Kelley Smith & Sarah Morris

Name: Kelley Smith & Sarah Morris
Start: 2025-03-22T17:00:00-05:00
Location: 11332 Main St, Trempealeau, WI

Schedule

Sat, 22 Mar, 2025 at 05:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

11332 Main St, Trempealeau, WI | Trempealeau, WI

KELLEY SMITH BIO / QUOTES
Folksinger-songwriter Kelley Smith is a hopeless romantic who fancies old poetry and grandpa sweaters. All at once whimsical and haunting, Smith delivers deeply affecting lyrics with wry charm and a time traveler's voice. Prone to melancholy and daydreaming, Kelley spent her childhood roaming the woods of Minnesota and singing to forest animals. To this day, her longing for that landscape runs deep and seems to find its way into her songs in one way or another.
Raised by musicians, Smith always had music in her bones, but it wasn't until she was 40 and a mother of four that her first record, Moon Child (2022), came to be. As an insomniac, she wrote this first batch of songs by moonlight. They evoke a sense of belonging, juxtaposed with escapism, as she croons about long-term love, grief, and her draw to the night sky. ”Her authentic, rootsy sound, falling somewhere between country, folk, bluegrass and old-time music, is a pitch-perfect vehicle for the themes she explores...” - Adventures in Americana
Since 2022, Kelley has had the honor of sharing stages with folks like Charlie Parr, Dave Simonett, Alan Sparhawk, Wild Horses, Kelly Hunt, Drew Peterson, Stephen Wilson Jr., Molly Maher, and more. Most often performing solo or as a duo, Smith interprets old folk songs on guitar and banjo, in addition to her original music.
“Her ability to close the distance from the stage to your ears, while portioning out strong emotions, keeps you constantly leaning in more and more.”
- TOM SMOUSE [Smouse In The House]
”[Smith] has been making waves in the local folk and Americana scene. Her rustic sound, combined with relatable gut-punchy lyrics has been resonating with audiences up north and beyond.”
- SARAH O. [Southern Minn Scene]
”In its truest form, folk music requires us to slow down, listen closely, and let ourselves be absorbed by stories that take us to another place and time. And there might be no better example of that in the Minnesota music scene than Kelley Smith. These organic and unvarnished songs reflect life experiences that could as easily come from past lives as they could from Kelley’s soul.”
- DAVID DENNISON [Rieder Homestead Concerts]
“Kelley has performance sparkle that’s simply youthful. It belies innocence without being sugary...Kelley is similar in tradition to New Zealand’s marvelous Jenny Mitchell. Ladies who don’t adhere to the path of showboating yet exhibit extraordinary songwriting & performance skills.”
- JOHN APICE (Americana Highways)
SARAH MORRIS BIO / QUOTES
Sarah Morris has a habit of missing the forest. From the day the Minneapolis based singer-songwriter picked up a guitar, armed with the bone-deep memory of her parents’ well-loved record collection and rooted in the storytelling fire of a Mary Chapin Carpenter tune, she’s been too busy crafting love letters to the details of the trees. Sarah’s endearingly honest, expertly penned songs encourage audiences to pull away from the big picture and get caught up in the magic of our everyday minutia, the rainy day ache in her sunlit voice granting us permission to escape into stories at once hauntingly familiar and uniquely her own.
A graduate of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Sarah spent the first years of her career in Nashville, losing herself in the art of writing timeless Americana melodies. “Sarah Morris [is] a bright, clear, brilliant songwriter,” wrote Jon Hunt of L’Etoile Magazine. “…pure and crisp and perfect.” In the years since her 2011 debut album, Lonely or Free, Sarah’s career, like her songs, has been overflowing with delicious details. Her albums Ordinary Things (2015), Hearts in Need of Repair (2017), and All Mine (2020) recorded with band mates Thomas Nordlund, Andrew Foreman, and Lars-Erik Larson with producer Eric Blomquist, earned international airplay and considerable critical acclaim, reaching notable positions on both the Americana Music Association and Euro Americana charts. In 2016, Sarah was a top four finalist in the NewSong Music Contest at Lincoln Center in New York City, 2nd place winner of the Chris Austin Songwriting Competition at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, NC, and an Americana semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. In 2018, she went on to win the Kerrville New Folk Competition, collecting an honorable mention at the Telluride Troubadour contest along the way. More recently, Sarah was named Midwest Country Music Organization’s Songwriter of the Year for the third time.
In 2023, Sarah released her 5th album of originals, ‘Here’s To You’, which was recently awarded ‘Album of the Year’ by the Midwest Country Music Organization.
Produced by Dave Mehling, Dave Franklin of The Big Takeover said of Here’s To You,
“It’s a triumph. An album of space and restraint, any note played, every word uttered feels perfectly and purposely placed. The album is a beautiful blend of groove and grace, intimacy and entertainment, fun, and feeling. What more could you ask for? What indeed?”
“Rootsy singer Sarah Morris offers a Norah Jones-like approach to Americana, smoothing overs its rough edges with a butter-velvety voice and an intimate songwriting style.” Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune.
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