Kelley Mickwee and her voice are one of the most recognizable talents making music in her home state of Texas at the moment – even if you may not immediately know it.
Mickwee has been a mainstay in the Texas-based music scene for years: currently, as part of Kevin Russell’s Shinyribs’ Shiny Soul Sisters, singing harmony and background vocals at his live show; as one-fourth of the acclaimed Americana group The Trishas, with Jamie Lin Wilson, Savannah Welch and Liz Foster; and before then as one-half of a Memphis, TN-based duo Jed and Kelley. But sometimes what gets lost in the shuffle of all the well-deserved acclaim for what she adds to other artist’s projects is the music she makes in her own right.
“It’s been way too long since I have released music that is all mine,” she says. “I’m so proud of how these songs turned out, and it just felt like the right time to put new music out and see if people are still interested in what I’m doing on my own.”
It’s a comment bathed in humility, and the kind of thing an artist only says if they’re really in it because no other career path would ever really make sense for them. What else is there to do but to keep doing it? Her comments are referring to a new two-song project called Boomtown to Bust, an A-side and B-side single that she’s taking the extra mile and releasing on vinyl. “I love the good old-fashioned singles releases: a taste of what the artist is currently creating, without ingesting an entire album,” she says.
Both songs were written with Ben Jones as part of a yet-to-be-released duets album with Dan Dyer, and recorded with Jonathan Tyler at his home studio, Clyde’s VIP Room. “Jonathan Tyler and I have known each other for years and I have always been a big fan of his music, his work ethic and his vibe in general,” Mickwee says. “I was driving and heard his tune ‘Old Friend’ come on the radio and thought, that’s it, I need to make some music with this guy. So, I sent him a demo of these two tunes and asked if he’d help give them life.”
Boomtown to Bust is Kelley’s first original release since 2014’s You Used to Live Here, her debut solo record. She wasn’t kidding when she described the album’s release as feeling like “totally starting from scratch again” … and more than a little scary. Although she was already a seasoned artist at that point with a decade’s worth of experience under her belt, up until then all of her performing and recording experience had been as part of a unit: first as half of the Memphis-based duo Jed and Kelley, and then as one-fourth of Texas’ acclaimed all-woman Americana group, the Trishas.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Don’t Miss You At Austin,” Kelley’s new duet with Dan Dyer. Anyone who follows the news has surely heard about the explosion of growth in Texas cities, particularly Austin. What was once a sleepy college town with a vibrant music scene that gave birth to psych rock and outlaw country has since become a traffic-clogged landscape of homogeneous glass buildings, Airbnbs, and streets crawling with bachelorette parties and tech bros. Mixing folk, country, and even old timey jazz, Kelley and Dan reflect on what once was and what it has become. There is a sense of longing in the music and lyrics, but there is also a resoluteness in the idea that change is part of life and you can’t cling to the way things once were forever. Austin may be the most prominent example of a city that has lost a part of its soul, but this tune makes it clear that Houston and Dallas have also changed. For many, the solution to escaping these changes has been to move to the countryside and this tune celebrates the feeling of relief at having found a way to get out of the city while still holding a special place for it in your heart. It also carries a playful spirit that is amplified by the musical chemistry between these two singer-songwriters.
Dan describes the inspiration behind the tune:
This is a song about change, and some attempt to get ahead (or behind) the wave it presents.
In 2011 I had left Austin, moving 20 miles east in an attempt to escape the city. I soon found the city catching up with me, so in 2018 my partner and I purchased 25 acres near Fredericksburg, about an hour and a half west of the city. On weekends and any available free time I would drive out to the land to begin planning our future residence and farm. As I would head west through the developing suburbs of a fast expanding metropolis, somewhere past Dripping Springs I would turn off of the highway and take backroads to our place, the stress and anxiety slipping away with rolled down windows and no hurry to get there. On one of these drives the phrase “ I don’t miss you at Austin” came about and I held on to it until Kelley and I were able to sit and flesh out a song. It might come across as a diss to Austin or Houston or the other large cities in Texas (or anywhere) but really it’s a bittersweet acknowledgement of inevitable change, one that occurs everywhere, even the places in which we are trying to escape. I guess the human migration knows no bounds, and we may only seek our peace (piece) as fate and intuition guides us.
Kelley adds:
When Dan played what he had of the chorus, I could immediately relate and was excited to write this with him. I have lived in Austin for almost 14 years and I have bore witness to massive changes in our city both physically and economically but also with the people that live here now. Don’t get me wrong, Austin is still my home, and there is nowhere else I would rather live and work as a musician. But, this inevitable change has definitely pushed some folks out to the country, like Dan. So, this song isn’t meant to be a slam on the some major cities of Texas, but rather a shoutout to those who’ve moved to the rural areas. And a love song, to the nostalgia I have for my first 5 years here as an up and coming Austin musician, and also a nod to the simplicity of small town Texas livin’. With a little bit of humor, of course.
LISTEN:
Photo credit: Todd v Wolfson
