Reckless Kelly is an Austin, Texas based Americana/Texas Country band. Led by brothers Willy (vocals/guitar) and Cody Braun (vocals/fiddle/mandolin/harmonica), the band was originally formed in Oregon as an alternative country band. Although band’s name is taken from Australian bank robber Ned Kelly, Willy revealed a civic mindset shortly before the Presidential Election with the release of a song, Pennsylvania Avenue, about the importance of exercising your right to vote.
AMFM: What are the things you really care about? The things you believe in?
Recently we got the new single out Pennsylvania Avenue out, I had been writing this song for about five or six years, which is quite some time. We were going to put it on our last record but it didn’t really match up with all our other songs. So we decided to release it as a separate single with a B side, and we thought that the right time to release it would be right before the election. Get people thinking and talking and encourage people to go out there and vote, or maybe get people to pay a little bit more attention to what’s going on. We are not really all that political of a band or anything, we want to let people make their own decisions, we just wanted to start the dialog in our own way.
AMFM: Tell me about creating that single
Well I started writing back in the tail end of the Bush administration, so when people are asking me whether it was a song about Obama or Romney or this election, it’s actually not about either of those candidates as much as it was something different for me to write about besides the road and the heart and standard cheating and drinking songs. I think it was more appropriate for this election than the last where it was two guys you never really heard of before and this time around we have seen four years of the President, so to me it made more sense when I wrote it. I think it’s more relevant today. And like I said, it’s not pushing towards one side or the other. I think that’s something our fans know about us and coming to one of our shows they know that they do not have to sit there and listen to a kid on a soapbox telling them what to think and who they should vote for. This single was our way to open the door for discussion. We’ll play it live, and push it on the radio and make a CD of it but what people want to interpret it as is their own decision. That’s the great thing about music is, that once a song is written and it’s out there it is up to the listener to decide what they think it’s all about.
AMFM: Do you have any stories from touring on the road you would like to share?
We got some pretty funny ones and fortunately we were able to document one of the funniest moments we have ever had in the band. I take the camera out a lot and we film a lot of goofy stuff and make movies while we are on the road. Several years ago we were touring with Robert Earl King out in California. We played a show at the Fillmore, which is a venue out there and it’s a really cool place and we were really excited to play there. We are really good friends with Robert and his band and we have done a lot of live touring and they have helped us out at times. Jay, our drummer, took it upon himself to streak the stage at the show during their encore. We didn’t catch that on tape, thank God, but the next day Robert took it back on him. He pulled a prank on Jay where he acted like he was just completely livid, had a booking agent call us and tell us that we were kicked off the tour. And the guys in the band all knew about it, the whole band and we knew it was just a joke, except for Jay. So he was sitting there losing his mind thinking that he ruined our friendship with Robert Earl and its all caught on tape and if you go to our Reckless Kelly youtube, or RecklessKelly.com There is a page called RKTV, the video is called Aftermath. It’s about 10 or 15 minutes long but its pretty funny.
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