Shelly Fairchild Relieves Heartache on the Road in ‘Mississippi Turnpike’ Video [Exclusive Premiere]

Shelly Fairchild's brand-new "Mississippi Turnpike" video draws directly from a difficult breakup she went through.

Ironically, the singer-songwriter did not write the song despite its autobiographical nature. Her co-producer Carey Ott sent her "Mississippi Turnpike," which he co-wrote with Tim Lee Jones. Fairchild was in her car driving from Nashville back to her hometown of Clinton, Miss., when she heard it.

"I was on my way home to find the me that I didn't recognize anymore after going through a really bad breakup," she tells Taste of Country. "The song hit me as if I had actually written the words myself."

"I called him right away and said, 'We have to put this on my record!'" Fairchild recalls. "It was as if he and Tim were speaking for me. Like they had retraced all of my steps from the time I left home headed to Nashville to the very moment I was in... driving home to Mississippi, completely broken."

The newly-filmed video, which is premiering via Taste of Country, features an almost literal re-telling of the song's lyrics, with Fairchild hitting the open road to outrun the ghosts of the past. But it also tells parallel stories about more than one person searching for redemption and learning how to live again.

Fairchild was at a creative crossroads when she began working on her latest album, Buffalo, which she calls "the most honest record I've ever made." She was in a writer's block, but after listening to and even cutting several outside songs, she realized she had to dig in and re-focus creatively. She says the new album chronicles all of the highs and lows of her journey since she left home for Nashville two decades ago.

"I have experienced a lot over the years that I've been gone ... I've loved and I've had so many joys and successes, but I've also lost and fought hard to live the truth of who I am as a gay woman," she says. "Because of my truth, I've lost record deals, friends, and family members. I've been heartbroken and I've broken a few, I've lied, I've cheated, and I've been given a lot of chances to get things right. These are some key elements that I really wanted as a part of the storyline for the video. I wanted to show how so many different things can really weigh your soul down ... but you don't have to stay down."

"There is always someone that knows what it feels like to be broken," Fairchild adds. "I have found a family that love and support me and that has saved me so many times and in so many ways! So, with this song and with this video, 'Mississippi Turnpike,' I feel like it's my first chance ... in a long line of second chances ... to say I'm headed to where I wanna be .... you know, 'where it feels like me.'"

Buffalo is available at iTunes.

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