EER1104 2/15/11
kelley Hunt . biography
Rare is the six year-old who finds it natural as breathing to dash over to a piano and pound out her own jumping, two-handed version of Ray Charles’ R&B groundbreaker “I Got a Woman” or Chuck Berry’s pioneering rock ‘n’ roll anthem “Maybellene”. Kelley Hunt was that little girl. Rarer still is what she grew into—a real, live roots R&B singer-songwriter. In the world of bluesy, bodily music, there are plenty of people known for their singing, or for their playing, but far fewer recognized for songwrit - ing and fewer still for all three. Hunt has a rich, full-bodied voice that always strikes you as the per - fect medium of expression for whatever she chooses to sing. And on keyboards she can be her own authoritative, muscular rhythm section and an exploratory improviser. But she writes with the musical intelligence to absorb an array of early, plugged-in popular music and make it new, applying tradi - tional underpinnings to contemporary social and political subjects in her very personal way. And she can step back and write a fierce hip-twisting, groovecentric, righteously rootsy dance number. She does it all with passion and a commanding stage presence - and makes sure she brings her audi - ence along with her.
On paper, Hunt is an independent act who’s made an impact in the roots world and beyond; a Kansas Music Hall of Famer who’s won over crowds from international blues and jazz gatherings to Austin City Limits Music Festival and Seattle’s Bumbershoot, performed on Prairie Home Companion no less than six times and sold close to 150 thousand albums on her own independent label.
But no list of accomplishments could do justice to the bold spirit of what Hunt does, a spirit she’s channeled into GRAVITY LOVES YOU , her fifth overall album and the third she has co-produced. Recorded in Nashville with top-tier roots and pop players like James Pennebaker (Delbert McClinton), Mark Jordan (Van Morrison), Dave Roe (Johnny Cash), Tim Marks (Taylor Swift) and Bryan Owings (Shelby Lynne), the dozen originals spin narratives and summon moods that leave no room for timid - ity. Though they’re a diverse batch of songs in theme and style, says Hunt, “they all get around to ‘find the life that’s true to you. You’re not gonna fall off the end of the earth if you just take a giant leap of faith. Let the ‘gravity’ that pulls you toward your true self work for you. Do it. Like, do it now.’”
The seeds of that attitude were sown by her uniquely unbounded and thoroughly musical upbringing. She was, first of all, born in Kansas City, Missouri, a place then still faintly buzzing with the down - home-meets-uptown energy of a blues and jazz scene that boasted the likes of jump blues shouter Big Joe Turner and boogie-woogie pianist Jay McShann.
As for Hunt’s own bloodline, her mother sang on the radio with a jazz trio as a teen, and went on to biography . kelley hunt . page two
steal the show with big bands and theatre productions in the region. “When I would see my mother sing,” Hunt says, “everybody in the place would go silent. Because it was almost like she lost herself. And I thought, ‘Well, hey, that’s how you do it.’” Her father played standup bass in the Navy, and later made his own proper washtub bass which, for the record, he still plays today.
Each summer when a local jazz program drew musicians of all ages, races and stripes to town, Hunt recalls her parents hosting lively and diverse parties in their home, which inevitably evolved into jam sessions. And thanks to her older siblings she got hip to Motown, Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf early on in grade school. “The first time I heard Howlin’ Wolf I was in maybe third grade,” she laughs. “And it just scared the hell out of me and I just played it over and over. And the first album I ever bought, in fourth grade, was a James Brown album” ( PRISONER OF LOVE , to be exact - which she still owns).
All during this time Hunt was working out her own ideas on piano. “I grew up in an atmosphere where boundaries just didn’t matter and people were okay with the joyful aspect of musical expression, no matter what it sounded like or what style,” she says. “And I was fully accepted as a wild little kid that would just leap up and start banging out something on the piano. I was never told to tone it down, shut it up, never laughed at.”
