Ready for Prine Time
With a new album prepped and ready, Kelsey Waldon was perfectly content issuing her third LP in the same fashion as her previous two—through her own independent label. The Kentucky native’s 2014 debut quickly stirred critics, raising her profile from Nashville upstart to a nationally recognized, fresh-face archetype of authentic country music. Her 2016 follow-up, I’ve Got a Way, landed on several “best of” lists, drawing the attention of a couple of high-profile fans who personally confessed their affection for her work—songwriting legend John Prine and his wife, Fiona.
Stunned, Waldon graciouslyaccepted their compliments,and their suggestion to considerPrine’s Oh Boy imprint as ahome for her next project. And,two years later, Waldon will notonly release her latest LP, WhiteNoise/White Lines, through OhBoy Records, butwill also tour withPrine this fall. Sheeven joined thesongwriter for ashow-stoppingduet on “In Spiteof Ourselves”at this year’sBonnaroo.
“It was really rowdy. The smile on John’s face said it all,” Waldon says about the sit in. “It’ll probably go down as a favorite time in my history of singing that [song] with him.”
Despite her shift in distribution, Waldon still proudly carries a deep and reflective respect for the Southeast, using her music to muse naturally about the rural region in a way that echoesPrine’s enduring appeal as aniconic American storyteller.Waldon insisted on bringingher live band into the studiothis time around, despiteworking with session veteranson her previous releases.
For a while, Waldon evenconsidered naming the albumafter a song that referencesher home state, “Kentucky,1988,” but ultimately felt thetitle would imply too narrowa scope. If anything, thenWaldon’s recent mileagearound the U.S. reaffirmedher thoughts on how smallthe country really is, evenin these polarizing times.“We’re really all very similar,”says Waldon. “I know someJersey girls that have the samekind of grit as some countrygirls back home.”
Waldon wrote and road-tested some of White Noise/ White Lines’ 11 songs on tour and built others in the studio during some especially spontaneous moments. Forgoing a click-track, she and her band recorded live, to “capture lightning in a bottle,” she says, keeping takes that crackled with the energy and atmosphere of a concert performance.
“I wanted the danger, and the magic, that can happen onstage. I really wanted to feel that in the studio,” Waldon says. “I wanted that raw heat. Even if it wasn’t perfect, it was perfectly imperfect.”
This article originally appears in the September 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.
