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As much as singer-songwriter Jill Andrews has moved on, it's almost impossible at this point in her career to discuss what comes next without talking about what's come before.

In her case, everything she's accomplished in 2009 -- a child, a marriage, the launching of a solo career, the recording of a new batch of songs, opening for Willie Nelson at The Tennessee Theatre last month -- has happened so fast that the dust has barely had time to settle on the band she co-founded more than five years ago -- the everybodyfields.

Over the course of three albums, cross-country tours and an increasingly prominent profile in the national Americana scene, the everybodyfields seemed bound for big things. Until, that is, a message went up on the band's website back in June, announcing that Andrews and everybodyfields co-founder Sam Quinn were going their separate ways.

"I think, mainly, it was just working with another person and not being your own leader," Andrews told The Daily Times during a recent phone interview. "Now, I am my own leader -- I can make whatever decision I want. When you're working with somebody else, you always have to deal with somebody else's opinions. Sometimes, they're really, really great, and Sam and I had a lot of those moments. We collaborated well and with a lot of respect.

"But then there were those places where we didn't, and after a while, it took its toll. It was at a point where we were at a stalemate about some really important business decisions, and I was like, 'Well ... you know ...'"

She lets that thought drift, subtly shifting the conversation in another direction. In the everybodyfields, Andrews was always the demure one -- not that Quinn was boisterous. In concert, she always said more with her grace on stage and the magnificent beauty of her voice -- like that of Over the Rhine's Karin Bergquist, blended with a hundred years of Appalachian heartache, aged in barrels of introspection and stored in those cool, dry recesses of the heart that seldom see light unless an artist like Andrews goes exploring there.

The two met in Blount County -- at Camp Wesley Woods in Walland, and after returning to Johnson City, they began collaborating musically. Three albums followed, and the most recent being 2007's "Nothing Is OK," recorded in the wake of their breakup as a couple. Speculation has been made that the two were unable to get past those lingering emotional feelings, but Andrews insists that she and Quinn remain friends -- and that, one day, the unreleased album they recorded at local Rock Snob studio before their split might see the light.

"There's a chance, at some point, that we might release some sort of stuff," she said.

In the meantime, Andrews has forged ahead with a solo career, assembling a cast of stellar local musicians -- including Maryville native and former everybodyfields keyboard player Josh Oliver -- to record a six-song EP released last month. Some of the songs were written while the everybodyfields were still together; others, she said, evolved afterward. Either way, songwriting has always come relatively easy to her.

"Honestly, there wasn't a whole lot of collaboration in the everybodyfields," she said. "In the beginning there was more, but really, the thing we noticed as we went on and on through the years is that I would write all my songs, he would write all of his songs, and we came together as two separate artists and formed a band -- which was actually really amazing.

"We fit so well because we liked the same kind of music; it wasn't like he would just throw in a reggae song, you know? It worked really, really well, so taking him off of the stage and adding all of these other guys was something I did very selectively. And, so far, it hasn't been that weird of a transition."

Nor, it seems, has it been for fans. She doesn't shun her everybodyfields material, and those who fell in love with her voice and her writing in that band will find that all of those qualities still exist -- and are magnified, even -- in her solo career. Although only six songs, the new EP is more dense that the typical Old Time sound of the everybodyfields; layers of piano and chiming guitar lift her soaring vocals off the earthly plain the everybodyfields so often plowed; songs like "Worth Keeping" and "Sweetest in the Morning" shine like the sun off of water, and the whole record is more majestic than gritty -- fitting, it seems, for a woman who found herself at life's crossroads and picked her path without hesitation or regret.

"I was having a baby, and this band thing wasn't working out anymore, but I still wanted to do music," she said. "I feel like I'm growing so much as an artist, just year by year, and I didn't want to stop doing that just because I'm a mom and all that. So I kept going. I've been touring a lot, and it's totally insane, bringing a baby on the road to dark, dinghy nightclubs and playing music, but it works because he's got a loving mommy and daddy and four new 'uncles' in my band who take care of him.

"It's been a crazy couple of months. I had a baby at the end of May and put out my album in October, and I do have other songs I'm working on so I can put out a full-length in either the spring or summer. It's just been wild, and I very much am still processing the whole thing."