Here's a story you don't hear every day: Lori McKenna, a 38-year-old mother of five who has been married to the same man since she was 19 and lives within a stone's throw of her childhood home, is just weeks away from her first major-label album release date. Need more? How about her appearance last year on "Oprah" with superstar Faith Hill, who recorded three of McKenna's songs on the album "Fireflies" -- including its title track?

Or how about the fact that her new album was produced by super producer Byron Gallimore and superstar Tim McGraw, via their StyleSonic Records imprint? And then there's her 18-show run as the opening act for McGraw and Hill's blockbuster Soul2Soul 2007 tour. And the fact that McKenna -- who grew up in Stoughton, Mass -- didn't start writing songs until she was 27.

"Unglamorous," out Aug. 14 on StyleSonic/Warner Bros., is actually her fifth album. McKenna wrote or co-wrote all 11 cuts on the record and calls "Your Next Lover" her favorite. "I've been married for 19 years, so it's a song about someone moving on and she's sort of knowing where they're going to go because you know them so well."

The rocking and defiant "I Know You," name-checks D.H. Lawrence, and the title cut talks of faded curtains, TV dinners and drinking wine from a jelly glass. "I only can write about what I know or conversations I've had with people who have the same type of life that I do," she says. "I live in the same town I grew up in. I only have a sixth grade vocabulary, and I only know three chords. This is who I am, and I don't really have time to take a piano class or anything."