Alabama songwriter Kristy Lee has been as surprised as anyone to see her newly released album, “The Olive Tree,” sitting at No. 1 on the blues album chart at iTunes, over the likes of Etta James and Joe Bonamassa.

It is not a traditional blues album at all, but it covers blues territory, telling the story of a voyage through darkness and light, fear and strength, loss and redemption. When Lee sings in the title track that “it took the Angel of Death” to open her eyes, she’s not kidding around.

“The Olive Tree” was a long time coming, and it’s kind of a miracle it exists at all – let alone that it’s made the splash it has.

“We did the best we could with the release,” Lee said. “I would have never imagined that it’d be sitting at No. 1 on the iTunes blues chart right now. You’re always hopeful for some kind of excitement with things like this. To see it there, I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts. I don’t even want to look at the chart again because I know it’s going to change soon.”

As she spoke by phone from her home in south Alabama, she apologized for a little bit of background noise. Her band would be rehearsing later in the evening, she said, and she was chopping ingredients for a pot of collard greens she was about to cook for her musicians.

That detail is classic Kristy Lee. It exemplifies the “dirt road soul” label Lee has used to describe her music: As down-home as can be at its roots, but blessed with a soaring powerhouse of a voice that can surprise and shock, driven by a need to make connections that are deep and real. You don’t see Lee’s fans coming up to shake hands at a show: You see them coming in for full-clinch, how-have-you-been hugs. So of course she’s chopping collards for the band.

“The Olive Tree,” however, doesn’t stick to the same dirt road. It doesn’t sound like anything Lee has recorded in the past: The voice is the same, but the instrumental tones and textures are different. It even reaches into ska on one track. Some of the songs have a theatrical feel, as if written for a concept album or a musical.

There are reasons for all that. The album comes from a time in her life when Lee wasn’t able to just keep walking down the same road. It’s the product of what she calls “the roller coaster that I was on at that time of life.”

“In 2012 I was having some issues and just days before leaving for my first European tour I got some test results that were extremely scary,” Lee said. “I got a phone call from my doctor and she was like, ‘Kristy, it looks like there’s a tumor in your spinal cord.’ I was like, ‘What?’”

With only days to go before she was scheduled to leave the country, she went through a whirlwind of testing. Canceling the trip was a real possibility to consider, but the cancer scare also provided some motivation to go through with it if at all possible.

“A lot of people involved … knew that it was possible that it could be the last trip of my life,” she said. “They wanted me to go on this trip.”

“The evening before I left, I had a spinal tap,” she said. “And I flew out the next morning.”

“We received the news that it was benign and more likely in the field of multiple sclerosis while sitting under an olive tree in Europe,” she said. “And I felt like that was a very significant thing. Even though it wasn’t the best of news, it still was the better of the news. I felt like in that moment I got a second chance at life.”

In the liner notes you’ll find something that looks almost like a track listing, but that’s not what it is. It’s a poetic summary of the album, drawing one phrase from the lyrics of each song. “I lit a candle in Rome, asked time to go easy on me, reminisced, was being polite, felt alone, karma came around, I held onto hope, processed the progress, found my voice and set it free.”

“I really did go into a church in Rome and I lit a candle and I said a prayer,” she said.

“I know nothing about Catholicism, so I didn’t really understand the flow of things,” she said. So she asked if it was OK, and when she was assured that it was, she “picked out the picture that was calling to me the most” to place her candle.

Later she found out that she’d randomly chosen the archangel Michael, also classed as a saint in Catholic theology. Catholic tradition assigns him several roles including one as the angel of death, who accompanies or transports the souls of the recently deceased to judgment. Lee was told that this particular day was the day designated for his celebration.

It is that symbol of protection, not the usual scythe-toting skeleton, that is the Angel of Death she cites in her lyrics.

As she said, the news wasn’t the worst but it also wasn’t great. Preserving her health was suddenly a much greater concern. That continues to be the case today, though Lee says she is “overall in good health.” But she has had to work at it since 2012. At times she couldn’t much else as she grappled with the impacts of MS.

That was tough, because Lee had built some momentum. She had always managed to strike her own path, playing cities and venues outside the usual local and regional circuit. She has toured as an opener for G. Love and for The Indigo Girls, opening for the latter at Mobile’s Saenger Theatre and Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. She and her longtime partner Missy Sebastian had also been instrumental in presenting Pensacola Unleashed, an annual LGBTQ+ festival that ran from 2003 until 2023. (They announced in April that the May 2023 event would be “the final chapter.”)

