As 2024 draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the late Kelly Joe Phelps, a musician who profoundly influenced me over the last two years. I cannot think of any artist that I feel a need to write about more right now. He has inspired me in countless ways, resurfacing tools within me. I want to send that grateful, creative energy into the ether. Or do we call that the dark recesses of the internet these days? I'm under this stone, grateful for the creative tools I possess. Artists of many disciplines and far greater ability than I, have in part, given me these. In my middle age, Kelly Joe is a very important one. He has helped me reclaim myself, get right with myself, to accept where I am. How someone we’ve never even met can inspire others to fully see themselves is a beautiful thing indeed!
Kelly Joe Phelps reminds me of exactly what I was looking for when I started writing songs and developing my playing. The journey... feeling at one with your expression in a musical space yet somehow restless and searching. That duality. Grounded in your musical vision, yet each time you approach it, it moves in unexpected ways, never settling exactly inside one thing. The slight variations every time he played. I love living in the age of YouTube where I can listen to this genius play many versions of the same songs and hear how different they could be due to his commitment to the moment. In this way, he brings his experience from his 20s as a jazz bassist to the blues and folk songs he is known for.
At the very beginning of 2023, I experienced a meaningful musical epiphany as I fully immersed myself in his music. I did a lot of listening! I took a break from his work halfway through 2023. I’m always listening to tons of music. Mostly in the roots, folk, jazz, blues, and soul arena, but lots of bits and pieces outside of this too. In 2024, I found myself delving even deeper into his work. An artist who was just as influenced by Ornette Coleman as he was Mississippi Fred McDowell, he helped me reconnect with my deep-rooted love for fingerstyle guitar and folk/blues songwriting. Having obsessed over and struggled with my jazz trumpet chops, and bossa nova guitar for several years, I've become comfortable incorporating parts of the jazz sensibility I've developed into my work as a singer-songwriter. The freedom I feel in his approach has inspired me to integrate elements of improvisation and my ambient trumpet style into my folk and blues-based music. He profoundly inspired me to pursue my desire to play solo once more. As much as I love his band albums like “Slingshot Professionals”—which features one of my favourite guitarists, Bill Frisell, on a couple of tracks—it’s his solo work that truly speaks to me. Hearing him interpret some of those “Slingshot” tunes on live recordings is really something! Here he is interpreting “Window Grin” from that album:
Lead Me On
He was pretty peerless at the time that he released his debut “Lead Me On” playing lap slide on a flattop acoustic guitar in a manner that was so free, fluid and smooth in its tone. He was kind of like his own town in a large county of blues and folk music. I love how he developed this sound for just one more album before he began to bring in his Travis picked (of which he was masterful) songs such as “River Rat Jimmy” on the fantastic “Shine Eyed Mr Zen.” By the time he made it to his 4th album “Sky Like A Broken Clock” he was one of the greatest acoustic (an opinion shared by many others) slide players of his generation and yet he played no slide on that album, asking second guitarist (and later his producer/engineer Steve Dawson) to play the slide parts. Instead, he was in a place of focusing on writing and delivering songs. At that point, his guitar playing was a tool for delivering his words, improvisations, and loose hypnotic melodies. I remember reading in an interview that as he got further into writing songs he would write words - poetry, short stories, etc. – without considering music or melodies. It wasn’t until he felt that an idea wanted to be a song that any of the musical language would come into play. Something I’ve always been interested in is the concept of “painting with words.” I feel that Kelly Joe’s lyrical world is highly successful in this kind of impressionistic storytelling. There are characters, but we’re getting snippets of their lives, thoughts, feelings, and outlook. It’s highly open to interpretation... big swatches of colour. To me, some of his writing feels like an effort to depict the inner lives of people. I'm very interested in experimenting with this approach in my own way.
"…and now I've got this process of writing that fits me and I like the fact that I figured out how to paint pictures like that, you know? I mean I'm certainly not trying to be misunderstood, but I'm certainly not trying to be direct, either. I'm trying to create an emotional impact with the words. And you know, it's a bit of a challenge perhaps to sort of 'break the code', or whatever, and get inside it. But it also leaves a lot of room, just like those paintings, it leaves a lot of room to have it feel personal to you, you know what I mean? Like a painting is going to feel different to you than it is to me, and I think that music stands that chance as well."
