By Jacob Coleman
At the time of writing, Florida and much of the American South has been engulfed in a particularly brutal heat wave. The heat index has stayed firmly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, in some places even breaching 110. You can’t stay out in the elements for too long without risking heat stroke. Kyle Keller, a few weeks after releasing his sophomore album The Great American Highway, shared an Instagram post on the sadness that heat waves entail. He observes that these heat waves are “oppressive in the most primal sense,” and he sees animals seeking any possible shade and recreation being forced inside. At best, the heat is a nuisance. At worst, it’s a substantial health risk.
Keller is no stranger to the heat. In the most literal sense, he makes this known on “October Summer Days,” a tune about the bizarre sensation of a sweltering Halloween. On a deeper level, though, The Great American Highway showcases a man who’s lived a lot of lives, and has a profound sense of empathy for everyone traversing this life.
Like a lot of my favorite country and folk singers, Kyle Keller is a storyteller first and foremost. There is not a song on this record where he isn’t reflecting on journeys in life or imparting the wisdom he’s learned along the way. On the uptempo rambler of a title track, he sings about all his good times on the road in a truly shoddy car; by the end of the song, the car is engulfed in flames. On “This Town’s Gonna Swallow You Whole,” we hear a desolate ballad about a community reduced to a shell of its former self as all the jobs and money went elsewhere. I’m not the first person to notice similarities between Keller and old songwriting greats like Bob Dylan and Tom T. Hall, and like those guys, it can be a little ambiguous where reality ends and metaphor begins in his writing. Regardless of whether or not “Stick’s Blues” is a true story, though, what really stuck with me on this album was the feeling behind it.
The Great American Highway is a humble, optimistic record. Some of the central themes you can take away from this album are the importance of following your own direction in life, finding home and community in the people around you, and appreciating what makes us all human. Much of the time, Keller comes off like an old friend sharing the advice he’s learned that’s helped him through life. He even has a sense of humor about it, too. On the album opener, he ponders that his songs are too long and too slow and put people to sleep, only to break into the album’s most upbeat song a moment later. Don’t confuse Keller’s optimism with naivete, either; when he wants to, he can cut deep. If you stick around for “Why Would God Steal?,” a crushingly honest reflection of grief after the loss of a loved one, you’ll hear one of the most rousing songs I’ve heard in the past few years.
I might be making it sound like Kyle Keller is a lyrics-first musician, but the music on this album is hardly an afterthought. Rather, you’ll find that Keller quite simply knows how to write a damn song. The title track is a total barnburner, complete with a Johnny Cash-esque backbeat and a blazing guitar solo from Bonkers! favorite Austin Brockner. At least one or two of the mid-tempo numbers are bound to get stuck in your head. “October Summer Days” did it for me. The biggest punch of this album comes in the ballads, which are just gorgeous. “Holding On To What I Hoped For,” a track about the sad realization that a relationship isn’t meant to be, is a clear highlight in this regard. It consists of little more than Keller’s vocals, his delicate acoustic guitar and Ben Derrico’s subtle cello accompaniment. The warm intimacy of Justin Mercer’s production and Keller’s gift for writing melodies turn an already great set of lyrics into a stunning song.
I’ve been listening to a lot of country lately. I can’t entirely pin down what caused the uptick, but I can tell you that Tanya Tucker, Dwight Yoakam and Rosanne Cash have been getting a lot more burn from me than usual. These artists all have wildly different sonic palettes and none are that similar to Kyle Keller. But what makes them all resonate is that all of their songs are unmistakably human. They’re artists who can run the gamut of emotions and get down to the bare, honest root of things while still having a good time. Kyle Keller has that gift. In The Great American Highway, I hear the makings of a truly great country artist.
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