Kelsey Waldon Rides Winning Streak into New Album Announcement

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For years Kelsey Waldon fans have been rendered a little frustrated that this critically important piece to the Kentucky insurgency hasn’t received more of the widespread recognition she’s deserved. In 2024, that is all changing. On February 28th, the Country Music Hall of Fame’s American Currents exhibit opens, and Kelsey Waldon is one of the featured performers this year.

That’s not all. On February 18th, Waldon was announced as the winner of the 2024 Ameripolitan Outlaw Female award down in Austin. As she said during her acceptance speech, “Being an Outlaw is being yourself, still doing it, even though you’ve been told ‘no’ so many times. So many times, y’all.”

Piggy backing off of this momentum, Waldon has just released a new song and video, and has announced her next album called There’s Always a Song out May 10th on Oh Boy Records.

Kelsey Waldon has released plenty of original songs in her career. But on this new project, she mines the great American songbook to recreate her original inspirations for deciding to become a country singer in the first place. She then reaches out to some of her closest friends in the music business to bring these songs to life.

“These songs are deep. They were here long before me, and they will be here long after I’m gone, after any of us are here. They will survive the test of time,” Waldon says about the eight songs. “It’s like they live in some kind of universe that just survives forever. These songs know the secrets to life.”


Waldon also gives credit to her band for helping to inspire the song selection, and their communal affinity for old-time and Appalachia music on van rides, especially her fiddle player Libby Weitnauer who has become instrumental to Waldon’s sound. Kelsey recorded There’s Always a Song with her band at Nashville’s Creative Workshop—the famous studio with the rough wood panels that’s seen in the legendary Heartworn Highways film when Larry Jon Wilson is recording.

Some of the songs and collaborations people can expect on the album include Isaac Gibson of 49 Winchester singing on Ralph Stanley’s “I Only Exist,” fiddler Amanda Shires joining Waldon on the old Bill Monroe classic “Uncle Pen,” and fellow Kentuckian and close friend S.G. Goodman singing with Waldon on “Hello Stranger” inspired by the 1973 version by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard (listen below).

“There’s a lot of bullshit out there, and sometimes our goals and dreams get clouded by competition or become jaded,” Waldon says. “[These songs are] like something tapping into me and being like, ‘That’s why you love this.’ It feels like home to me; it feels like the truth. It just brought me so much joy to work with my peers, my friends, people I really admire.”

There’s Always a Song is now available for pre-order.


TRACK LIST:

1. Keep Your Garden Clean
2. Hello Stranger (with S.G. Goodman)
3. I Only Exist (with Isaac Gibson / 49 Winchester)
4. Uncle Pen (with Amanda Shires)
5. Pretty Bird
6. I’ve Endured
7. Traveling The Highway Home (with Margo Price)
8. Your Lone Journey

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