We can thank Nanci Griffith for Kelly Willis.
Courtesy of Tony Brown.
Story goes that Griffith heard Willis sing while performing in Austin as part of band named Radio Ranch.
Brown, who produced Griffith’s 1987 album Lonestar State of Mind, her first foray into mainstream country music, and 1988’s live album “One Fair Summer Evening, ” signed Kelly Willis to MCA in 1989.
The debut album was titled Well Travelled Love.
Willis was only 20 years-old at the time.
Her Radio Ranch band-mates backed her on the album with Mas Palermo on drums, W. Brad Fordham on bass, David Murray on guitars, and Michael Hardwick on steel guitar.
MCA fully leaned into promoting their young new talent. Willis was featured in both Vogue and Mademoiselle magazine. She was cast in the Tim Robbins film Bob Roberts. She sang on the Thelma and Louise soundtrack.
Despite this exposure, promotion, and push, radio didn’t get behind her. None of the three singles charted. “I Don’t Want to Love you,” “River of Love,” and “Looking for Someone Like You” all deserved at least a chip and chair at the new traditionalist country music table.
The album was chock full of excellent songwriting from the likes of Monte Warden, Kevin Welch, Paul Kennerley, Emory Gordy Jr., Mas Palermo, and Steve Earle.
And her voice. It is big and playful and friendly. She apparently didn’t begin singing until she was a senior in high school, but her short performing history is hugely present in her teasing energy and sound. The entire album is an invitation to look beyond the album even as your are overwhelmed by its own commanding charms and pure presence and immediacy.
Her cover of John Hiatt’s “Drive South” was the standout track for me; I wore out my cassette copy of the album rewinding that one song over and over gain. Her performance is pleading, urgent, and just insanely fun to listen to.
Suzy Boggus would run her version of the song to number two on the Billboard charts in 1992.
The entire Well Travelled Love album is a little miracle. It attitudinally and sonically predicts the burgeoning alt-country scene right from within the heart of Nashville, the belly-of-the beast, as Tony Brown was clearly courting country-radio hits while Willis had something else in mind.
The radio hits never came.
Not unlike Marty Brown, Kelly Willis was a critic’s darling whose credibility had to have scared the tar out of the industry. Nashville wanted all her youthful sex appeal with none of her confidence or artistic depth, all the hotness with none of the heat.
Willis said, “I had spent years in Nashville at MCA Records not quite knowing what I wanted. I was young and unformed, trying to please too many others, being the girl with potential.”
After one more album working with Tony Brown, MCA turned her over to Don Was but that was it. Her mainstream career had run its course. Her highest charting single “Baby Take a Piece of My Heart” came off her sophomore album Bang Bang, topping out at 51 on Billboard.
Spin magazine described her as, “Nashville’s most brilliant mistake.”
American writer Silas House said, “The rest of the story has been well-documented and is now the stuff- of how-Nashville-can do-it wrong legend.”
Thankfully, despite her own fears, Willis was far from washed up at 24. The world had more goodwill to offer her than she could imagine.
She had her own what-would-Willie-do moment, and followed her heart from Nashville back to Austin’s music scene where it all had begun for her when she was enrolled at Austin Community College.
Jonathan highlights her career in Country Universe’s 100 Greatest Women feature and tracks how Willis would go on to fulfill her destiny as The Queen of Alternative Country.
But before exploring her stunning second-act renaissance, stay here a little longer with her debut album Well Travelled Love and test the water.
As Willis sings in “River of Love,” “Sometimes it’s better just to dive right in.”
Kelly Willis is one of my favorites of the last 40 years – I have seven of her albums, including the two with ex-husband Bruce Robison, and there is not a dud in the bunch. I hate to think of her as Alt-Country but I guess that is true.
I discovered her with that third, self-titled effort and then went back and got her two prior records. Definitely one of the great label failures of the nineties; she should’ve been huge, but it seemed like diminishing returns with each MCA release (I guess there’s only so much label push to go around when you have Reba, Wynnona and Trisha Yearwood on your label, something Patty Loveless quickly learned and rectified).
And it must he said ’93 was an amazing year for the female side–Kelly’s album, Patty’s Only What I Feel, Carlene Carter’s Little Love Letters, Suzy Bogguss’ Something Up My Sleeve, Lari White’s Lead Me Not, Deborah Allen’s Delta Dreamland (though the less said about her these days probably the better), Trisha’s The Song Remembers When, Faith Hill’s Take Me As I Am. Talk about a quality lineup.