Kelsi Walker redefines her sound with her new album “Nervous Kid”
Kelsi Walker is walking a musical tightrope.
Known as a singer-songwriter while she was in the process of creating her new album, “Nervous Kid,” she and her bandmates realized that the music they were making didn’t quite fit that description.
“For a year and a half, I have tried to decide if I should be a singer-songwriter or a band,” says Walker, sitting on the deck at Barley’s in the Old City. “Three days ago, I’m sitting with people at Crafty Bastard and saying, ‘Maybe I should call it something else.’ Just back and forth. I have not been able to land on anything else other than my name.”
Recent shows have revealed the evolution from a likable folk vibe to pop with depth.
Growing up in Maryville, Walker attended Heritage High School before enrolling in the University of Tennessee, where she earned a degree in communications studies. She had performed music in church and was involved in the Young Life organization for Christian youth.
“I barely did music,” says Walker. “I was really focusing on school, and I was involved in Young Life. I was really focused on getting out of college and having a degree and being part of other organizations. I learned how to play a guitar mostly because we needed a guitar player for Young Life events.”
She began playing open-mic nights at Maryville’s Vienna Coffee House, but she didn’t have a lot of confidence in her abilities.
“Luckily for me, I had a lot of people around me who forced me to believe in myself,” says Walker.
Although she came from a background that was rooted in Christian music, it was secular music that had given Walker solace and hope.
“When I was 15, I discovered alternative rock and punk music, and it changed my world because it was real and it was like … I found myself. I was a lonely kid who didn’t know anything that was going on and needed for someone to say anything that was real so that I could acknowledge that the world isn’t always great. But no one was saying it. … I started to realize all this stuff was going on, but no one was talking about it. Then I discovered music about actual feelings, actual sadness and grief. Then I discovered Paramore, and [lead singer-songwriter] Hayley Williams just raised me, basically, from there on out.”
Walker released her first EP, the folky “Skin, Bones and Fear,” in early 2017. Later that year, Walker met fellow singer-songwriter Daje Morris in a coffee shop. Morris invited Walker to perform with her at an upcoming house concert with friend Joey Jennings. Walker accepted, and it was fortuitous.
“I played music and met people and thought, ‘Oh, my gosh! I want to be a part of this so badly,’” says Walker.
Jennings ended up playing drums on Walker’s new album. Cody Barnhart, who also was on the bill, wound up playing guitar in Walker’s band and has played a large part in crafting the new album. Jennings knows studio owner/producer Christopher Barrett Riley, who ended up recording and producing Walker’s album.
“That’s the thing that’s so cool and beautiful to me,” she says. “You can see it all across this town in music. People just find each other and create relationships. It’s this really inclusive spirit.”
After a test run with a couple of singles, Walker decided to record what would become “Nervous Kid” at Riley’s studio in Jamestown, Tennessee.
“It’s so funny,” says Walker. “I had a list of, like, 10 songs that I’d written over the past three years, and I was like, ‘Here’s the whole album.’ But when we started working on the album and it was coming together, our sound changed, and I wrote almost all new songs.”
Walker says anyone who saw the group perform until recently saw only a group trying to find its sound. Over the past few months, however, it’s come together. She wants the performances to be as intimate and vulnerable as a singer-songwriter delivering personal songs but with the fun and scope of a full band.
“Like a conversation,” she explains. “But also something that’s so fun that anyone in a bar can hear it and tap their foot to it and have fun with their friends, but not forcing anyone into these deeper conversations.”
For Walker, music – both as a listener and as a performer – can be liberating but also a little scary.
“Music is allowing for me to step out of all of these places that I felt comfortable my whole life and meet people who have different experiences than I do,” she says. “I have learned so much. It’s changed my whole perspective of the world and even the way that I believe things. I’m still exploring faith and spirituality and what it means to follow a certain belief. Growing up, it was in such a box, and you’re not allowed to ask questions. At some point, there comes this [dilemma of], ‘OK, what does it mean to be REAL right now if I am making art that is real?’ Do I do something that is comfortable that I know will be accepted? Or do I do something that is honest and I’m not quite sure of?’”
One thing Walker does know is that honesty connects with people.
“Life is tension. I can look out at this gorgeous day and hear birds chirp, and I love this town and life is good. But at the same moment that life is good, there are also these injustices going on in the world. There are things going on in my own life that are hard and difficult. And I think at some point we’re all taught that one cancels the other out. I think these feelings can exist within our lives, and they don’t cancel each other out. There’s room for us all to feel.
“That’s what I try to create. Along with Cody, on the music aspect, we tried to make something that technically you could dance to if you wanted, but also have these moments with real things about life. And acknowledge that there is a brokenness but also a wholeness that exists, too. I have gotten really tired of people cutting out the nuance of life to make it simple and easier to understand. When we do that, we cut out so much of life’s beauty, too.”
“It’s what I felt just being someone watching shows at Rhythm N’ Blooms this past weekend. You look around and you see all these people connecting over art and music and feeling less alone for a moment because they’re connecting with an artist and connecting with their friends beside them, and it’s beautiful. It’s why I do music.
“The cool thing is: For most of my life, I’ve been on the listener side and the fan side, and I’ve been the one waiting in line for a concert to be close to the front. But it’s so cool to be on the artist side and make something that I believe in and put it out in the world. My biggest hope for this is that you connect with it. That’s it. … It makes me excited to fight for what I’m doing and make sure it gets out to people.”
