Matt Reynolds, a student at Belmont and a music fanatic known to Inside Vandy as "thebelmontcritic," had the opportunity to sit down with Josh Kelley in his tour bus at Nashville's 12th & Porter to discuss his career and his family and to trade old-school Nintendo games. Read on to see what the pop crooner had to say.
TBC: So how did you fall into this whole music thing?
JK: My mom was a drummer and she taught my brother and I how to play the drums. Later, my older brother left his guitar at the house after he moved out. When he got back, I was better than him so he let me have it. I just sort of fell into this and started doing it for a living.
TBC: Are any of your siblings still involved with music now?
JK: My younger brother lives here in Nashville too and is in a band called Lady Antebellum. A couple years ago he was doing finance and I made him leave it and now he's here doing music. They're talking with a couple labels now and working out a deal. I'm really excited for their future.
TBC: Describe the sound of your music and the heart of its content?
JK: It's like rock/soul and pop blended together with a dash of James Taylor or Dave Matthews. It's really hard to say because my voice is so different. I grew up listening to a ton of blues and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I'm 27 now and I've been doing this since I was a little kid. I write about things that have already happened to me as opposed to things that I want to happen to me in the future.
TBC: Do you ever sit on this tour bus and just think of how far your career has taken you?
JK: The only way to keep perspective on your life is to look back on how far you've come. I've had a slow build my entire career and it's been nice. Because of that, I know how to handle anything that comes my way. It's also hard to really talk about myself too, it's so weird.
TBC: How do you pull your music together into songs and what do you write about?
JK: I pull from life experiences when I write or sometimes I just sing random words and a cool phrase falls out - but really your subconscious does that. Random words don't just fall out, they fall out because you've experienced something that day or that week that you need to talk about. Since everyone staying on this bus is a writer, we've written 17 songs on the bus during the tour and it's really stretched me as a writer.
TBC: How do you feel about the crowds here in Nashville and the support you've gotten here?
JK: I've never gotten big crowds here to tell you the truth. I'm still working on tapping this market out. In my big markets I play house of blueses and stuff like that, so I really want Nashville to be a bigger market for me. And Plus I have a house here, so I'm going to start working on Nashville a little harder.
TBC: Do you have a heavy hand in the business side of music?
JK: I own a record label also and we put a bunch of artists out, so it's kind of trippy. I've got an album coming out here soon and I'm getting married in December, so I have so much shit on my plate. It's always just go-go-go. When I started this tour I drove from here to Boston and was on the bus for two days straight and I was freaking out. I couldn't get the Nintendo to work!
TBC: What would you cite as your first "big break?"
JK: I had a marketing strategy when I was in college. I would spammail 100 people a day on Napster. One of the recipients was an A&R guy in Hollywood. He sent me something back and said I love this shit and a year later he signed me. I started thinking about being signed and two months later I'm there. After signing with Hollywood Records, they put "Amazin'" and "Only You" on the radio, which really did a lot for me.
TBC: As your career continues to progress, how do you think it will affect your personal life?
JK: My wife's an actress ( Katherine Heigl of "Grey's Anatomy") and lives in LA. She's on a TV show that's always on so it's impossible to ever see her. But what's really great is how we get along so well because we're both in the entertainment business and both know what it takes to be successful.