She continued to do those things after 2012, but “I’ve had times when I’ve had to start and stop my career,” she said.

The song “Feeling Weak” opens with lines that capture the pain of that: “The nerves on my skin are burning again, like a ghost out in the hall tryin’ to get in,” she howls.

“I wrote that song specifically about losing my ability to play guitar and sing music for a period of time in my life,” she said. “It was strange … I felt like I lost my identity.”

“I do believe anybody can relate to not feeling like themselves,” she said.

It was about 2017 when the album began to take shape. Lee found fertile ground at Clearwave Recording Studios in Decatur, with proprietor Jeremy Stephens mixing and Lee producing her own work for the first time.

“North Alabama has got some magic,” said Lee, who recorded a previous album in Muscle Shoals. “I wanted some of that north Alabama spirit to show up. And I believe it did.”

“It was definitely a blessing to find that studio. And the musicians that were available endlessly,” she said. “They were available endlessly to me through those times. And it was really tender times for me. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen every day.”

Credited musicians include Jeffrey Clemens and Katie Herron on drums; Sean Hopkins and Dan Hardin on bass; Marge Loveday on keys, organ and vocals; Alex Banks on saxophone; and Tara Jones, Diamond Thomas and Shaturia Lightbourne on vocals. Some familiar allies also dropped by to add vocals: Mobile area songwriter Eric Erdman and Australian duo Julz Parker and Leesa Gentz, aka the Hussy Hicks.

If the music sounds like it comes from a different space, there’s a good reason: Lee was coming from a different space.

“A lot of that stuff came from steroids,” she said. “I was on copious amounts of steroids and not sleeping for days. So thank God these songs showed up and gave me a place to put it.”

“I wrote the majority of those songs in my sleep,” she said. “It was the first time that I was able to, and it was because I was on so much steroids, that when I woke up I was actually able to remember the song.”

“Every time I write a song I’m just thankful,” she said. “I’m not the kind of person who can just sit down and say, ‘Today I’ll write this song.’”

They come to her, and she feels a certain degree of obligation to deliver them as they arrived. She’s grateful to have found musicians who could help her “paint the picture” for each song. And she’s happy the resulting music seems to be finding an audience.

“As an artist you’re always hopeful that people are going to connect with what you’re doing. But I knew that this record was a little different,” she said. “It’s definitely about a very personal journey.”

“I’m really happy the record is resonating with people,” she said.

It’s no fluke, though. Lee has spent a lot of time building a base of fans ready to follow her, wherever the next turn the road might take her. That’s another thing she’s had time to take stock of, during the starts and stops.

“It’s an extremely grassroots community,” she said. “It’s grassroots to the extreme … If I didn’t have their support I’d still be singing and playing, but it would just be in a room in my house.”

“If anything I would say I’m a more grateful person,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot throughout the process, those starts and stops. I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve learned a lot about those around me and the support I’ve had. Definitely I wouldn’t be well now if I hadn’t had the support that I’ve had.”

“I’m starting to see so many stories that have branched off showing me how powerful music is,” she said. “How powerful of a conduit music is.”

For a long while, “The Olive Tree” was her ball and chain – finished, but with a release hanging fire. It’s free now, and so is she. “It’s still sinking in, to me, that it’s finally in the world,” she said. “It’s slowly sinking in that it’s real. I can’t tell you how good a feeling that is.”

“It’s been a saving grace for me, no doubt,” she said. “It’s been the No. 1 healing tool, the No. 1 medicine for me, throughout this journey. It’s over a decade now, this journey with my health. The biggest healing for me has been music, and I just thank God for that. We all need a place to put things, and I can’t imagine what people do when they don’t have a place to put things.”

She’s got an album release party coming up Sept. 1 and Cedar Street Social in downtown Mobile; see www.kristyleemusic.com for venue and ticket information. “The Olive Tree” also can be purchased through the site, and it’s available through major streaming services.

She’ll be adding more dates as her plans develop, including an overseas trip postponed by the pandemic. And don’t be surprised to hear more new music. She swears it’ll never again take her this long to release a project.

“I have like two more albums of songs I’ve written during that time,” she said. “And now all of a sudden that this is free, I have all these songs showing up.”

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