Jodee Lewis takes a mean street tour with Whiskey Halo

Jodee Lewis is a country and folk artist with a honky-tonk attitude, combining the spunk of Miranda Lambert with the snarky wit of Kacey Musgraves. Lewis also is a Christian, but that’s not immediately obvious on her debut album Whiskey Halo.

Suffice it to say Lewis doesn’t put the cookies on the bottom shelf. She populates her songs with characters that duck responsibility, drink too much, and are nearly always left high and dry.

But they have a rueful humor as well. Several laugh-out-loud lines punctuate “I Don’t Miss,” in which Lewis enumerates her relief at the death of an unfaithful lover. Electric guitar crunches along while a trombone provides extra sass for Lewis’ wry sarcasm, “I don’t miss the way I felt at sundown / crying ‘cause you never did me right / wondering who was lying there beside you / ah but honey I know where you are tonight …”

In an interview after a recent concert, Lewis explained that faith actually plays a huge role in her music.

“God is big … and it’s ok to talk about the fall and to be honest about how things really are and how people really feel,” she told me.

Certainly Lewis is acquainted with struggle and strife. She grew up in the Missouri Ozarks in a “really, really poor area,” with a difficult family environment. Lewis’ dad died when she was still a kid, and later her own son, Luke, died while he was a baby. This latter experience in particular led to a season of isolation and negativity. Eventually, Lewis realized she wanted something better for herself and for her kids. Her desire to put to death her destructive “alter egos” led to the visceral and original opening track, “O Mother.”

A banjo strums blues riffs while Lewis spits epithets about one alter ego: “She was a low-down, no good snake in the grass / breathing fire and drinking from a stolen flask / but I shot her in the chest and watched her die / I won’t say I’m sorry and I never will cry.” Lewis’ trademark silky twang combines with drums and bass to lend gravitas for the daunting truths of parenthood: “O Mother don’t you know / that the devil reaps all the seeds you sow.” Yet people are not just automatons doomed to carry out the patterns set by flawed parents. They are free agents left with a choice: “The sins of the father will haunt their child with a whiskey halo and a lonely smile / but when family resemblance rears its head / you can dig it up or you can bury it dead.”

Whiskey Halo takes the listener down some pretty mean streets. Lewis’ jarring images are not easily dismissed and raise interesting questions: Does creating an effective piece of art constitute its own merit? Does a close examination of faults encourage acceptance or inspire better? Part of the answer lies in the wider context.

While Lewis is loathe to offer easy resolution, light creeps in. “I Lift My Eyes To the Hills” confronts the ultimate bankruptcy of human effort and limitations. Electric guitar and drums introduce a grainy majesty as Lewis realizes, “I lift my eyes to the hills / from where does my help come / My help comes from the Lord.”

Lewis is no Pollyanna, but talking straight may earn her a hearing with non-believers who wouldn’t set foot in a church. It also means her hopeful songs—unlooked for and unsuspected—stand in greater contrast. If there is room for Pollyanna, maybe there is room for Lewis, too.