Kelly Willis‘s Easy is easily one of the most beautiful country records made in the past year. Willis has been making records since the early 1990s, after she was “discovered” in an Austin, Texas, nightclub by Nanci Griffith. After spending the better part of the decade trying to fit her round-peg sensibilities into the very square hole that is Nashville, this Oklahoma native moved back to Austin in the late ’90s and signed with Ryko. Her first CD for this indie label, 1999’s What I Deserve, saw her stretching her wings and finding her style, and Easy completes the transition.
Willis has a voice like warm honey, deep and smooth but still sweet, and she favors songs on the old honky-tonk themes of falling in love, falling out of love, and sometimes falling in love with the wrong person. A good case could be made that Kelly Willis is the natural heir to Patsy Cline, without the tragedy and turmoil. She can sing heartache with the best of them, but she has the kind of healthy girl-next-door good looks that make her the perfect foil to the navel-baring country-pop divas being churned out by the Music City machine.
Willis also has a good grasp of many sides of the country-folk idiom, plus she can write her own songs, and she has an excellent ear for others’ songs to cover. Witness her deliciously catchy take on the late Kirsty MacColl’s “Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!” her bluegrass-gospel cover of Paul Kelly’s “You Can’t Take it With You,” and the torchy “Find Another Fool” by Marcia Ball.
Willis wrote or co-wrote most of the rest of the tracks, including the mid-tempo swing opening track, “If I Left You,” and the title track, a slow waltz-time ballad with lyrics that use simple words to convey some complex emotions: “I want my heart to stand alone/to be the one that’s made of stone… The farther I fall the more I know/that I’m gonna have to let you go.” She goes even further out on a limb with “Getting to Me,” co-written with Jayhawk Gary Louris: “They say that you spend your lifetime burning/but I spend mine just turning and turning.”
If you can judge a musician by the company she keeps, Kelly Willis is a star firmly embedded in the heavens. Her backing band includes alt-country trailblazer Chuck Prophet and Mark Spencer on guitars, and the incredible Amy Farris on backing vocals, viola and fiddle — watch for more from this one! Drummer Rafael Gayol’s work is notable for just how well it fits the mood of every track.
Add to that guest musicians like the great Lloyd Maines on pedal steel, Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile on mandolin, Vince Gill, Dan Tyminski, Alison Krauss and Willis’ husband Bruce Robison on backing vocals, and rock legend Ian McLagan on keyboards — well, with a crew like that, it’d be easy for the singer or her songs to be overwhelmed, but it never happens. Thank excellent production and an abundance of good taste by all involved.
Easy is real easy to listen to, and if the music biz made any sense, Kelly Willis would be a household name by now.
(Ryko, 2002)
