Elvie Shane's 'Damascus' honors tough truths amid mainstream country success

"Damascus," Elvie Shane's latest album, finds the Kentucky artist at an inflection point between blue-collar truths and hard-won success.

Rather than racing forward with his next project, Shane is taking the time to dig deeper into newfound mental clarity, self-awareness and sobriety. He says he is resolved to carry this focus on personal wellness and inner peace with him.

Long before the artist responsible for the 2021 album "Backslider" and the country chart-topping anthem "My Boy" was singing country music, he was singing hymns, a capella, with his brother and mother.

Retracing the origins of his singing career, Shane tells the story of when he had to take over his brother's part in the hymn "Victory is Sweet," delivering lines about being safe from harm when he was touching Jesus. His brother had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that left him unable to perform at church.

"My life is filled with stories about a lot of hard topics," says Shane.

Emerging from a 'downward spiral'

Shane says his first album, featuring upbeat country and classic rock-sounding songs about meeting his wife and moving to Nashville betrayed the reality of his life at the time. Listeners, he says, "would be surprised to know how deep the downward spiral was that I hit when I 'played the (Nashville) game' and the entire album didn't perform like 'My Boy' did and reach the top of the charts."

Shane's latest album is named "Damascus" because, in the Bible, it's a city that is destroyed and restored on many occasions. He's also adopting a Biblical spin to embody the "no holds barred authenticity and integrity" and "humility and spirituality" required to "tell the stories I want to tell about the life I've lived."

Album opener "Outside Dog" reflects the emptiness that followed a year when "My Boy" hit No. 1 and achieved platinum-selling success eight months later. Alongside that, he was also on tour with many of his favorite country acts. Shane thought he had achieved the pinnacle of success in the genre.

However, 2023 found him feeling less fulfilled than ever.

"I ended up still feeling like I did in high school when I didn't fit in and bounced between friend groups. Things ended up at a place where my sister and my wife had an intervention with me about how angry I was," he recalls.

"Damascus" arrived for Shane not just as a vessel to get him past frustrations with his career, which had not met his expectations. But more than that, it reflects coming to terms with the events of a tumultuous 35 years of existence.

"I wrote' Winning Horse' (the "Damascus" album track) as a love song to end the arguments between my family, my wife, my label and me. I just needed them to believe in what I was doing," he says. "I had to tell them that I was going to do the hard work of running the race and getting us to where we needed to go -- and if I fail, then at least I failed with my integrity intact."

Breaking free of generations of trauma

"Damascus" represents how hard life has always been complex for Shane.

Alongside time spent as a barnstorming evangelist after high school, he succumbed to a drug-addled lifestyle, including being surrounded by now-imprisoned felons. On "Damascus," this is reflected by the song "Pill" being followed by ones entitled "215634" and "Appalachian Alchemy."

"My oldest childhood friend is serving life in prison for reckless homicide. He's inmate 215634," Shane says.

"Damascus" could easily be a series of trap-style rap-country tunes and place Shane in a box alongside many post-COVID-era breakout country acts.

However, its third single is the Little Big Town ballad collaboration, "First Place."

"We're all a little gritty and everyone loves the hits," says Shane.

As an impressionable high school junior, he listened to Little Big Town's 2005 favorite, "Boondocks," as much as he was 50 Cent and T.I. 17 years later, he met and opened for them on a tour alongside Miranda Lambert and the Cadillac Three.

While now well known in country music's mainstream, it still required liquid courage to text someone who sang a song he loved when stardom in the genre felt improbable.

"I got a little drunk when my band and I recorded the first run of the track and sent it to (Little Big Town member) Karen Fairchild. I was a lot more drunk when I sent another text and asked her if Little Big Town would join me on it for a collaboration," he says. "I was hungover the next morning when she replied, 'Let's do it!'"

"Damascus" highlights how Shane reveals success as a hard-won, achievable road for his family, fans and friends to walk together.

"I achieved success putting out a record that ultimately talked about 10 percent of who I am. Now, after meeting, performing for and seeing my fans, I wrote a record that reflects the other 90 percent of (my humanity)," he says. "They're getting a record that reflects someone experiencing happiness that feels better than achieving their wildest dreams."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Elvie Shane's 'Damascus' honors tough truths amid mainstream country success