Reckless Kelly
Roots country-rock
Willy Braun (vocals,
guitars, harmonium, percussion, harmonica) - Cody Braun (fiddle,
mandolin, tenor guitar, harmonica, vocals) - Jay Nazz
(drums, percussion) - Joe “Bass” Miller (bass)
For nearly 25 years, Reckless Kelly has graced the
musical landscape with a high-powered form of Americana, equally rooted in raw passion,
refined musicianship, and gritty authenticity. With the dual release of two new albums—American
Jackpot and American Girls—the
Idaho-bred band presents a beautifully detailed portrait of their beloved country, turning their
nuanced songwriting to its many glories and tragedies. While one batch of songs centers on slice-of-life
storytelling and the other ex- plores the complexities of human connection, the collective body of work unfolds with a profound and often
eye-opening attention to the subtleties of American
life.
“I’ve always wanted
to write an America-themed record,
but not in some super-political or ‘rah rah rah’ sort of way,” says Willy Braun, who co-founded Reckless Kelly with his
older brother Cody Braun and drummer Jay Nazz in 1996. “I wanted to tell
stories of everyday life, and the
kinds of things that nearly everybody experiences growing up in this country.”
Although Reckless Kelly initially intended to make just
one album, the project took on a life of its
own once they headed into the studio. “I wanted to produce this one by myself,
just to try that out, and I made sure to book plenty
of studio time to get it done right,” says Willy. “We ended up mov-
ing along really fast, so I pulled
out a few more songs and figured
we’d end up using them down the road. Before we knew it, we had
enough material for two really good records.”
The follow-up to their acclaimed 2016 album Sunset Motel, American Jackpot and American
Girls em- body a wonderfully eclectic sonic palette, achieved with the help
of V.I.P. guest musicians like Gary
Clark Jr. and Charlie Sexton, along with several members of their own legendary family (including
Uncle Gary Braun on chromatic harmonica and their father Muzzie Braun on lead
and harmony vocals). Recorded at Arlyn Studios in their adopted hometown of Austin, both albums abound with an
unbridled vitality—an element that has much to do with the band’s deliberate
decision to keep pre-production to a minimum in order to harness the magic of in-studio spontaneity. “There’s something incredible about the first
time you play a song really well together, and we don’t
ever want to waste that take
on the rehearsal room,” Willy notes.
Throughout American
Jackpot, Reckless Kelly
joyously examines what they most cherish about their
homeland, exalting everything from the thrill of mule-riding through the Grand Canyon to the country’s singular
potential as a cultural melting pot. At the same time, the band never shies
away from calling out forces that threaten America’s character. To that end, the album is bookended by two piano-driven tracks with lyrics lifted from the Emma Lazarus
poem inscribed at the Statue of Liberty: the full-hearted and hopeful “North American Jackpot,” and
“Goodbye Colorado #3” (a quietly impassioned response to anti-immigrant
rhetoric). “It seemed to make sense to open and close the record with similar
themes, where one song’s about people coming to America, and the other’s about
people getting kicked out of this
country they’ve lived in forever,” says Willy.
Elsewhere on the album, Reckless Kelly conjures a
distinctly American spirit through their artfully executed musical
references—the heavy-hearted Tom Petty homage “Tom Was a Friend of Mine” channels the elegant simplicity of its subject’s songwriting, while Bukka
Allen’s ballpark-organ melodies lend a certain whimsy to “42” and its tribute to the great American pastime.
And on songs like “Thinkin’ ‘Bout You All Night,” American Jackpot celebrates the splendor of the country’s most majestic spaces. With its finely rendered
images of rolling fog and
sun-streaked pinyon pines, th
sweetly wistful track came to life in three separate
states: a park called Garden of the Gods in Col-
orado, a cabin porch in California’s Sonoma Valley, and a lodge on Oregon’s
Klamath Lake. “We nearly put that one on the American Girls album, but to me it’s a song about the vast
diversity of America, and all the little geographical differences in the places
it was written,” Willy points out.
Though each album encompasses endlessly unpredictable
moods and textures (thanks in part to Eleanor Whitmore’s lush string
arrangements), American Girls finds
Reckless Kelly embracing an un- deniably playful energy. Sparked from a pair of pink sunglasses left on the dashboard of Willy’s truck, “Miss Marissa” wanders into
the unlikely territory of ELO-esque
symphonic pop—a sound worlds away from “Any Place That’s Wild,” a Marty
Robbins-meets-Sergio Leone duet with singer/ songwriter Suzy Bogguss. “Instead
of using tambourines on that one, we spent
about two hours one
night stomping around the studio with spurs on,” Willy recalls. Meanwhile,
“Don’t Give Up on Love” emerges as a bouncy
rock-and-roll number with roots in classic Springsteen and the Ronettes, and the album’s title track
offers up a swaggering ode to the greatest girls in the world.
One of many
songs penned with Idaho-born singer/songwriter Jeff Crosby, “I Only See You With My Eyes Closed” provides
one of American Girls most haunting
moments, its intensity heightened by Sexton’s
ethereal guitar work. “There’s one verse about waking up and not being able to
remember what you were dreaming, but the feeling of the dream is still lingering,” says Willy. “There’s three
different guitar parts drifting in and out on that song, and it’s meant to be
the musical equivalent of drifting in and out of a dream.” Another collaboration with Crosby, “Lonesome On My
Own” matches Geoff Queen’s
luminous steel-guitar tones with lyrics
encapsulating a painful
self-awareness (e.g., “Maybe she’s better without
hangin’ from my love like a marionette”). But on “Lost
Inside The Groove,” American Girls turns impossibly
jubilant, bringing swinging rhythms and a fiery guitar solo to the song’s
expression of lovestruck adoration.
“Shawn Sahm sent me that song idea, so we worked it out and had him come down
and play guitar and Vox Continental organ,” explains Willy, referring to the
son of Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas
Tornados founder Doug Sahm. “It had this real Tex-Mex feel right off the bat, and I think they’re going to dig
it in Texas.”
In the writing of Reckless
Kelly’s latest material, Willy took several trips up to his desert retreat in Idaho,
a spot near the Brauns’ White Cloud Mountains hometown. Though the two brothers
first forged their musical partnership back in Idaho, they later decamped to
Bend, Oregon, where they quickly linked up with Jay Nazz. Soon after forming
Reckless Kelly (whose
name nods to the legend of
Australian highwayman Ned Kelly), the three musicians relocated to Austin
and rounded out the
lineup with bassist Joe Miller and guitarist David Abeyta (who exited the band
after the release of Sunset Motel).
Over the years, they’ve delivered a string of
critically lauded albums, including 2011’s Grammy-nominated Good Luck & True Love and 2013’s
Grammy-winning Long Night Moon.
With the release of American Jackpot and American Girls, Reckless Kelly hopes to
lead listeners to thoughtful reflection on their own experience of living in America, and possibly invite
a certain pur- poseful nostalgia. “I’d really love
for people to listen to this record and remember,” says Willy. “I hope ‘42’ makes them remember playing
ball when they were kids, and I hope ‘Tom Was a Friend of Mine’ makes them think of hearing a Tom Petty song and feeling like
he was your buddy, even though you never met him. Mostly I just hope these
songs remind them of all the
different aspects of growing up in America,
and feeling so lucky to live here.”
- Website:
- http://recklesskelly.com/