A singer and songwriter whose music combines a contemporary lyrical outlook with a sound that harks back to country music of the ’50 and ’60s, Kelsey Waldon sings like a honky tonk angel, with a voice that’s sweet, spicy, and as authentic as the day is long. Her vocals and arrangements are informed by Nashville’s past, but the stories she tells are rooted in the here and now, with a dash of down-home feminism and no-frills politics. Waldon’s 2016 album, I’ve Got a Way, was a powerful set of tough retro-country, but it was the endorsement of songwriting legend John Prine that gave her a serious break; he issued 2019’s White Noise/White Lines through his Oh Boy label. 2022’s No Regular Dog gave her music a bit of outlaw atmosphere while still speaking from her heart and soul.

Kelsey Waldon was born in the rural Kentucky community of Monkey’s Eyebrow. She grew up listening to classic country music and absorbed the influences of artists like Loretta Lynn, George Jones, and Merle Haggard, as well as bluegrass icons like Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs and celebrated songwriters like Guy Clark. When Waldon was 13, her parents split up, and she took up the guitar as she turned to music to make sense of the pain of growing up in a broken home. By the time she graduated from high school, Waldon was determined to make a career out of music, and she initially chose to skip college in favor of moving to Nashville. Waldon supported herself with low-paying jobs while playing bar gigs when she could get them, learning to perform by doing.

In time, Waldon decided to gain more book learning about the world of music, and enrolled at Nashville’s Belmont University, where she studied songwriting and music business. As Waldon began putting more of her personal experiences in her songs, her following grew, and in 2007 she released a five-song EP, Dirty Hands, Dirty Feet. A full-length album followed in 2010, which she released herself under the alias Anchor in the Valley. Two Kelsey Waldon EPs followed, 2011’s Anybody’s Darlin’ and 2012’s Fixin’ It Up, but it was her first proper album, 2014’s The Goldmine, that proved to be her creative and commercial breakthrough. Produced by Michael Rinne, The Goldmine captured Waldon’s tough but emotionally powerful honky tonk sound as well as her personal songwriting, and the album earned rave reviews and an enthusiastic reception from Americana and retro-country fans.

In 2016, Waldon returned with another Rinne-produced effort, I’ve Got a Way. The LP’s tough, honky tonk arrangements and her potent vocal style spread the word about her music even further, and he gained an important new fan in celebrated singer/songwriter John Prine. Prine told a reporter, “Her voice is one of the more authentic country voices I’ve heard in a long time,” and he not only performed with her at the Grand Ol’ Opry, he signed her to his independent Oh Boy label, making her the imprint’s first new artist in 15 years. Waldon’s Oh Boy debut, 2019’s White Noise/White Lines, was produced by her in tandem with Dan Knobler, and she supported it with plenty of live work, headlining small shows and serving as Prine’s opening act. (He would sometimes invite her to join him on stage to sing his celebration of a semi-functioning marriage, “In Spite of Ourselves.”) John Prine’s death in April 2020 hit Waldon hard, and she paid tribute to him with a soulful interpretation of his song “Sam Stone” on the EP They’ll Never Keep Us Down, issued in November 2020, featuring seven covers of classic tunes of political and social protest. For her second Oh Boy LP, she went into the studio with Shooter Jennings as producer, with the country music scion adding a bit of 1970s outlaw swagger to the sessions. A digital single, “Tall and Mighty” b/w “Sweet Little Girl,” appeared as a preview of the August 2022 release of the album No Regular Dog. ~ Mark Deming