Raised in Hammond, Indiana, but residing in Nashville for over a decade, Kiely Connell’s sophomore album, MY OWN COMPANY,explores emotionally raw terrain. A relationship falling apart, the suicide of a close friend, unwelcome lewd advances and alcohol and substance abuse are candidly addressed. With lyrics drawn from often bitter personal experiences, Connell’s powerful vocals, combined with a hand-picked supporting cast of musicians, the album shows remarkable growth from her impressive debut 2021 album, CALUMET QUEEN. ‘I feel that we really did something special with this record,’ she expressed to Lonesome Highway when we recently spoke. We couldn’t agree more.
What was the music scene closer to home for you before moving to Nashville?
You had a lot of blues happening in Chicago, but I wish that it had a better music scene because I may not have felt the need to come to Nashville. I’m glad I did though, because moving somewhere like this encourages you to be the best writer, singer and performer you can be. When you’re in an environment where music is all around you and there is a lot of competition, it forces you to sink or swim.
However, you are proud of your home scene, having titled your debut album CALUMET QUEEN.
I am. It’s funny being from North West Indiana; when I play elsewhere in Indiana, people will come up and say, ‘You’re not really from Indiana,’ because you are that close to Chicago. Even when I attended University in Indiana, people would say, ‘Well, you’re from the region,’ and call you a ‘region rat,’ which I was proud of because it means that we are scrappy and resilient people who keep going no matter what.
Your songwriting is very personal, dealing with matters of the heart and real-life issues. I don’t expect that came from attending songwriting classes and writing with strangers.
I never did songwriting classes. I’ve never been a person who thrives in a writing room. I want to write with people who inspire and deeply understand each other. I think that is how you come up with the most authentic and truly heartfelt material. When I first moved here, there was a small publishing group that I started co-writing with, having never written a song with another person before. By doing that, I met other writers who would become some of my best friends, and over the years, it became common for us to call one other up and share ideas, come over for coffee, talk about it and maybe something really cool would come out of it.
When we recently posted a review of your new album, MY OWN COMPANY, we also featured two other albums released by Nashville-based women that were similarly confessional. Is it a coincidence, or is there a movement developing?
I think that is probably coincidental. I remember something you wrote about in your review, wondering if it was brought about by the pandemic, where people seek emotional comradery to feel that they are not alone in what they are experiencing. That is certainly true for me, and that is what I try to do as a songwriter by speaking from a place of struggles that I have gone through or awakenings that I have had, hoping that that might help someone else.
You name-check the author Neil Gaiman and also John Prine as inspiring your writing.
I have read more of Neil Gaiman’s work than any other author. He has this wonderful way of weaving reality into a fantasy world I can relate to. There is so much metaphor in his work. His book NEVERWHERE is an incredible read, classic Gaiman. He talks about this whole class of people who live in a society called London Below, a place that exists below the surface. All of these people have slipped through the cracks, and the whole book is not only entertaining but also poignant and really touching. I have always been drawn to the heavy issues that he addresses; I love his word choices and phrasing, which get my brain working thinking about how I can express certain things differently in my writing. How could you not be influenced by John Prine? Back in April, I was touring with John Prine’s son, Tommy. He’s also a great storyteller, and I recently listened to a bunch of John Prine’s records again, which are classic songwriting that teaches you everything you need to learn.
Tell me about the song Restless Bones on the album, which deals with the suicide of a close friend of yours many years ago. Was that a song you always intended to write but needed to wait until the correct time?
I had the realisation a long time ago that the event influenced how I viewed my life and how I navigate things. My friend Jake Anderson, who wrote that song with me, we realised that we had lost friends in the same way. Sometimes, when you are writing songs, you will just reel off titles for songs, and strangely, it was Jake who had the title Restless Bones. I immediately said, ‘ Do you know that makes me think of my friend who I lost in high school.’ From there, we just talked about the type of people that they were, and there was a strange overlap of this shared trauma. It was such a painful thing.
Through To You is a reality check of wasted lives in an industry that can quickly draw artists down a dark road and one that not everyone recovers from.
Originally, that song was written with one person in mind, but over time, it evolved into the realisation of the many people I know who are that way, especially in this town. People begin to get some success, and all of a sudden become used to drinking their lives away, and there is not a drug at the club that they are not going to do. It’s extremely unfortunate; I have watched a lot of people lose themselves. Truth be told, it’s even hard for me. You’re bonding with the listeners and want to bring people together; I truly feel that is my calling. People may come up to you and wax poetic about a specific moment in your set and want to buy you a beer. Suddenly, you’ve had a lot of beers, and if you have a gig the next day and may have a six- or eight-hour drive, you have to learn how to say no. Otherwise, there is no longevity in it. Personally, with all of my anxious and depressive tendencies, drugs are something that I have very much stayed away from. I know alcohol is technically a drug and depressant, but the other things make me really uneasy, and that’s probably why I am not exposed to it. maybe I give something off, and people know that.