Kelly Joe Phelps, 2003 (Triste Magazine Interview)
I like all of his output and deeply love a lot of it. I'm certainly not on the fence about his instrumental album "Western Bell." I know it divides his fans, but I feel it’s a work of genius (that I haven't listened to anywhere near enough!). I do certainly have to be in a particular kind of head-space and usually be alone to listen to it. When I read reviews by fans of KJP questioning why he made it, I want to say that he couldn’t help but make that album! He shifted about within a particular musical world for years. He clearly had a restless searching spirit. Once the lap slide playing of his early releases was fully explored and he felt like he’d said what he wanted to musically, he moved away from that way of playing.
I was stunned to discover he’d died at the age of 62 just 6 months before I got into him. I'm absolutely gutted I never saw him play live. I clearly remember "Sky Like A Broken Clock" being reviewed on the same page in a magazine as my debut. I heard one track from that album on a free sampler and liked it. Somehow, I never got around to listening any further. A fact I sorely wish I could alter now!
His voice and words deeply move me and soothe me right down to my bones! I love the hypnotic rolling nature of his vocal delivery and lyrics. Let alone his picking and slide technique. I'll be studying that for years! In fact, he’s inspired me to begin my slide guitar journey, a technique I’ve barely approached. He's as meaningful to my acoustic guitar playing as when I discovered Nick Drake over 25 years ago or started listening to João Gilberto. Honestly, it's easy to think that what he's playing on the guitar is easy, as he reached a point of such effortlessness with it. Whether that’s the lap style of his earlier songs, the incredible execution of his fingerstyle material, or his late bottleneck work on final recordings and performances. A great example in his later work is "Down To The Praying Ground.” As far as I’m concerned it’s tricky to maintain such a fluid smooth sound on a steel guitar with a heavy brass slide. He had so much control... masterful!
I love this performance of that song from one of his final tours:
In 2013, he announced that he was taking a hiatus from touring due to ulnar neuropathy in his right hand and arm, which severely impacted his ability to play. He did undertake a final tour in 2014, but after that he retreated completely from his music career. Posting a few years later, he said that this condition had cleared up. However, he never returned to music professionally. He passed away on 31st May 2022 at the age of 62. The cause of his death is not public knowledge. Perhaps it never will be.
R.I.P. Kelly Joe, no matter your struggles in life, your time here was inspirational and meaningful. Thank you.
Here’s a link to my ever-evolving KJP Spotify playlist. It is in chronological order. I suggest making your way through his albums if you want a deep dive but I hope this gives you a good starting point:
I highly recommend his official live album “Tap The Red Cane Whirlwind” (Rykodisc, 2004). Unfortunately, it’s not currently available on streaming platforms. I bought the CD (old school!). The opening track on that album, a version of Skip James’ classic “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, is mesmerising. Here’s an even later version from 2013 played on resonator:
There are many incredible live performances on YouTube, plus snippets of interviews at various sites, but here are a few recommendations:
Podcast Interviews:
This is a podcast interview on the subject of his instrumental alt-folk/free jazz album “Western Bell”:
Crush Worldwide, Inc. - TGS - KELLY JOE PHELPS INTERVIEW #1
Between Western Bell and his final album “Brother Sinner and The whale” Kelly Joe collaborated on an album with Corrine West of her songs. He provided his fluid guitar lines and backing vocals to create an album of mellow Americana where they truly complement each other. Here’s an interview with them:
2012 Audio Interview:
Kelly Joe Phelps (RIP) - Salty Interview (November 2012) by Interviews: Salty Dog Blues N | Mixcloud
Text interviews from 2003:
This is a great little interview (it contains the one quote I used) but it says the website isn’t secure. I think it’s because it’s an older site without the security we have now. I’ve had no issues but thought I should mention it:
Kelly Joe Phelps interview - Triste Magazine