Lillie Mae

WCPO Lounge Acts

Lillie Mae has yet to climb out of her mid-20s, but the singer/songwriter has already spent more than a decade fiddling her way through the honky tonks of Music City’s Lower Broadway and backing Jack White.

Just a couple months ago, she stepped out on her own to drop her debut solo album “Forever and Then Some” on April 14.

“What isn’t interesting about her?” Stacy Vee asked a Los Angeles Times reporter. Vee is director of festival talent for Goldenvoice, which organizes the Stagecoach Country Music Festival. “Seriously, the way she’s singing, the way she presents her art, I haven’t seen it performed like that. … It’s completely fresh, it sounds way older and way newer, masculine and feminine at the same time. It’s going to be a really fun project to watch develop.”

Back in 2008, Lillie Mae fronted the four-piece string group Jypsi alongside two sisters and a brother as they released an album on Arista Nashville and then played South by Southwest, Stagecoach and Bonnaroo.

After Jypsi broke up, Lillie Mae supported White’s solo project until she journeyed into White’s Third Man Records studio with few expectations.

“There was no plan to make a whole album,” Lillie Mae told the Los Angeles Times. “He asked me to come in and record a few songs, and after we got done with three, he said, ‘You got any more?’ ”

Indeed she did. The album ranges across 11 tracks, many of which feature backing instrumentals from her musical family members and interspersing more traditional country licks with rugged rock riffs born out of her time with White’s band.

“I was spending time with hip-hop drummers, crazy psychedelic keyboardists, classical, unbelievable (players). If I didn't get that gig, I never would've met those people or been turned onto so much more music. It's just this huge, eclectic variety of musicians,” Lillie Mae told WXPN’s World Cafe.

Set list:

• Wash Me Clean
• Honky Tonks and Taverns
• -interview-
• Loaner
• These Daze

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