NASHVILLE SCENE: How Shannon McNally got her Zen back, with Dr. John's help

There's proof on the new album Small Town Talk that Mac Rebennack (known to most as Dr. John) almost — almost — succeeded in knocking Shannon McNally off her sly, sensual game. Just short of a minute into "Long Face" — a New Orleans strut by Bobby Charles on an album stocked beginning to end with Charles' swamp-pop songwriting — McNally is singing about what she does and doesn't want in a lover, Rebennack is peppering her with wise-ass jive talk, and then you hear the faintest giggle. She collects herself in time to saunter on into the next verse, sounding remarkably unruffled by one of popular music's great funky tricksters.

"Or trying to remain unruffled, yeah," McNally tells the Scene via phone.

Even back when McNally was a green little thing, releasing her folk-pop debut Jukebox Sparrows on a major label, nobody would've accused her of being an uncontrolled singer. Recently, Harry Connick Jr. appeared as a coach on American Idol and doled out criticism of contestants' flowery interpretations of standards that rekindled the debate about what constitutes good singing. That's something McNally can appreciate: "Somebody had to say it. I mean, my God."

With a little prompting, the New York-born, Mississippi-based singer-songwriter explains where she stands on the subject. "I've always just been drawn to a certain kind of singer," McNally says thoughtfully. "Willie Nelson's probably my favorite singer of all singers. But the over-embellishment, that just doesn't appeal to me. It's one thing if Aretha Franklin really does something amazing, because she has such an amazing voice, but there's so much behind her embellishment.

"My idea of a good singer, it's just kind of across the board," she continues. "It's all over the place. I mean, I could listen to Barbra Streisand sing anything. I love some technique. I love control. But I also think Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson are pretty great singers, because there's so much meaning in every word."

McNally's own supple drawl has a sneaky sort of magnetism to it; her singing seems to conceal just as much as it reveals. "My voice is an instrument, and as an instrumentalist I think of it as you just don't have to give it all up every time," she says. "You're supposed to have some restraint, so that when people come back for more, you have something more to offer. It's just like guitar players: If it's, like, masturbatory, well then who needs that?"

Another big moment for vocal interplay on Small Town Talk — which McNally and Rebennack co-produced — is "String of Hearts." With the help of mutual friend Rodney Crowell, McNally enlisted Vince Gill to sing harmony, and he cut a luminous, sympathetic orbit above her rich, dusky notes.

"It's a big pop ballad," McNally says. "I don't know too many men's voices that could really sing that like that. He's a real singer's singer. I think when I first mentioned it [to Crowell], I was probably just kind of daydreaming out loud, almost too scared to even ask: 'Would that be completely audacious of me to suggest that perhaps, maybe he would consider doing this?'

"That my vocal held up with him — I felt like it did anyway — and that together they accented each other," McNally continues, "that was a little turning point in my own self-appreciation."

Making albums with seriously seasoned free-thinkers like Dr. John and the late Jim Dickinson has been good for McNally's mystically rootsy music.

"Well, I mean, for years I was on a major label," McNally says, "and I was a young artist, female artist, and it's very, very hard to be taken seriously. And so patronized. I mean, just from every walk of life in the music business you're just patronized from day one. Neither one of them did that. They both recognized the capabilities of my voice, and of me as an artist. And they challenged me to embody that, and to trust it. And they didn't do it in any kind of schmaltzy, talk-show-host kind of way. They just did it with subtle affirmation.

"For them to just treat me as another musician in the room is all I ever want, is all I ever wanted," McNally says. "So it felt like, 'Wow, I did it. I got here.' "