Leah Blevins opens new territory for heartbreak. She makes it almost a pleasure. Hearing the grit grind through her vibrato, with words that work a clear, deep, penetrating vein into the relatively slow and boring surroundings of heartbreak, the music makes a unique mark. It did in Blevins recent appearance at Red Wing Roots Music Festival at Twin Chimneys Park near Fredericksburg, Virginia. After Red Wing, her upcoming tour will include stints with old friends Sons of Bill (SOB) and long-time singer-songwriter idol, Amanda Shires.

Leah graces SOB’s great Sam Wilson song “Road to Canaan” in sharing vocals with Sam, a gorgeous collaboration. Being with her, seeing her in concert or off, is a visual experience as well. He eyes are as deep a blue as possible, like bright, small, perfectly-round wells of soft color,   birds’ eggs come alive.

“I’m just a little country girl from Kentucky. At first I came to Nashville to be in a band. I was a backup singer. But, the band broke up. And when I realized what I really wanted to do, I started to solo and write songs, and I’m always changing,” is how she described her transition to her new role as Leah Blevins, solo artist with some name recognition. “It hasn’t been that long ago that I was sleeping in the car and playing for audiences of four,” she remembers.

“Walk Home” is a balls-out country blues, heartbreak-matured in a soak of salt. Blevins comes straight out at the song and knifes into it, but melodically, leavening the pain with the butter and sugar of rhythm and timing.

Another song about a Mexican restaurant in Charlottesville leaves the restaurant in the first line and launches into an emotionally-draining song about a five-hour drive from Nashville to Charlottesville to see a singer-songwriter and potential lover/guy friend. “Looking for four hours of his time, not a lifetime,” she sings (or similar). And, in another tune, when she croons, “God, Help Me” You can almost feel God doing just that, the atmosphere of god in the feelings around us and in our hearts.

When she leaks out, “Where the Goodbye Begins.” She describes in painful but still somehow exhilarating detail how that process of loving starts, continues, and, once again, ends. Her widely- rounded mouthfuls are filled with meaning and feeling, softened by ever-present music, her graceful, yet dynamic sense of rhythm. Her mouth widens, it purses, it takes the shape of a kiss, the oval of a howl, the narrowness of a bite, the dragging emphasis of a rounding snarl. Leah was maybe on an edge of something. But she doesn’t see herself changing. “I’m just a little country girl,” she said, “If I’m singing, I’ll be happy.”

She loves the festivals, now that she’s into her fourth one, the others having been just prior to this in North Carolina. “It’s different from Nashville. Nashville is political. It’s great, but it is political. Out here at the festivals, people are warm and open and welcoming. It’s not that Nashville isn’t warm, but it is political.”

Her influences are heavily in the direction of Townes Van Zandt, Gillian Welch, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Stevie Nicks, among others.  “I heard Stevie Nicks growing up. I think that’s where my vibrato comes from,” she said.

Her voice is so distinctive. And yet, I, at least, feel like I’ve known her songs most of my life after only a few hearings, due to how they settle in, what a fit her sound is, how it grooves likes it’s been a soft weight on your soul life-long. All four of the tunes on her new EP are like that.

In her spare time, she pursues her visual art, not wanting to “limit her voice” and seeking to expand her creative world, musically and visually, following the creative example as well of the creator of an image now tattooed on her arm, Pablo Picasso.

Leah Blevins carries that creative approach to the world Picasso had, little country girl from Knoxville or not, a distinctive and powerful new voice in country and Americana.