If it sounds too dire to imagine, Leah Blevins’ incandescent sense of fate, faith and kindness gives the torch-pop country doyenne a light saber of clarity that cuts through emotions with dignity and a real sense of self. The Sandy Hook, Kentucky-born songstress lived in a space that was deeply present. The daughter of a dentist who became a career politician, and a teenage gospel quartet pianist who fell into deep addiction, she knows the reality of oatmeal baths in red water, no heat in the winter and finding out the teacher giving your family refuge was also your mother’s supplier before she got sober over 20 years ago.

It makes All Dressed Up, her Dan Auerbach-produced Easy Eye Sound debut, an album that will hit people wherever they live and offer insight into the struggles of those they love without ever preaching or judging the ones battling faithless love, drug problems, or struggling to believe in themselves.

“We got tossed off a lot,” the amber-headed Blevins explains. “My older sister and her husband took us in. I was in the 8th grade, and we all lived together ’til I graduated. My mom came from the Hatfields; her maiden name was Justice, and she started playing the piano in church at the age of twelve.”

Music, though, won out. Living with her siblings, she started singing background vocals in their band; Patty Loveless, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert and The Judds informed their sound. By the time Blevins was studying Communications at Morehead State, Elliot Collett & the Articles swept her away to Nashville in 2011. Though the band didn’t last long, the ethics she learned from touring by the age of 20 gave her a compass, and in 2014 she made a choice after a lifetime of singing background vocals to pursue a career as a solo artist.