Needless to say, Seawright doesn’t just stand in one place on stage.
“You’ll never get that from me. I’m used to moving around a lot,” she allows, with a healthy dose of southern charm.
Leah hails from Fort Payne, which is also home to the legendary group Alabama. Their drummer, Mark Herndon, has been providing the beat for Seawright’s music on the road, giving her a tie to the Country Music Hall of Fame members. The northeast portion of the state was also responsible for giving us the music of the Louvin Brothers, as well as fellow newcomer Jacob Lyda. She says that talent is everywhere in the region. “It’s really in the bloodlines around there. Everybody is a musician, or you come from musicians. There’s so much musical talent from the whole state of Alabama. We have a recording studio at the house, and we try to help folks out so they don’t have to pay high prices. There’s so much talent there.”
Seawright’s own talent is very apparent on the album, ranging from heartbreaking ballads to fun songs like “Soft Abs and Hard Arteries.” She jokes that she had some inspiration from a close source in writing the unique tune. “I did,” she says. “When I was in the studio with the musicians, I said ‘Let’s go back to the 70s with this song. I want it to have a retro country-western swing type feel to it. I wrote that song in about five minutes. The year before last, my husband forgot my birthday, and then he blamed it on me because I was born on the wrong day. He made some kind of smart-aleck remark, and I was standing by the coffee pot, thinking ‘Lord, help me not to be one back because I really want to right now.’ So I went to the bathroom, and jotted down the whole song. I wrote it for him, as he’s gained some weight. Marriage does that to you. So, I feel like I won that argument that night because I got to write that song. We didn’t actually argue, and I still won. That’s pretty cool.”
But there’s another side to Leah, as evidenced by the powerful “Standing Right Here.” Of the song, she says that “A lot of people have asked me ‘What inspires you to write?’ I get a lot of inspiration from other people’s lives and stuff that they go through. My closest cousin was going through a horrible divorce. She had been visiting for the weekend, and went back home. I guess I was just feeling her pain. I took my little girl to softball practice, and the song just started coming to me. I dropped her off, and said ‘I’ll be in there in just one minute. I’ve got a song idea.’ I literally wrote it in just five minutes. It was just from her experience of what she was going through. It was inspired by divorce. I know that’s horrible, but that’s what it was inspired by.”
And, if that one doesn’t get you, the pain-drenched “Feeling You Gone” will. “I wrote that song after the tragic loss of my cousin,” she tells MNN. “He was 22 years old, and was killed in a car wreck. It was horrible. His mom, who is my Aunt and has always been like a second mom to me, she would always tell me that ‘You just don’t understand that when you lose a child, every thing you look at reminds you of it. And, I didn’t understand that. We had always gone on vacations with my kids, and this was several months after she told me that. We took a two-day trip without the kids on a cruise ship. I got in line to get food, and I was putting things for the kids on my plate out of habit, because they had always been there. I was grabbing Chocolate Milk, and I thought ‘Wait a minute, they’re not with me.’ And, at that point, what she had said just hit me. So I wrote that song. Anybody can relate to that if you’ve lost somebody, or even if you’ve just lost a relationship. I’ve had people who have had their loved ones overseas tell me that they think of them when they hear it. It took me several times to sing that song without crying.It was so close to my heart. It’s a very emotional song, but I hope that it brings healing to a lot of people.”
Affecting people’s lives with her music is something that Leah Seawright is serious about. And, who knows, one day her name might be alongside that other musical act from Fort Payne on the welcome sign at the end of town. “I would love that,” she admits. “It’s already a small town. I feel like the town is a huge family. It’s like everybody has been so much in support of me, and that means so much. To have your hometown backing you, and rooting for you, and everybody post encouraging messages online is great. That would mean a lot, but I just want to be me. I don’t want to be a star. I just want to do what I love, and hopefully bring a little bit of sunshine to their lives. That’s what I want to do!”
For more on Leah, check out http://www.leahseawright.com/fr_home.cfm
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