At 16, her brother’s friends drafted her to play keyboards in their blues-rock band. The moment of truth arrived the night their lead singer was a no-show for a good-paying gig. “They said, ‘Boy, we hope you can sing, because it’s time to start.’ I was so scared. And I just pretended like I had no fear all night long.”
From there to here, Hunt has traveled quite the roundabout route. She studied music composition and voice at the University of Kansas for a couple years—leaving once she felt she’d gotten all she could from the program—gigged in bar bands, started a family and eventually realized what she had to be doing - making her own music her own way.
Over 1500 live performances and nearly 150K in indie album sales later much has happened to prove she was right to take that leap. There have been slots on an impressive array of US and international festival stages and song placements in major studio and idie feature films (including a co-score and onscreen role in indie filmmaker Kevin Willmott’s feature “The Battle for Bunker Hill”). The great Johnnie Johnson - Chuck Berry’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame piano player - became her musical mentor. She made an album with legendary Nashville producer Garth Fundis and hitmaker Gary Nicholson ( NEW SHADE OF BLUE EER0703, 2007), featuring a duet with Delbert McClinton, all three of them people who know a thing or two about the soulful side of roots music. And she found a perfectly unorthodox songwriting partner in Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg - a union producing impressive material heard on both acclaimed 2008 release MERCY (EER0804) and on GRAVITY LOVES YOU .
The title track of GRAVITY LOVES YOU is a Hunt/Mirriam-Goldberg co-write built on a wealth of em - powering imagery and brought to life in the supple lifts and swoops of Hunt’s vocal performance, ef - fectively driving home the idea that the possibility of failure is nothing to live in fear of. Throughout the album Hunt demonstrates her songwriting agility continuing a new generation of her music first unveiled on MERCY . Traditional influences are meshed with contemporary overlays and social and political observation. Songs that conjure burning boogie-woogie (“Shake It Off Right Away”), old- school funk (“Too Much History”), percolating R&B (“Deep Old Love”), blues-rock (“The House of Love”) rockabilly/gospel (“I’m Ready”) and Philly soul (“This Fall”) as well as sophisticated singer- biography . kelley hunt . page three
songwriter fare (“Music Was the Thread” and “When the Deal Came Down”) and gospely anthems of uplift (“These Are the Days,” “In the End” and “Land of Milk and Honey,” the latter inspired by Presi - dent Obama’s inauguration) all contently coexist on the same volume supporting the album’s overar- ching theme from different angles. And as was the case with her first four releases, GRAVITY LOVES YOU was recorded and mixed totally analog.
"It's really hard for me to work away from the warmth of 2" tape. And I think it has become a kind of signature of my recordings now. It presents its own set of challenges but we were really lucky on the 'GRAVITY' sessions. Things were so easy and fluid we actually tracked 20 sides. Of course there isn't anything groundbreaking about tracking and mixing analog. It's kind of amusing that it gets this new kind of novelty. Not that long ago everything was done analog. And we all know there are new technologies out there that reduce the cost of getting tape richness and give you digital convenience and versatility. But it takes a certain breed of cat to get the total analog thing to happen as envi - sioned. And these days that breed is becoming an endangered species. It’s the beauty of live per - formance in the studio - on both sides of the glass. We've been fortunate - the engineering and performing talent we've had the privilege of working with in the studio really knows that vibe inside and out. They're all really accomplished - huge musical vocabularies, great chops and in many cases resumes that would blow your mind. And they all helped me bring a spirit to this project that really de - fined it. It was a total pleasure making this record," Kelley said.
Kelley Hunt will be on tour throughout 2011 in support of GRAVITY LOVES YOU .
"The thing about making a record you really like, that really feels good to you - you can't wait to get it out there and perform it in person for the people," she added.
To request a copy of GRAVITY LOVES YOU, or to schedule an interview with Kelley Hunt, contact:
Al Berman / Out Loud Talent Management 785.841.6000 785.760.2574 mobile [email protected]