The path leading to Shelean's new album, Anything Goes, can be traced all the way back to her beginnings in Texas. Shelean was born in Newton, and moved to Orange during her sophomore year. Her earliest musical influences came from her father, a Southern Baptist minister and church music director, and her older sister, also an accomplished singer/stage performer. Shelean made her stage debut at age 7 in a local production of Fiddler On The Roof. Performing, she says, "was just in my blood".

Shelean's family moved to Nashville, where she finished high school and then took an acting/singing job at Opryland, the famed Nashville theme park that drew hundreds of aspiring stage performers from around the country. Before it closed in 1997, "Opryland was one of the only theme parks where music was performed by live musicians rather than on pre-recorded tracks," Shelean recalls. "It employed huge numbers of people in Nashville and I was blessed to be coming up at that time"—and also to meet trombonist Barry Green, her fellow employee and future husband.

After 18 months at Opryland, Shelean joined the Tennessee Repertory Theater where she enjoyed a steady and successful 15-year career. She appeared in leading roles in TRT productions of West Side Story, The Sound of Music, You Can't Take It With You, and other Broadway favorites; Shelean also did studio session work and acted in promotional films while she and Barry raised their daughter Tyler and son Seth.

About the new album, Anything Goes

Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, and Johnny Mercer ... Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, George & Ira Gershwin ... from the barroom to the Broadway stage, people have been singing the pre-rock classics of these composers for the better part of a century. But on Anything Goes, her debut album for GrandVista Music, Shelean Newman breathes vivid life into twelve standards from The Great American Songbook with her passionate delivery and fresh, surprising arrangements.

Gone are the tinkling pianos, faint drumming, and soothing Muzak-style string arrangements of yesteryear. In their place, we hear strong elements of blues and jazz, Southern rock and New Orleans piano boogie, from a tight and cohesive rock band complemented by some of Nashville's top horn and string players. And at the center of this ingeniously conceived production is a voice that's warm, worldly, and just a bit mysterious. After decades in musical theater, Shelean Newman brings all of her interpretive skills to these timeless tunes, infusing them with a maturity and musicality that less experienced performers would be hard-pressed to match.

The making of Anything Goes began a few years back when Shelean Newman first tried her hand at songwriting in collaboration with Nashville composer Paul Binkley. When Paul later became president of a new label called GrandVista Music (founded and led by David Mastran), he approached Shelean about the possibility of recording for the label.

"It was a wonderful opportunity," she admits. "But although my songwriting was coming along, I didn't feel I had enough high-quality originals for an album."

The initial idea—traditional pop standards recorded as a children's lullaby album—soon evolved into a very different and very adult project as Shelean pondered the song list and a variety of musical approaches. "Despite my musical theater background, I don't listen to much Broadway show music for my own pleasure," she explains. "I like a lot of the same stuff my kids listen to, from Nirvana to Rufus Wainwright."

During the time that Shelean was pondering the song list for what became Anything Goes, she was listening frequently to her friend Chris Walters' 2003 album Cool Blue Swing. The original jazz-pop songs of this talented keyboardist and composer – a native of New Orleans and a Nashville resident since 1989 – were laced with Crescent City funk and Caribbean calypso. "Chris was a colleague of mine and someone who could cover all the bases, from George Gershwin and Bing Crosby to Dr. John and Randy Newman," says Shelean. "I thought, 'I need to call Chris and get him to do some arrangements for this project.' But the first time we met about it, he told me: 'I'm not a Broadway kind of guy.'

"So I said, 'Well, neither am I! So think way outside the box—if you hear an arrangement or an approach in your head, just go way to the left with it.'

"The next time we got together, Chris played me a version of 'Embraceable You' that sounded like it had been written by George and Ira Gershwin and Kurt Cobain...and we just took it from there." Thus did Chris Walters become the producer of Anything Goes.

Walters' technical ability perfectly complemented his partner's intuitive feel. "Sometimes his idea was right there from the start," Shelean recalls. "Other times I'd say, that sounds really beautiful but it's not at all what I'm thinking for that song.

"Although I can read music, I can't really give directions in theoretical terms. But we have the kind of understanding where I can say to him, 'it needs to be more open' or 'that's too pretty.'"

Since the completion of her album in the spring of 2008, Shelean Newman has performed the songs of Anything Goes at a series of high-profile Nashville shows. "We've been getting a surprising response from younger people, like between 25 and 35. Of course, some of the musical theater fans only want to hear these songs the way they think the composers intended, or the way Nat King Cole or Tony Bennett once sang the songs.

"Certainly one could argue that nobody can really improve on an interpretation by Nat Cole or Tony Bennett, two of the all-time great singers. But for people who've grown up on contemporary rock and hip-hop, this is really a new way to hear this material—and I've had any number of them come up afterwards and tell me, 'wow, that was really cool!'"