Kelsey’s songs are good storytelling in of themselves and generally don’t require much by way of explication so I will largely confine myself to talking about the musical side of things here.
“Play Pretend” was the first of Kelsey’s songs that got to experience. I remember when she first performed it in front of me, singing sweetly shy along with a slightly out of-tune acoustic guitar and I thought 'Hey, I like this tune and she’s got a cool voice' but I didn’t think much beyond that because I was under the impression that she was already in production talks with one of my colleagues. I called her a month or so later and asked her where she stood with it and it had gone no further so I told her I’d help her produce it. For better or worse I wrote a progressive-tinged arrangement of the ballad that also included some idiosyncratic EDM elements and (licensed) sound effects – it was something of an experiment, what can I say? I played a couple of layers of live guitar and programmed all the virtual instruments on this song. The video was shot (entirely around Norfolk, VA), edited and produced by our friend Jacki Paolella at Shoetree Productions. Enjoy!
“All in Your Head” was the third or fourth tune I produced with Kelsey and her second “official” music video – also helmed by Jacki Paolella like “Play Pretend” above – but when she initially performed this song for me I thought it might really benefit from being set against a solo piano instead being another guitar-driven song. I transcribed her tune and wrote out a piano arrangement of it and sent it off to my good friend Josh DiStefano (He was in Germany at the time … don’t you just love the Internet?) He recorded himself playing it and then sent it back to me so we could record Kelsey singing over it. (FTR she actually taught herself how to play the piano riffs for the song after this.) I came up with some rough ideas for the video and Jacki turned my inchoate ideas into the polished video below. The video for “All in Your Head” was also shot in Norfolk, VA and features our friend Sam Hunt good-naturedly playing the onscreen role of Kelsey’s douche bag boyfriend and there’s a also a special appearance by esteemed local talent Skye Zentz as a neighborhood busker. As I mentioned earlier, I’ll let Kelsey’s song tell the story.
We also dabbled in other styles such as – two of my favorites – the jazz-tinged-retro-meets-spaghetti-western of "Weird Girl / No No No”(featuring David Wiley on trumpet) and the upbeat rock of the irony-laden "Happy Song”, both below:
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I’d also like to make special mention here of Justin Sunday and Adam Daube for their invaluable assistance in recording and mixing these songs and Bob Wright for doing a superb job of mastering them.