Ruston Kelly brings songs of weakness and strength to intimate Rose Music Hall date
Not if, but when Ruston Kelly's voice trembles the walls around Rose Music Hall, dislodging some portion of the pain and regret a gathered crowd holds, they have Dave Matthews to thank.
Kelly's "Too Chill to Kill" run of acoustic shows represents the first step "in the spirit of continually becoming Dave Matthews," he said recently, fully serious but with a smile in his voice. The 35-year-old singer-songwriter upholds the live-music king as a career model. Often after playing long stretches of arenas and amphitheaters with his sprawling band, Matthews turns to occupy smaller rooms with guitarist Tim Reynolds.
That looping approach — building up, then paring down, only to build up again — excites Kelly. Columbia audiences can take that first step alongside him on April 1 at the Park Avenue venue.
The South Carolina-born Kelly arrives after landing a 1-2 punch of vulnerability with last year's record "The Weakness" and a companion EP "Weakness Etc" out this week. Here, he's building a unique canon, bending earlier, country-informed albums into a more expansive pop sound with wide-screen concerns and intimate colors.
And Kelly uses the language of weakness like few pop stars: naming his failures, living along fault lines as he rebuilds and redefines terms like strength and self-acceptance.
In the wake of these projects, Kelly has seen and reckoned with the price of vulnerability, he said. He understands why other artists might be afraid to set up their tents on shakier ground.
"But also I said something very large about myself to myself about things I continually try and work on," Kelly said of his recent albums.
"There are these little areas, these little cracks in myself, I'm trying to mend as we all do. But I made it in this expressive, forever-lasting form that I can't really get away from. ... It's helped me maintain continually working on myself and expressing myself through weakness, but that being a form of healing and then becoming stronger because of it."
"Weakness Etc." recasts a couple songs from its sibling record. Here, "Cold Black Mile" remains warm and atmospheric but cuts a more acoustic path, forming a sort of bent, not-broken soul music; a fresh version of "Mending Song" harnesses the spirit of a plaintive piano and nudges Kelly's voice forward to a place just behind your ear.
The bond between the full-length "Weakness" and subsequent EP forms a blueprint for Kelly's coming tour. Last year's release exhibited a new approach within the studio, he said, creating a sort of alternative existence for the singer-songwriter type.
"(Before 'The Weakness'), the song is front and center and the production only exists to either beautify or support whatever the message is in the song, whatever the vibe is of the song," Kelly said. "And this time around, I wanted to take the songs and have them be a whole part of the painting rather than the focal point."
"Weakness Etc." retraces steps to form a circle, taking a Kelly song and giving "the listener an experience of what it was like in its purest form," he said.
Something pure, almost ancient, animates the EP track "Belly of the Beast." A Springsteen harmonica whirs into the void, ushering this hymn into being. Over piano chords, Kelly sings of stumbles, scraped knees and self-medication, then describes how screwed-up prayers yield something like hope:
"In the heart of the dark / In the shadow days / I have called out to Michael in a casual way / Said I was looking for manna in everything that I ate ... / Holy Spirit, I need to feel it more than I've ever felt / From the heart of the dark, I fled."
In this song — and so much of Kelly's catalog — listeners feel as though they're in the same room with someone who knows their sandpaper-rough histories, who shares their weakness. Now on tour, that sentiment will carry through in heartening ways.
Kelly plays Rose Music Hall at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 1. Tickets are $25-$28. Visit https://rosemusichall.com/ for more details.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at [email protected] or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Ruston Kelly brings 'Weakness Etc.' to up-close Rose Music Hall show