The song Damn Hands comes bursting out of the speakers and finds you spitting fire in the direction of persons that show zero respect towards women. Does that phenomenon still regularly occur from your experience?
Unfortunately, it does still happen. It’s not just the music scene but just in general. If I need to decompress and have a bite and a beer after a show, I want to sit there and be left alone. Sometimes, people come over to you, and just because they talk to you for five minutes, they think you’re going to want to go home with them. It’s an assumption with no respect for boundaries.
The track listing on the album is most impressive. Bookending the album with On The Mend and the title track My Own Company, are well-placed and honest statements of where you are at presently.
Thank you. Honestly, I spent hours going through the track listing to put all the songs strategically in order so that the story made sense. You’re quite right because the first three tracks and those last two tracks relate perfectly to each other. I wrote On The Mend last winter when I was on the road touring alone through a lot of the Midwest. It was my first holiday alone, which the song Anaesthesia is about. I was trying to put a lot of things behind me, sort through all of my thoughts and, hopefully, heal myself. To me, there was no other way that I could end the album but with My Own Company, and it also needed to be the album title.
Tucker Martine came on board for the production. How did that come about?
I wanted to work with Tucker for over a decade. When I first moved to this town and was going through many changes trying to meet friends and trying to prove myself, I heard the record THE WORSE THINGS GET THE HARDER I FIGHT by Neko Case, whom I am a huge fan of. That record was so heavy and relatable; she had gone through all of these big moments in her life at that time and was horribly depressed, and I related to that. Not only that, but the way that the whole album was put together, there’s a song on the album called Nearly Midnight in Honolulu, and she practically chants the whole song, and the way that song was put together was incredibly impressive to me. I love all her albums, but I thought there was something special about that album. It stuck with me to the extent that if you knew me at all, you would probably be forced to listen to that record, so when I was thinking about producers, even for my first record, I wondered if I could ever afford to get Tucker to produce. I had looked up the work that he had done, and I thought that he would never be in my budget; he had done all of The Decemberists’ albums, whom I love, Sufjan Stevens and Madison Cunningham, who I had toured with. Over the years, I would joke with people that Tucker Martine was going to make my next record. When I met up with Thirty Tigers, we talked about producers, and they said they were thinking of something not traditionally Nashville for you and asked me how I felt about Tucker Martine.
That must have come as a pleasant surprise.
My jaw dropped, and I asked, ‘Are you kidding me? Is that an option? They sent him some demos, and he immediately responded. We had a phone call, which was probably meant to last about thirty minutes but ended up lasting about two hours, talking about all the things that we loved sonically and TV shows. I knew then that we would get on as we had similar musical tastes and a sense of humour. The whole recording was magical. I ended up having Nate Query from one of my favourite bands, The Decemberist’ on bass. I had been crammed into a room in Chicago watching The Decembrists about a decade ago in Chicago and never thought that I would be playing music with him. Andy Borger, who has toured and played records with Tom Waits and Norah Jones, played drums; it was an amazing experience. We recorded in Portland in the spring, although it was raining, andeverything was growing, lush, and alive. You feel so inspired, and I feel that we really did something special with this record.
Did Tucker bring the players on board?
Yes, he brought Andy and Nate, and I brought my longtime musical collaborator and friend, Drew Kohl, who also played on my first record and comes on tour with me. He plays everything, any guitar, organ or piano you hear on the record, he played. What I love about him is that there are a million guitar players in the world that can come in and play something nice but may not be quite right for the song. Drew is incredibly thoughtful; he will listen to a melody that you sing and all of a sudden, he will be playing a lead guitar part that sounds like he was there when I wrote the song; he’s very gifted that way.
How did the connection with Thirty Tigers come about?
They got on board because Trigger, at Saving Country Music, sent David Macias at Thirty Tigers, my name. He listened to my music, and within a few days, I had an email from David saying that we needed to talk about working together. I thought, ‘Do they really mean me.’ They are the largest independent record label with so many acts that I love from every genre. I learned that my project manager at the label was also the project manager for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dwight Yoakam. The whole thing was magical.
Interview by Declan Culliton Photography by Alysse Gafkjen