It’s a “very proud mama moment” for Crystal Shawanda whenever her daughter, Zhaawande, joins her on stage. The Nashville-based artist, whose latest album, Sing Pretty Blues, was nominated for a Juno, has been on the road since April, performing everywhere from Alabama to Alberta. She’ll be in Vancouver on July 3 for the FIFA Fan Festival along with Ziggy Marley and The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer. When Zhaa Zhaa—as she calls her—was younger, Shawanda and her husband, guitarist Dewayne Strobel, would bring their daughter out for just one song. Now nine years old, Zhaa Zhaa’s officially part of the band, singing backup, playing tambourine and shaker, and showing off her dance moves. “What’s really cool is we get to look out in the audience and we see other families getting inspired,” Shawanda says. “And usually by the end, Zhaa Zhaa has her own little fan club of kids who are excited to meet her—and who could care less about me,” the singer says, laughing. “It’s so fun to watch. I love it.”
Shawanda is on the phone from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island. It’s where she grew up, on the shores of Lake Huron. The sound of children playing is in the background. She is enjoying a short break in her touring schedule, spending time with family before she hits the road again and shares the stage with her husband and daughter.
Sharing music has become a tradition in Shawanda’s family. Before she blazed trails as an Indigenous woman in country and blues—she’s the first Indigenous woman to reach the Top 10 of the American Billboard blues chart, the first to win a Canadian Country Music Association Award for Female Artist of the Year, the first to win a Juno for Blues Album of the Year, and the first to sing at the Grand Ole Opry—she grew up in a close-knit household filled with laughter and all kinds of music. Her parents loved Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, The Beatles, and Cream. Her brothers listened to Muddy Waters, Etta James, Tom Petty, Prince, and Ozzy Osbourne. Shawanda absorbed it all. “I was taught very early on that there’s not one genre that’s better than the other,” she says. “I was very blessed to have that open mind given to me at an early age.”
The kind of music you listen to growing up, she adds, influences the kind of person you become. “It shapes your point of view and how you connect with people. And, you know, my family showed me that music was like medicine, and it could be healing. So depending on what kind of day they were having, that’s what decided the music they were listening to. And that stays with me to this day.”
Shawanda, who started out singing country before transitioning to the blues, has been drawn to Music City since she was a little girl growing up on the reservation—a credit, she says, to her parents. “They were always encouraging us to dream and try things and to not be afraid of failing. And so, that really shaped who I became as a person. And they showed me by example.” Her mother went back to school as an adult, while her father found success with his own trucking company. “We would get in the truck and we would travel all over America, all the way to California, all the way down to Florida, and we were always passing through Tennessee,” Shawanda recalls. “Every school break I had—every March break, every summer break—we were always in the trucks with him. And we’d drive down to Nashville and park at the truck stop, and then we’d walk across the bridge over to Broadway, which is just across the river. I would get up to sing at different places and, you know, that was basically my beginning. Immediately from our first trip to Nashville, I started planning my move there. And I think that was kind of what my dad was hoping for all along.”
While Shawanda has lived in Nashville for over 20 years now, her northern roots remain with her, especially when it comes to the importance she places on community. “I think that’s a thing that I miss the most about Canada and about my hometown and being around family, is that sense of community,” she says. “It’s really in my values, it’s in my morals, it’s how I carry myself, it is how I treat people that I work with, and it’s also how I raise my daughter. ”
Those roots also, of course, show up in her music. On Sing Pretty Blues, in her powerful, husky, Tina Turner voice, Shawanda sings about love, heartbreak, independence, and resilience. Country and blues are closely-related genres that are rich with storytelling, and it’s a strong connection shared with Indigenous culture. “That’s how we keep our history,” she explains. “Sharing those stories, and we keep those stories alive, and that’s how we teach the younger generations. And within country music and blues music, it’s all about the story. That’s what makes it so engaging and so emotional. People connect with those songs in a deep way because when they hear [them], it’s like, ‘Yes, I know what that’s like. I’ve lived those words.’ And I think it’s comforting to know you’re not the only one that’s been through something.”
Sing Pretty Blues features a few beautiful covers, including Tom Petty’s “Honey Bee” and “Changes” by Black Sabbath—the latter is one of the album’s biggest highlights, with Shawanda’s voice gritty with emotion over twanging guitar and soulful keys. The song is dedicated to Snowflake, a fan who became part of the family and was lost to addiction.
“Almost everyone knows somebody who’s been affected by addiction,” Shawanda says. She remembers how Snowflake started attending shows as a child. “We watched her grow up and become a young woman, and the loss of her life was a huge loss. We still look for her when we come to do shows back home, and we miss seeing her waiting in line. It just really hit so close, because we just never thought that could happen—and that’s why I’m sharing it, because I want people to know that even when you think you’re so far away from that, it can come close to to your community and to your family and to your personal circle, you know?”
Country music is now experiencing a major resurgence, with artists such as Jelly Roll, Luke Combs, and Shaboozey. Shawanda thinks part of why country is resonating so much is because of how songwriters are blending genres, which creates a broad appeal. It’s similar to what she grew up with in the ’90s, she says. “It was such an interesting time, you know, where one minute you were listening to a rock song, and the next song would be TLC, and the next one was, like, Pearl Jam. It was a very eclectic time on Top 40 radio.” Shania Twain, of course, famously fused country with pop, which later went on to inspire Taylor Swift’s crossover.
The marrying of styles creates a sense of nostalgia and familiarity, she adds. It also brings things back to a throughline for her: community.
“It’s connecting the audiences,” she says. “So now you have all these different kinds of people going to country music festivals because they all feel represented—which is pretty cool.”
Images courtesy of Eric Alper. Read more Music stories.
