Kelsey Waldon: No Regular Dog Tour w/ Emily Nenni

1245 Chicago Avenue,Evanston IL 60202

06 October, 2022

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COVID-19 PolicyPlease review our current COVID-19 policy here: www.evanstonspace.com/covidpolicy GENRE: Singer-Songwriter ABOUT THE ARTISTS On her new album No Regular Dog, singer/songwriter/guitarist Kelsey Waldon shares a gritty and glorious portrait of living in devotion to your deepest dreams: the brutal self-doubt and unending sacrifice, hard-won wisdom and sudden moments of unimaginable transcendence. Revealing her supreme gift for spinning harsh truths into songs that soothe and brighten the soul, the Kentucky-bred artist ultimately makes an unassailable case for boldly following your heart—a sentiment perfectly encapsulated in No Regular Dog’s raw and radiant title track. “I wrote ‘No Regular Dog’ at a time when I was gone so much and working so hard and starting to wonder if I had the staying power to keep it going,” says Waldon, who now lives in Ashland City, Tennessee. “After putting in my time in the van on the road, after all the blood, sweat, and tears and the crying in parking lots, I’d finally gotten to where I wanted—but it was also a moment when I really started questioning myself. In the end I came around to answer my own question and realize that, yes, I can do this. I won’t be put down so easy. I am no regular dog.” Waldon’s fourth full-length and the follow-up to 2019’s White Noise/ White Lines—her debut release for John Prine’s Oh Boy Records—No Regular Dog came to life over the course of many charmed and freewheeling sessions at Dave’s Room Studio in Los Angeles, with production from kindred spirit Shooter Jennings (Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker). “I’d never recorded an album anywhere but Nashville or back home, and it felt good to get outside my bubble,” Waldon says. “We were able to hunker down and work till late into night, doing what we could to catch lightning in a bottle.” In a departure from the more guitar-heavy approach of its predecessor (a critically lauded album that landed on NPR Music’s Best of 2019 list), No Regular Dog unfolds in a lush yet understated sound that lets the singular character of Waldon’s songwriting and voice shine through each track. Featuring her longtime band members, Brett Resnick (pedal steel), Alec Newnam (bass), and Nate Felty (drums), along with musicians like famed guitarist/dobro player Doug Pettibone (Lucinda Williams, Keith Richards), the album also illuminates the immense depth of her musicality, mining inspiration from such eclectic sources as mid-century bluegrass, ’60s soul, and ’70s country-rock. “Everything’s in there, all the music I’ve ever known and loved,” says Waldon. “I wanted to show my whole color scheme and create something that’s less of a honky-tonk thing and more like a big, beautiful picture of everything I see in country music.” Originally from the tiny rural town of Monkey’s Eyebrow, Waldon has long relied on music as a lifeline. “I’ve always used songwriting as a way to process the world around me and also process my own thoughts and feelings,” she says, naming classic country artists like Loretta Lynn, George Jones, and Merle Haggard among her early influences. “If I didn’t have the ability to put all that down on paper, I think I’d be pretty lost today.” After penning her first song as a small child—“My mom still has lyrics sheets I made when I was about nine, everything laid out in verse and chorus”—Waldon continued sharpening her craft and eventually left home for Nashville, where she further honed her chops by playing local bar gigs. Over the coming years, she put out a series of EPs before making her full-length debut with The Goldmine: a self-released 2014 effort that earned abundant praise from leading outlets like Rolling Stone, who hailed her as “Tammy Wynette on a trip to Whiskeytown.” Arriving in 2016, Waldon’s sophomore album I’ve Got a Way drew even more acclaim and appeared on such coveted year-end roundups as the Top 10 Favorite Albums Of 2016 list from Ken Tucker of NPR’s Fresh Air, with its lead single “All By Myself” featured on NPR’s Top 100 Songs of 2016 list. Several years later, she performed at the Grand Ole Opry with the likes of Sturgill Simpson and John Prine, who invited her to join the Oh Boy Records family while up onstage—making Waldon the label’s first new artist signing in 15 years. Co-produced with Dan Knobler (Allison Russell, Della Mae), White Noise/ White Lines delivered such standouts as “Kentucky, 1988,” which later topped Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Country and Americana Songs of 2019 list. Looking back on the making of No Regular Dog—an album rooted in rigorous self-reflection—Waldon speaks to her newly clarified sense of purpose as a songwriter and artist. “I hope that these songs are able to live with people and help make the world a little better, because I think that’s a big part of what my job is,” she says. “At the end of the day, I’m so thankful for my passion for music because it’s sustained me throughout my whole life, and now I want it to do the same for other people. And if anyone’s struggling, I hope they can recognize the ‘No Regular Dog’ within themselves, and start to see how much they’re really worth.” https://www.kelseywaldon.com/ Nashville-based singer-songwriter Emily Nenni sang her first songs on stage at legendary Robert's Western World by bribing the band and doorman with cookies. She has since honed in her Honky-Tonk skills in double-wide trailers on Sunday nights, clubs across the south, and playing for ranchers and wranglers in Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado.