NASHVILLE, TENN. (May 10, 2024) — Brian Kelley has always wanted to make music that feels like the life he lives. The DIAMOND-selling superstar’s full-length debut album with Big Machine Records, Tennessee Truth, does just that. Available everywhere today (5/10), listen here.
“I’m so excited for y’all to hear my debut album. Each and every one of these songs make up my Tennessee Truth,” shares Kelley. “I hope everyone enjoys listening to this project as much as I did making it. This is my Tennessee Truth.”
Between big riffs powered by some of the most respected players in Music City – guitarists Derek Wells and Rob McNelley, multi-instrumentalist Ilya Toshinsky, multiple CMA Musician of the Year fiddler Jenee Fleenor, drummer Jerry Roe, and steel guitar legend Paul Franklin – Kelley sings, plainly and powerfully, about the world he inhabits. Across 12 pumped-up Country anthems (eight to his co-writing credit) produced by Dann Huff, he preaches about the restorative powers of rural living (“How We’re Livin’,” “Dirt Cheap”), everlasting love (“Barefeet Or Boots,” “Dirt Road Date Night”), cutting loose (“King Ranch,” “Doin’ Nothin’”), and standing up for oneself (“Kiss My Boots”). It is the gamut and gauntlet of feelings, moments, and embracing the whole of daily living. Likewise, Kelley hasn’t abandoned the ‘beach cowboy’ sounds that defined his 2021 passion project Sunshine State Of Mind either. One listen to “10 O’Clock On The Dock,” and you’re floating. But the rest of the song cycles move inland: scenes of John Deere joyrides, front porch swinging, and long nights out where the cattails sway populate Tennessee Truth.
Recording in batches throughout last year, Kelley ranked and re-ranked a running list of the songs that were in consideration for the final cut. Some, like “Acres,” were obvious. Over larger-than-life drums and a signature fiddle hook, he sings about his simplest desire: the woman he loves in wide open spaces. “I closed my eyes the day we were writing that,” recalls Kelley of writing with Adam Sanders and Will Weatherly, “and I imagined my wife, Brittney, on her family farm in Georgia. Even now, I picture it. Riding dirt roads and going to get peach ice cream and boiled peanuts. That’s one of my favorite places to go to get off the grid, to just be me with the woman I love. What’s better? Nothing. I wanted to capture that in a song.” Watch the lyric video.
