By way of Alaska, Oregon, Denver and New Mexico, roving femme troubadour Rooster Blackspur now tackles Tennessee with Nashville: Cinderella Sessions, covering a pleasant slice of the Nashville country gauntlet in her own door-bustin’ seven-track album, released out of the oldest surviving independent studio in Nashville, Cinderella Sound Studio.

Nashville: Cinderella Sessions begins with “Kickin’ Up Dust” as Blackspur bursts in hot to play the blame game in this railing roadhouse charger before switching gears on the soft, forlorn, Bonnie Raitt-tinged ballad “Hard Road,” featuring a gospel-style breakdown of beautiful backing vocals.

Soft-jazz ’80s strummer “The Way,” with a harmonica thrown in to “country-ize” it, continues the crooning with a punctuating rasp of poppiness revealed in the jovial, uptempo chorus. Here, Blackspur imparts the wisdom of using every day to build on what you have, in order to become a little stronger.

In contrast, the wisdom in “Lonely Angels” relates to letting go, within a good mix of church music and secular country, drawing the line in a relationship and, surprisingly, painting the man involved in this steadfast and diligent song to be human. The hybrid of spiritual and secular styles on this track makes it seem possible she’d break into worship, singing “Looooord” instead of “Loooooo-nlieness” at the verse.

“I Saw You” follows, a fast tempoed, honky-tonk-snared traveling song, driven by yodel and “haw” calls echoing against a rarin’ lap steel in this country buster, like when I saw you (When *Hi-YA!* Saw you [whip crack]!).

“Big Dipper,” a starry, country dreamscape with lap steel, acoustic strum and electric guitar filler riffs, delivers another heavily stringed canyon-of-sound number (with an easy piano rhythm and a xylophone’s ping) for a grandness that encapsulates the blend of the secular and heavenly. The power of the artist’s longing shines through in a wall-of-sound fashion in this beautiful late album track.

Find Rooster Blackspur’s Nashville: Cinderella Sessions across the icons, on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp, where you can also find a lovely Christmas track, Hold You For Christmas.

Rooster’s homepage on the net is at roosterblackspur.com. The artist took up somewhat of a residency at The 5 Spot in Nashville over the course of late 2025; find more information on future performances there at the5spotnashville.com.