TYLER- JAMES KELLY

Name: TYLER- JAMES KELLY
Start: 2025-02-28T12:00:00-05:00
Location: The Knickerbocker Music Center

Schedule

Fri, 28 Feb, 2025 at 12:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

The Knickerbocker Music Center | Westerly, RI

TYLER- JAMES KELLY with full band
Friday, February 28
Award-winning Blues.
Show: 8p | Doors: 7p
Tickets: $20 ($2 Service Charge Included With Online Tickets. All sales are final, no ticket refunds or exchanges. Seats are on a first-come, first-serve basis, and seats are not guaranteed with ticket purchase.)
Tyler-James Kelly makes 1970s-inspired country music for the modern world. It's a warm, lived-in sound, created by a longtime songwriter who's happy to be a torchbearer for the music that's always inspired him.
That sound reaches a new peak with Dream River, Kelly's full-length solo debut. He wrote the album's 10 songs at home in Rhode Island, during a period of change and rebirth. "My lady and I had just moved into a small, mid-century house on a hill, overlooking a river that I'd grown up swimming in," he says. "It's a very humble house, but it does things to you. One day, I just picked up my guitar and banged out a tune about gratitude and the peace that a home like this can bring."
That song became the launchpad for an entire album that not only pays tribute to the people and places that have influenced Kelly's life, but also the vintage music that's fueled him for decades. Inspired by his new surroundings — a deck that he rebuilt himself, a nostalgic river flowing past his property, and a rural landscape that offered a break from the hard hustle of city life — Kelly began to dig deep, writing songs that embraced his longtime love of country music. He had already spent years on the road, fronting a critically-acclaimed blues-rock band, but moving to that house in the Rhode Island countryside helped shift his perspective and his priorities. "I decided I was done with anything that wasn't 100% authentic in my life," Kelly explains. "I wanted to show everyone who I really am. People can create a character version of themselves, and I wanted to get rid of that."
Dream River takes its cues from the American roots music that Kelly first discovered in childhood. A guitarist since the age of 10, he grew up listening to honky-tonk pickers and top-shelf songwriters, falling in love with artists like Hank Williams, Jerry Reed, Robert Johnson, George Jones, and Jim Croce. He also developed a taste for the storytellers of the 1970s, including Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Don Williams, and Guy Clark. "There's this joke that my parents used to say, which is, 'Tyler walked into a corn maze in 1975, and he just came out now,'" Kelly says. "And I was born in 1988! I grew up at my Nanna's house, though, and I was raised with a lot of old antiques and records. Other kids had CDs; I had 45s and 8-tracks."
Kelly's appreciation for the old stuff — vintage tones, timeless songwriting, analog production — is on full display with Dream River, an album that turns classic ingredients into something contemporary. The album bounces between waltzing country (the titular "Dream River"), dark and desperate Americana ("Hard Times"), and highway-bound honky-tonk ("Traveling' Troubadour"), with Kelly's big, booming baritone leading the way. Recorded at Dead Pop Studios in Providence, Rhode Island, Dream River also features contributions from instrumentalists like drummer Bart Lingley (The Chicks, Jim Lauderdale), pedal steel guitarist Will Van Horn (Robert Ellis), engineer/multi-instumentalist Nicholas Coolidge, and bassist Lee Clay Johnson (author of Nitro Mountain).
Hailed by Rolling Stone as a "deft chicken-pickin' guitarist" with a "head-turner" live show, Tyler-James Kelly sees Dream River as more than just an introduction to his solo career. He views the album as a part of something much bigger. It's a celebration of the music that's inspired generations of songwriters, pickers, and fans, performed by a songwriter who's happy to wear his influences on his sleeve. The way Kelly sees it, he's just carrying the tradition forward.
"I just want to be a torch holder for something that's very American — something that means the world to me and my community of country music lovers," he says. "Country was originally called folk music. It's music for the people. It's stories about life. That's all I'm trying to be a part of."