Chely Wright may have written the songs on her 2010 release “Lifted Off the Ground” during a traumatic time in her life, but they’ve blossomed into something of a journal of how she moved from despair to hope in her life. Until last May, when Wright came out as a lesbian, she had spent all of her energy hiding her secret. Now she not only is public about her orientation, but also uses her star power to educate and inform.
Chely Wright
| If you go |
| When: 7:30 p.m. Friday |
| Where: Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria |
| Details: $25; 202-397-SEAT; ticketmaster.com |
“I wrote the songs when I was having a breakdown, which I now call my breakthrough,” she said from her Nashville, Tenn., home just prior to starting this leg of the tour. “Now the songs are more than I could ever have imagined they’d be.”
Although the Academy of Country Music named Wright Top New Female Vocalist in 1995, the singer-songwriter was miserable. Her first top Top 40 hit, “Shut Up and Drive” in 1997, and the other hits that followed were marked with sadness because of the secret she kept.
She was midway through recording her latest album in the summer of 2007 when she told her friend Rodney Crowell, who produced the album, that she was coming out.
“I sat on my porch with Rodney. That was the day I told him I was gay,” she said. “We were in the middle of making my record. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t say, ‘You know what? We’re going to stop making this record.’ That’s the fear of an artist like me. You never know who will be in or out.”
Rodney was not only supportive but in a way helped Wright take her next step.
“I said. ‘Rodney. I am gay and I’m going to come out.’ And he said, ‘OK, how are you going to do it? I said, ‘I don’t know but I’m going to do it well.’ When he left my house that day, I went downstairs, opened by laptop and wrote ‘Like Me,’ the title page of my book.”
The confession allowed Wright to acquiesce to the process, knowing that Crowell, who has produced some of the most legendary albums from Nashville, would help her navigate the emotional minefield of her songs and produce a top-notch album.
“It’s like getting in a car with someone who has been driving for a long time. You take a breath and know we’re going to get there,” she said. “That’s what Rodney brought to me — comfort, skill and understanding.”
