Kelly Willis has been on a different label for nearly every season of her musical career. She weathered a commercially anticlimactic three-album deal in Nashville with MCA, then hung in pre-production limbo with A&M before refashioning her career in Austin, on Rykodisc’s more lenient watch. But the label that’s been foremost on her mind in recent years is mother.
Willis and her husband, fellow Texas singer-songwriter Bruce Robison, have expanded their family exponentially, with young Willis/Robisons born in 2001, 2003—that year it was twins—and 2006.
“It does feel like a full life all of a sudden,” Willis says. “We’re hoping we don’t have any more surprises. Those things always turn out to be good surprises, but we’re at maximum, you know…capacity.”
Willis’ 1990 debut, Well Traveled Love, may not have been the work of a veteran, but she already had a way of warming and vitalizing a song with her pining, honeyed lilt. “I was 20 years old when I signed to MCA, and I was also terribly, terribly shy and just a completely different kind of person than I am now,” she says. “I feel like some of those people would just be shocked to see that I can talk and finish a sentence, you know, and not shake like a leaf on stage.”
Since those early days of make-a-record-every-year pressure, Willis has not been one to sprint from album to album. But even she was beginning to think too much time had passed since her fetching 2002 acoustic-leaning set Easy, and Rykodisc was starting to drop some subtle hints. “Every now and then they say, ‘Sure would like to have another record,’ ” she says.
But firing up the creative process isn’t so simple with four small children to care for. “I couldn’t even make a record,” says Willis. “I had no creative time whatsoever. People started telling me, ‘You should just do a record of covers, or else you’ll never make a record.’ So I decided to do that.”
Willis’ upcoming record—due out next year—is one-half covers—including an Iggy Pop tune and what she calls “so not alternative country singer-songwriter” choices—and one-half originals that she wrote with her guitarist and producer Chuck Prophet. What does it sound like? “You know, we just finished tracking yesterday, so I don’t have a strong handle on it,” she says. “It’s got some high energy songs on there. It’s a different record than anything I’ve ever made before. It doesn’t really compare to anything.”
Translation: as good as her last two albums have been, Willis feels no need to re-create Easy’s spare, silken country balladry, or What I Deserve’s sultry neo-traditionalism, when she can wrap her golden warble around a slightly different sound.
But don’t expect a bunch of songs about motherhood. “More than anything, being married—Bruce and I have been married 10 years this year—has probably been a bigger influence on my songwriting, just weathering all the complications of being in a relationship with someone and trying to make it a lifelong commitment.”
Willis sings on all of Robison’s records and vice versa, but the couple have only tested the waters of collaboration once, under the special circumstances of a holiday record. What began as a limited-release EP for fans of their annual Christmas tour—the only shows they generally do together—became a full-length album titled Happy Holidays this year.
And by now, Willis is well acquainted with the challenges of juggling family dynamics. “I came close to just quitting, because I just felt like I can’t do both these things,” she says. “Both of them require way too much of a person. So I really slowed down with my touring career and my recording career and focused on the family. The family, of course, that’s the no-brainer—that’s going to be the priority. I’m figuring out how to get some more music back in.”
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