Lori McKenna's 'Unglamorous'

Finally, I get to profile singer-songwriter Lori McKenna in today’s USA Today. I say “finally” because I’d wanted to do a piece on the Stoughton, Mass., native back in 2005, after Faith Hill delayed her Fireflies album so she could put three of Lori’s songs – including “Fireflies” and “Stealing Kisses” – on it. Lori’s a mother of five (kids range in age from 3 to 18) married to a plumber, and until those royalty checks started rolling in, all seven of them lived in a 1,500-square-foot house that Lori and her husband, Gene, had bought when they were 19.

Lori would play out several nights a month, rarely venturing farther than she could drive overnight, since it was always important to be home by the time the kids woke up. “I’ve even driven home from Philly,” she says, “which is really dumb, but you get home in six hours when you have to.”

With a story like that – and with songs as good as hers (I can’t stress enough that you pick up her other albums once you have the new one, Unglamorous) – I really wanted to talk to her. For some reason, though, the publicist at Warner Bros., which had re-released her old albums, dragged her heels on putting us together. In retrospect, I suspect the folks at Oprah had insisted on some sort of exclusivity, since Lori and Faith showed up there not long after I started asking for an interview.

Anyway, I got to interview her over coffee recently at Fido in Nashville, and we hit it off immediately, not only because we both had driven Ford Windstars with 150,000 miles on them (though Lori has traded hers in for a Toyota Sienna), but because four of my kids are the same ages as four of her kids. And that’s really something, considering how they’re spaced – 15, 13, 5 and 3. As Lori said, “That’s so weird, because there’s that gap.” Lori says she gets the strangest questions about that gap. I know what she means: The most common one I get, if my wife’s not around, is “Are they all with the same wife?” (Yes, they are, thank you very much.)

So, anyway, enjoy the story. If you do, be sure to click the “recommended” button on the USA Today page. And leave a comment, too - here or there. That'd be great.

Oh, and did I say that Unglamorous is one of my favorite albums so far this year? 'Cause I should have.