Kelsey Lamb is a quickly rising country singer-songwriter from Arkansas. Here, we chat to Kelsey about why she ultimately ended up singing country music, her new music and single out this Friday and what her plan is looking like for the rest of 2021.
Hi Kelsey. How are you doing?
I’m good. How are you?
Not too bad. You must be so excited for the single coming out this week – it must be nice to have new music coming out this Friday, particularly during this time to have some kind of momentum.
It’s been a lifesaver. I’m thankful that last year, I had just a ton of music ready and I didn’t have to wait too long. So I’m very excited about this one.
Can you talk a little bit about it and the creative process behind it and how it came to be?
Yeah, so I wrote ‘When I Remember You,’ with my fiance Taylor Goyette and then our friend Chris. We wrote this way before quarantine – we were still sitting in a little closet studio writing songs then. Chris had this title idea and we just all wrote it from all three of our different perspectives. You know, we’ve all been in tough relationships and there’s memories and all of that. We wrote that from a positive mindset and tried to change it up from your regular breakup song, to give you a positive and more reflective moment with music. I think that it’s gonna hit well with people.
Your past few singles have been from a sadder, more painful place – do you find those easier to write?
I mean, they’re both not terribly difficult – love songs are really hard.
It’s funny that that’s the universal thing that everyone writes about, but is also one of the hardest things to write about.
It is and I honestly didn’t understand that until I started writing songs. I think it’s just more awkward, because people aren’t as excited to talk about the happy moments. We’re more vulnerable and we’re heartbroken, I think that that’s probably where that comes from. My last two tracks were real heartbreakers, but I wanted it to be that story of growth, because my first single ever put out was four years ago. ‘Little by Little’ is a love song, I mean, that’s about my fiance when we first met, and I realized that I didn’t tell the story. I haven’t always been in love, I’ve been shattered into a million pieces, so I wanted to write that story of growth back into the song. I think this one’s more reflective, which is good – hopefully to get to that point with exes where it’s like, ‘okay, I grew from that’. There’s a positive in that.
There’s something good that comes out of it, even if it’s painful. Your voice on that track is stunning, and obviously you released an acoustic version as well. Was it important to you to have that more stripped back moment?
Yeah, I have always loved acoustic and more stripped down music. I don’t know, I connect with it more, and so it was really cool to have both sides of it. I think people relate to different styles of music and I think especially with country music, it’s really nice when you can just strip it all back and go back to how it was when we wrote it in the room.It actually had a really good response on TikTok – the acoustic version actually did much better through that outlet, which I thought was really interesting.
It’s interesting to see what works on that format.
It’s a new discovery every single day in my world.
The weird thing about the app is that you go into it for music obviously, but that’s only one part of what you have to do as an artist – it’s learning curve.
Yeah, it’s been interesting, just with everything being virtual – even with Facebook Live and Instagram – it’s all fed into the TikTok world. I think, just being vulnerable and every part of yourself being out there. It’s the only way that I feel like we’ve been able to connect with fans. So, I think it’s making it a lot more personable and people are actually getting to know you, rather than just hearing your music.
I guess with the pandemic, the one positive side is that you’ve been able to reach people that you wouldn’t necessarily have been able to reach before?
Absolutely. I mean there’s been a whole other world through the internet – it’s been really interesting – I hated it at first, but it’s hard to get into.
I also want to talk about your musical journey and how you got to Nashville. How long have you been in the city for now and how much do you think it has affected your music?
I moved to Nashville about four and a half years ago now, in about 2017. I had just finished a musical run on the East Coast – Florida and New York – which was a Kenny Rogers musical that he had written – he wasn’t in the musical but Alan Thicke was. I had never written a song before – I had recorded other people’s songs prior to that and I grew up doing music my whole life. I just didn’t know I wanted to do country music, honestly. It was the Taylor Swift era, honestly, I did that musical and I just got the bug. I had had my heart broken and I had just graduated college. I just wanted to write and let it out. I was kind of at a point where I was like, ‘am I gonna do this or not? There’s nothing keeping me here.’ I just packed up and left and came to Nashville. My family has been very supportive.
It’s interesting that so many people never thought of doing country music, but I feel like a lot of people thought they would never do country music but the genre has changed so much and it’s so much more diverse than about twenty years ago.
Yeah, I did not grow up listening to country music growing up. My earliest country is Tim McGraw and Alison Krauss and that’s what made me fall in love with it. I think that’s the earliest unfortunately.
Going back to your experience in musicals and stuff, do you feel like that acting side of things has really shaped your music and allowed you to step into roles as you write?
I’ve never really thought about it like that. I don’t know, I’m really awkward when it comes to acting – I think that acting taught me to not get embarrassed as easily. It’s more embarrassing, if you don’t give it your all, so it helped a lot when I walk into a room to write songs, because that’s not second nature to me. So, I’m creating a whole new world that it’s just given me confidence that if I don’t lay it out there it isn’t going to go anywhere. I definitely think it gave me confidence.
Hopefully, we’ll have more shows as the year goes on and you’ve got a single coming out on Friday, but is there anything else in the pipeline – will you be releasing more singles or working toward a longer project?
I think I’m gonna stick with singles for now. It just feels right, I don’t feel like I have a full project to put out right now. I feel that I’m just constantly telling the story of me – the story of Kelsey, so that’s where I’m at. I also feel like we live in a single world right now, which is nice financially, I guess, during quarantine. I’m going to try to keep up what I started last year, just one song after the other every two months just to keep the story going. I wrote a lot this year, so I have a lot more to come. It’s happening.
Well we can’t wait to hear it. Thank you for taking the time to chat today. Hopefully we’ll get to hear you live when the world opens up!
I would love that so much. Thank you.
