Sense of Self
Deserving singer finally comes into her own
By Michael McCall
After nearly a decade in the music business, Kelly Willis is finally
hitting her stride. The Austin, Texas-based singer has always made good
records, but it's only recently that she has been able to determine her
own musical identity. As she intones pointedly on the title track of her
new album, What I Deserve, "I have done the best I can, but what I've done
is not who I am."
Those lines pretty much sum up Willis' experience on Music Row in the
early '90s, when over the course of three critically lauded albums for MCA
Records, she failed to score a single country radio hit. Listening again
to those albums, it's evident that Willis was an unusually capable country
vocalist, and that the work she created ranks among the most interesting
Nashville records of the period. But in retrospect, it's clear that she
never settled into a style that was completely her own.
At their best, Willis' MCA releases displayed her knack for putting a
souped-up twang into rockabilly tunes and for summoning complex emotions
on certain ballads. But these albums ultimately came off as failed
attempts at finding a middle ground between the songs she wanted to do and
the songs that might get her airplay on country radio.
Truth is, Willis isn't the kind of singer modern country radio likes;
she's far too complicated for that. Unlike straight-ahead belters Trisha
Yearwood and Martina McBride, she owns a vinegary, twangy voice that needs
room to slur words and slide delicately through its range. Hers isn't a
voice meant for putting across clear-spoken emotions or fist-pumping
anthems; Willis is better at expressing hidden things.
That's why What I Deserve ranks as the first true Kelly Willis album of
her career--or at least the first record that capitalizes on her strengths
rather than compromising them. The new collection completes a journey that
Willis started in 1993, when MCA cut her from its roster, just as it had
released her third album. "It was a real blow," she says. "I was real
hurt. I wasn't prepared for the timing of it. I was so attached to
everyone there, and suddenly it was like we weren't family anymore."
Eventually, she saw her severance as a blessing. "I was feeling lost
musically, says the soft-spoken Willis, whose youthful shyness of a decade
ago has evolved into a kind of quiet, reserved strength. "So I thought the
best thing to do was just start over, as if I had never had a career,
hadn't put any records out, and had the freedom to be whoever I want to
be."
She spent a couple of years writing songs, letting her feelings lead her
to new musical ground. Signed by A&M Records, she spent time in the studio
with several leaders of the mid-'90s alternative country movement,
recording songs backed by Son Volt, Sixteen Horsepower, and members of the
Jayhawks. "For the first time, I didn't feel any pressure in the studio,"
Willis says. "I experimented with different elements and got to figure out
how I wanted to sound."
Those sessions led to the release of a striking four-song sampler, Fading
Fast. Before she got to release a complete album, however, A&M underwent
the first of many corporate shakeups. Teresa Ensenat, the executive
guiding Willis' career, left the company. The singer was cut soon
afterward.
"I didn't feel as scared as you might think," she says of losing her
second record contract. "I had kind of dealt with it before, and I wasn't
as freaked out about it. Besides, I figured I would land on my feet."
She did. Quickly snatched up by Rykodisc, a leading independent record
company, Willis revisited the tapes she'd created for A&M. She retooled a
few songs and recorded several more with a hand-picked group of musicians,
including guitarists Mark Spencer, Chuck Prophet, John Dee Graham, and
Lloyd Maines. The result is What I Deserve.
"I found out that I can be myself and still make a record," she says. "For
the first time, I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not. I found out
that I can be completely in control of my own recording, and I never had
to do that before. Now that I know I can do that, I feel really
comfortable with it."
At this point, Willis has left her early rockabilly influences behind. In
search of a more mature sound, she has chosen to record songs about
searching for love, for identity, for a reason for being. "I'm 30 years
old now, and I feel real good about presenting these songs at this time in
my life. I feel like they're songs you can grow old with."
They include an ambitious range of covers, including songs by Nick Drake
("Time Has Told Me"), Dan Penn ("Real Deep Feeling"), Paul Kelly ("Cradle
of Love"), and Paul Westerberg (The Replacements' "They're Blind"). But
the most memorable work comes from closer to home: Two of the best songs
were written by her husband, Bruce Robison, including the wonderful
"Wrapped," a sprightly mid-tempo tune about a woman's conflicting emotions
as she unsuccessfully tries to put an old relationship behind her.
(Interestingly enough, Robison wrote the song about Willis during a time
when the couple had temporarily split up.)
Perhaps most importantly, though, Willis contributes some of the best
songs herself. Besides the fine title track, there's "Talk Like That," a
wistful country song about hearing her hometown in a stranger's accent,
and the flood of memories that results from hearing familiar speech
patterns in a place far from home.
"It occurred to me that if my music was going to be unique, it had to be
from my point of view," she says. "What really inspired me to write more
was thinking about Emmylou Harris. I love all the songs she's covered, but
when you hear a song she's written, you feel like you're getting let in on
a secret. It's so much more intimate."
Getting to this point, getting to where she feels as if she's revealing
more of herself as an artist, has made the trials of the past easier to
accept. "After a while, I realized that I was real unhappy in that world,"
she says of the mainstream country music industry. "I just didn't fit in.
I was failing everybody on every front, including myself. They were
spending a lot of money on me, and I just wasn't charming the right
people. At conventions and stuff like that, I just didn't feel
comfortable. It wasn't my world, really.... At some point I realized I
didn't want to be a superstar. But I did hope I could have a career
somehow."
What I Deserve suggests she has finally found the right path. By
forgetting about finding hits and concentrating on finding herself, Willis
may have hit upon a career formula that works for her.
