A good voice isn't unlike a slingshot: Any twit can inadvertently knock out a window, but putting out an eye is a different matter. Kelly Willis is a damn fine singer, and as she proved onstage at New York City's Village Underground last night, as well as on her past two records 1999's What I Deserve and this year's Easy, she doesn't rely on her honey-rich voice for pops. Instead Willis has shaped that raw ability into an interpretative talent. And it makes hers the best voice singing country music today.
Willis' nearly fifteen-year career has progressed like a sweater through a room full of hanging nails. Starting in the D.C.-area as a permed rockabilly cat with a band appropriately named the Fireballs, she blazed her way towards Nashville, which reeled her into a major-label deal and immediately set about trying to capitalize on her looks as much as her voice. There were issues of locale, her roots were always in and around Texas, which never sits right with Music City. Three records with MCA offered highlights, but while Willis had a good voice, she struggled to find a voice. Hang-ups between albums were regular, and with five albums in fifteen years -- three were released between 1990 and 1993 -- she was equal parts tortoise and hare. A four-song EP released six years ago marked a new phase in Willis' career. Fading Fast snapped and crackled and did all the things great country music used to do. And it opened Willis' sound to the two latest records.
Last night, there were tunes from those earliest records, and they were assimilated seamlessly. But the when's of her material aren't as important anymore; the thrill is in her seasoned delivery. Willis' way around a lyric is so comfortable that it's easy to miss the nuances. It's less the muscle-flexing high notes in the chorus of "Take Me Down," but more the cadence in last verse of "Not Forgotten You." The words bleed together as she skips through "Time flies and you just know/Time to think about letting go" before punctuating the verse with "Times I even forget to be blue," the last word appropriately drawing the crystalline emphasis. Willis' husband, Bruce Robison, is a gifted scribe and perhaps it's spousal verisimilitude but she knows all of the nooks and crannies of his songs and pours her voice into them accordingly. In addition to "Not Forgotten You," he wrote "What Did You Think," which she lovingly dresses with vibrato-tinged emphasis on the songs "I"'s and "you"'s to heartbreaking effect and "Wrapped," also with a rhythmically delightful chorus and the painful chills and jumping heartbeats of the song's slavish narrator: "Thought I was doing fine/About to get you off my mind/I see your face/And then I'm wrapped around your pretty little finger again."
Unlike the Nashville pop princesses, Willis (who has also written more than her share of fine songs) doesn't pluck her fruits from industry trees. And unlike typical singer-songwriter types, she doesn't lean too heavily on the sacred cows in the Texas writer ranch. Sure, she covered Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen back in the day, but with the past two albums she's become a great pop-country singer cut from a Seventies cloth similar to, say, Charlie Rich, be it her original material, Robison's or songs by the likes of Paul Westerberg. She looks to find the devil in the details. Last night she sang Kirsty MacColl's "Don't Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!," also on Easy, with reverence for its odd, lovely mood. That song's comfort in the same set list as Damon Bramblett's sneaky, elliptical electric chair tune, "Heaven Bound," and the Kendalls' Seventies' chestnut "Heaven Is Just a Sin Away," underscores the Willis' skill as a singer. She finds the door into a song and lives in it awhile. Interpretation of essence is paramount, and genre couldn't matter less.
The bittersweet taste to this appearance is the fact that Willis' ventures outside of Texas have grown scarce since the birth of her son last year, a dilemma that isn't likely to improve next year, as she's expecting twins. But be it marriage, being a mother, or just a few additional years attuned to music, Willis' ear for a song has matured into a sensitive and limber talent, and her voice, already a formidable instrument, has only benefited.
ANDREW DANSBY
(November 22, 2002)