Kelley McRae

On her first two albums, with songs like 'Johnny Cash' and 'Sparrow,' Kelley McRae made a name for herself as a songwriter who was not afraid to wear her broken heart on her sleeve. "I've always been able to draw from that well of loneliness and longing really easily" she says. "I'm a sucker for a sad song, cause I think if you can take pain and turn it into something beautiful, there's redemption there. But this time around, I went looking for a new well." On her third album, BRIGHTER THAN THE BLUES, McRae documents the lengths she was willing to go to find this new inspiration.
In February of 2011 McRae sold everything, let go of her Brooklyn apartment and spent the entire year touring America. She traveled coast to coast with her husband and guitarist, Matt Castelein, playing over 200 shows and putting 35,000 miles on their VW camper van. Along the way, she encountered the people and places that inspired the songs on BRIGHTER THAN THE BLUES. And although the album retains more than a hint of the sense of loneliness and longing that will be familiar to fans of McRae's previous albums, NEVER BE (★★★★, Paste Magazine) and HIGHRISES IN BROOKLYN ("Brilliant," Bob Harris BBC Radio), these songs carry a new sense of hope and light.
BRIGHTER THAN THE BLUES details a life on the road, from a glorious meal in New Orleans to a drive through the yellow hills of California, but musically, the album draws from McRae's Mississippi roots. The album was recorded in Knoxville, TN in an old stone house dubbed "The Castle," where Kelley and Matt spent the winter after their trek across America. With microphones rigged from a chandelier in the Castle's great room, the duo recorded and engineered the entire project themselves. The result is an album that delivers 11 stripped down tracks of heartfelt Americana in the vein of Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams. McRae says the album sounds a whole lot like her live show. "We tried to keep it simple. Live, we have two guitars, two voices and some stomping, and that's about it. I really wanted to capture the spirit of the live show."
The album will be released on September 15, 2012.