  |
|
|
Kevin's special gift, to my mind, is the ability to write lyrics so visual that hearing them is like watching a movie inside your head. He put that talent to work as a staff songwriter for many years, having songs cut by such artists as Moe Bandy (who cut several), T. Graham Brown, Jonathan Edwards, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, The Highwaymen, Scott Joss, The Judds, The Kendalls, Patty Loveless, Reba McEntire, Charlie Pride, Ricky Skaggs, Pam Tillis, Randy Travis, Conway Twitty, Don Williams, and Trisha Yearwood. While working at Tree he met Kieran Kane, then also a Tree staff writer, not long after his arrival in Nashville. Playing in clubs around town, Kevin developed a local following in bands such as The Roosters, which also featured Mike Henderson and Harry Stinson, among others. By 1988 he'd formed The Overtones, and gotten a record contract with Reprise, but his debut recording didn't come out until 1990. The self-titled album had a couple of singles and got great reviews, and he followed it with Western Beat two years later, which also received critical acclaim--but Reprise didn't seem to know what to do with him, and didn't provide the support needed to make the record a hit, not even bothering to pay to fly the band out when they were invited on The Tonight Show because they didn't have a hit single on the charts at the time (Kevin came up with the travel funds himself). Kevin and Reprise came to a mutual agreement that he could be released from his recording contract. Kevin soon found that although U.S. radio stations weren't open to the straight-from-the-heart lyrics and hard-edged acoustic sound he produced, other countries, such as some of the Scandinavian countries, were. Along with Kieran Kane and Harry Stinson, he realized they could produce their own records and have respectable sales overseas and domestically without all the baggage that comes along from a major label and its bottom-line approach--and so Dead Reckoning began. Kevin's first Dead Reckoning release,
Life
Down Here on Earth, met with brilliant reviews, as did his follow-up,
Beneath
My Wheels. DR has also been able to license Kevin's old Reprise records
so they are available again as well. In 2003, he released
Live Down Here on Earth, recorded live on tour with the Australian band The Flood, which has an accompanying soon-to-be-released DVD.
Kevin's newest release, You Can't Save Everybody, with Kieran
Kane and Fats Kaplin, is due out in North America in late July--you can get it now at the Dead Reckoning site. It got great reviews in its early release in Australia!
Cruise with Kevin! Kevin's signed on to do a concert cruise on
Carnival Cruise Line's ship Imagination! Check it on on the
cruise page on
Kevin's site for more info.
What the Critics SayLife Down Here on Earth:"An absolute stunner."--Jim Patterson, Associated Press "Kevin Welch defines the new "Americana"
sound as well as anybody: hardbitten songs of busted knuckles and bruised
hearts played out in sweet, virile melodies and articulated in a smooth-as-Kentucky-bourbon
singing voice....Welch's debut on Kieran Kane's Dead Reckoning label is
lightning in a bottle."--Wallace Baine, Addicted to Noise
“Everything great about Kevin Welch is present on "Everybody's Gotta Walk," the first cut from Beneath My Wheels, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter's masterful fourth album....Still, it's when he examines his own soul that Welch's poetic artistry establishes him among the finest songwriters toiling along the outskirts of the Nashville establishment."--John Floyd, Broward/Palm Beach New Times "Good, solid music and lyrics by the best singer-songwriter to come down the road in a long long time. Beneath My Wheels is the best album I have heard in 1999."--Chet Williamson, Rambles magazine "Welch has finally produced the masterpiece he's long had in him. Beneath My Wheels is full of uncommon musical variety and starkly beautiful images that resonate long after the disc has finished playing."--Jim Caligiuri, No Depression "Beneath My Wheels, his first album in four years, is nothing short of a masterpiece."--amazon.com “It's deep and it's beautiful, too. Like
Kevin Welch and the inner topography he explores so courageously.”--David
McGee, Barnes and Noble
"The title track is a slice of what modern country should sound like, with crisp, minimalistic instrumentation and Welch dispensing down-home wisdom."--Larry Rodgers, AZCentral.com "The result of their recording is Kevin's best album to date. Released in 2002 on the Dead Reckoning label, Millionaire is one of those rare albums that, like fine wine, it gets better with each successive listen."--Matt Bjorke, countrymusic.about.com "With Millionaire, everything's come together perfectly in one of the most satisfying repeat-button magnets of the year. With spine tingling backing vocals, Welch tells his stories in a handful of settings, from back-porch acoustic guitars and mandolins to full-on, driving, locomotive-rhythm electric band.--DJ Johnson, cosmik.com
Featured DiscographySolo Kevin
Welch,1990
Get info / Buy it from Amazon.com.
With The Dead Reckoners
A Night of Reckoning, 1997
Get info / Buy it from Amazon.com.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Some Kind of Paradise website is © 2001-2003 Write in Style. Cover art provided by and used with permission of CDnow.com. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Western
Beat, 1992
Life
Down Here on Earth, 1995
Beneath
My Wheels, 1999
11/12/13:
Live in Melbourne (with Kieran Kane), 2000
Millionaire,
2001
Live Down Here on Earth,
2003 with The Flood