Ashton Shepherd look for July release of CD

Look It Up, the album's debut single and the first song she recorded for this project, has become the fastest-rising hit of her career and currently sits at 21 on the Billboard country singles chart. Shepherd released an EP in March in anticipation of the full-length.

The new disc is follow-up to her 2008 debut, "Sounds So Good." She wrote or co-wrote 8 of the 10 songs on the new album, which was produced by Buddy Cannon. "I felt like I had a basic plan for this record," she said. "You've got your first record behind you; you've learned some things. Your sophomore record - I heard from all these people - is supposed to be different. It's supposed to be another factor and define you a little more. I'm thinking, 'How am I going to do this?'"

Shepherd wrote songs with Dean Dillon, Dale Dodson, Bobby Pinson and Troy Jones. "I was just a little scared of it, since I'd never co-written before," Shepherd said. "Once I started, I really, really enjoyed it. I felt like we had plenty of songs to choose from. So the angle on this record was trying to define Ashton Shepherd in a different way, maybe dig just a little bit deeper and try and put some different kinds of songs on it.

"I was listening back to the record, thinking, 'This has something for everybody on it.' I think we've accomplished that," said Shepherd, who wrote two songs alone, I'm Just a Woman and Rory's Radio.

"This record is more tempo-heavy. The first record was very country with all the ballads," she said. "It made it kind of hard to do live shows, because you had 11 songs and 6 of them were ballads. Now, we've got a good little handful of spunky songs that I think people will really like to sing along with and enjoy on this record."