By STEVE PFARRER
Lori McKenna’s a celebrated songwriter. But she’s got a pretty good story of her own: She was married and pregnant at 19 and a housewife and mother of three by her late 20s. About then, her family and friends coaxed her to venture out to open mics to play the songs she’d been strumming at home on her guitar. Her career as a folksinger burgeoned and she began hitting the big time in 2004 when country star Faith Hill recorded four of McKenna’s songs, then invited her to tour with her and her husband, fellow country singer Tim McGraw.
Today, McKenna, a lifelong resident of Stoughton, a bit south of Boston, has become a go-to songwriter in Nashville, penning tunes for dozens of other artists. Just this year, she won a Grammy Award (with co-writers Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey) for best country song for “Girl Crush,” performed by Little Big Town, while Tim McGraw had a No. 1 country hit with her tune “Humble and Kind.”
And with her new album, “The Bird & The Rifle,” McKenna has cemented her Nashville connection with a batch of songs — her own and some she’s co-written — that offer both a bit of twang and thoughtful folk, in a production that’s warm and layered yet still pared down, never getting in the way of her vocals and lyrics.
McKenna, who also has ties to the Valley — she’s recorded three of her 10 albums with the acoustic label Signature Sounds — will perform those new songs and some of her older ones when she plays with her band Friday at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton.
Country singer Ayla Brown — daughter of former U.S. Senator Scott Brown — opens the 7 p.m. show.
In a recent phone interview, McKenna, 47, said that even as her songwriting career has blossomed over the last several years, she’s made home and family a priority. She goes once a month to Nashville for songwriting sessions, and she typically only tours for short stretches at a time. She and her husband, Gene, who have known each other since third grade, have five children; their three oldest sons are now in their 20s.
“Home keeps me anchored,” she said. “And it’s been such an important place, a source, for my songwriting.”
That’s an interesting observation, because the characters in her songs, including several of the new ones, often find themselves struggling with loss, disenchantment and ebbing relationships. McKenna seems at her best in probing the doubts and worries of ordinary people, but she also honors their grit; she finds the mid-point between the personal and the universal.
In “Wreck You,” the new album’s opening track, she sings about a couple’s growing estrangement, for reasons neither seem able to pinpoint: “Don’t know how to pull you back/Don’t know how to pull you close/All I know is how to wreck you.”
In the title song as well, another couple feels the strain of unsaid things and the passage of time: “Something ’bout the bird in her spreadin’ those wings/Always brings the rifle out in him.” And in “Halfway Home,” a piano-based ballad, McKenna takes on the role of an older woman advising a younger one not to let men take her for granted: “Deep down you know that you’re worth more than this.”
But then there’s also the wry humor of “We Were Cool,” in which McKenna looks back on her high-school romance with her husband, recalling late-night car rides, after-school jobs in fast-food joints, and “ ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on tape cassette/Before we ever heard of the internet.”
“That’s kind of the story of the start of my adult life,” she said. “Our friends were going off to college, and we were getting married and starting a family. My husband and I would look at each other and say, ‘We must have been cool at some point.’ ”
McKenna’s got a strong alto that has long found the sweet spot between country and folk: soft and intimate at times, strong and raw at others, with a fair degree of twang on some cuts. She jokes that it was her inability to completely shed her lifelong Boston accent that led her to adapt some of that country cadence.
“When I first starting making records, my producers kept telling me I needed to pronounce my ‘Rs,’ and the only way I could do that was by singing with a twang,” she said.
For her last few records, including the acclaimed “Numbered Doors” in 2014, McKenna worked closely with her usual touring partner, former Valley multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mark Erelli, to develop a fairly spare and intimate sound. For “The Bird & The Rifle,” though, she recorded in Nashville with Dave Cobb, a Grammy-winning producer who’s worked with country singers Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell and many others.
It came about almost by accident, McKenna said. Her new management company asked her if she’d be interested in working with Cobb, something she hadn’t considered.
“I love his records, but my first thought was, ‘Would he want to do something with me?’ And [my manager] said, ‘Well, we can call him up and ask.’ ”
In 2007, in the wake of the attention she got touring with Hill and McGraw, McKenna made her major label debut on Warner Brothers with “Unglamorous,” and though the album received good reviews overall, some critics thought it over-produced. But that’s not an issue with “The Bird & The Rifle”: muted drums and electric guitar, gently picked and strummed acoustics and occasional strings and piano never overwhelm McKenna’s vocals.
She says the album was essentially recorded live, with a band backing her on three to four takes of each tune.
“I was a little nervous at first about it, but in the end I really like what we did,” she said. “I basically just took my songs and plugged them into [Cobb’s] world.”
That shows to fine effect on cuts like “Giving Up on Your Hometown,” tinged with melancholy about the changing face of small-town America, with images of shuttered churches and empty houses. Shimmering notes on electric guitar hover above and after a chorus that reminds listeners that “You can’t keep everything the way you want.”
McKenna says the song was actually inspired by changes she’s witnessed over the years in Stoughton, like old landmarks replaced by faceless housing, and the realization that “when we grow up, we see things differently. Things don’t stay the same, and you have to recognize that, even if it’s hard.”
One can hope, though, that McKenna won’t stop writing her precise, poignant songs. That, ideally, will stay the same.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
Lori McKenna plays the Iron Horse Friday, with an opening act at 7 p.m. Tickets and additional information can be found at iheg.com.