Shelby Lynne: Perfect Storm

Two years ago, as a huge Tuesday Night fan, she tracked down Crow's semiretired ex-producer in Northern California. "I was very lucky to have Shelby look me up," Bottrell says, "because I'd dropped off the face of the music industry for five years, with pleasure, waiting for someone like her to come along." They bonded over mutual business bitternesses—and later, over tragedy, as Bottrell's 7-year-old son died in a fall from a cliff midway through recording. More happily, her new label, Island Def Jam, was undergoing a distracting corporate purge, leaving the duo to miraculously record for a year without any execs checking in to demand a hit. "We thought, the label's gone to dogs---, so let's just keep on keepin' on," she laughs.

Bottrell calls the recording process "a raw emotional experience," and the otherwise exhilarating I Am... clearly earned its darker passages. But Lynne bristles at the suggestion she might've been "down" during its making. "A lot of people have gotten that misconception about me through these songs," she says, straightening in her seat. "No, I just know what it feels like to be there. I'm not down—it just takes a lot to make me happy!" Did someone say tougher than leather?