IVY ROOM PRESENTSTUESDAY SEPT 30THâKelsey WaldonPlus Special Guestsâ7 :00pm doors / 7:30 pm showADV TIX AVAILABLE - $20 DOORâIVY ROOM860 San Pablo Avenue, Albany ⢠21+âKelsey WaldonâIn the six years since she signed to John Prineâs Oh Boy Records, Kelsey Waldon has earned wide praise for her âself-penned compositions [with] the patina of authenticityâ (Rolling Stone). On her new album, Every Ghost, she confronts addiction, grief, generational trauma, and even herself â and comes through it stronger and at peace.âThereâs a lot of hard-earned healing on this record,â Waldon says of the nine-song project, recorded at Southern Grooves studio in Memphis with her band, The Muleskinners...
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IVY ROOM PRESENTSTUESDAY SEPT 30THâKelsey WaldonPlus Special Guestsâ7 :00pm doors / 7:30 pm showADV TIX AVAILABLE - $20 DOORâIVY ROOM860 San Pablo Avenue, Albany ⢠21+âKelsey WaldonâIn the six years since she signed to John Prineâs Oh Boy Records, Kelsey Waldon has earned wide praise for her âself-penned compositions [with] the patina of authenticityâ (Rolling Stone). On her new album, Every Ghost, she confronts addiction, grief, generational trauma, and even herself â and comes through it stronger and at peace.âThereâs a lot of hard-earned healing on this record,â Waldon says of the nine-song project, recorded at Southern Grooves studio in Memphis with her band, The Muleskinners. As she sings in the recordâs title track and first song, âGhost of Myself,â sheâs put in the work not only to better herself and leave behind bad habits, but also to learn to love her past selves. Doing so wasnât easy, Waldon admits. âIt took time and experience,â she says, adding that she can now find compassion for her younger self. âI think youâve gotta respect her,â Waldon says, âbecause she was trying as hard as she could for where she was at, and she was doing a damn good job.âCompassion is a throughline on Every Ghost, whether itâs for Waldon herself, for the person in the throes of addiction in âFalling Down,â or for a suffering world in âNursery Rhyme.â The people in Waldonâs songs arenât irredeemable â theyâre struggling.âYouâve got to have compassion; you gotta stay humble and have gratitude,â Waldon says. However, sheâs learned that you also canât let people take advantage of an empathetic heart. âComancheâ â which Waldon jokes is her very own truck song â finds Waldon grappling with the loss of a loved one, not to death but to boundaries sheâs set for her own good. Waldon owns a 1988 Jeep Comanche, and driving it serves as a kind of therapy for her.âI love the whole aspect of when design mattered,â she says, âand owning your car was an expression of yourself.ââComancheâ is deeply personal, but Waldonâs most introspective reflections bookend My Ghost. Its penultimate song, âMy Kin,â extends the idea of loving yourself in spite of yourself beyond the choices sheâs made and the circumstances sheâs put herself in, to reckon with both the good and the bad that come from her family tree. Those traits, Waldon concludes, make her who she is.âAs the song says, âIâm the best and worst of my kin,â and I love that for myself,â says Waldon, who was born and raised in a hunting lodge at the end of a dead-end road in the rural, unincorporated community of Monkeyâs Eyebrow, Ky. âAnd Iâm also at a point where Iâm willing to break these cycles, Iâm willing to grow, Iâm willing to evolve.âAmong those best parts of her lineage is Waldonâs grandmother, who died in June 2024. âShe was a remarkable woman. The women in my family have been rocks, and theyâve all been colorful and full of character,â Waldon says.âHer garden and her yard, that might have been one of the things she took the most pride in,â Waldon adds, recalling how her granny would often stop to dig up roadside flowers, then transplant them into her yard. A display of tiger lilies, some of which now grow in Waldonâs yard in Tennessee, was a particular point of pride.âTransplanting is such a tradition â it can teach you a lot,â Waldon says. âLife goes on, beauty can grow from anywhere, and as long as a person is remembered, theyâre never gone.âWaldon honors her granny with the song âTiger Lilies.â She didnât want an over-the-top sentimental song, so she instead leaned into the idea of traditions as a way to remember loved ones. âIâm sure Granny would love it,â Waldon says.Every Ghost concludes with a Hazel Dickens cover, âRamblinâ Woman.â Waldon covered two Dickens songs on 2024âs Thereâs Always a Song and had added âRamblinâ Womanâ to their live sets as well. While Waldon didnât originally intend to include their cover on this album, it served as âa sonic starâ during the recording process and has a message Waldon feels is still relevant decades after Dickens wrote it.âHazel was ahead of her time,â Waldon says. âOur existence is more than just what society expects of us. Weâre more than just somebodyâs girlfriend or wife or mother, and those are all beautiful things, but we can have our own independence, and we donât have to do it for anybody else. Weâre beautiful, magical, and powerful creatures.âThatâs certainly how Waldon sees herself after completing Every Ghost. âIt feels like thereâs a spirit of fearlessness throughout this album,â Waldon says, âand Iâm really proud of that.âWaldonâs fearlessness is among the reasons she landed at Oh Boy Records in 2019, as the independent labelâs first new signee in 15 years. Itâs attracted fans to her headline tours and her festival sets, and prompted artists including Tyler Childers, Charley Crockett, Robert Earl Keen, Margo Price, and Lucinda Williams to invite her on tour. It helped earn her both the title of âKentucky Colonelâ â an honor recognizing goodwill ambassadors of Kentuckyâs culture and traditions â and a spot in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museumâs annual American Currents exhibit in 2024.âTrue outlaw shit is sticking to your guns, and I feel like Iâm doing that,â Waldon says. âIâm not saying Iâm unbreakable, but I feel almost unbreakable. Iâve already hurt the worst that I could and lived to tell the story. We can be thankful for our ghosts."
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