Faith Kelly – On the Road 2026 – An Xperience Interview

Faith Kelly – On the Road 2026 – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

We first met Faith Kelly during our second issue, when she was co-starring in an independent film. Since then, she’s been all over the country, and she’s found all of the cool scenes. Welcome Faith,

RRX: Let’s go back. So eight year years, let’s just say 8 years. 8 years ago you’re, you’re in a film while you guys are filming a film, and then we interviewed you. So, uh, take it from there and, uh, and I’ll interject if I have any questions.

FK: Cool, well, I mean, let’s see, I think that was like 2018-ish, um, maybe 2019. I think it’s like winter February ‘19, so I won’t give you all the details because then it would be very long,

RRX: Right, true.

FK: I went on and I shot Walk Away, which is a feature film, and that was a horror movie. That one did pretty good. That one’s out now. I think I did a few other short films in that area, but pretty much right after I did two feature films in 2019 and after that. So the one didn’t come out yet though, that’s called Family Values. It should be out soon, which is funny because it’s so many years later. Mid-September 2021, I was invited to some open mics out in the Catskills, which is where I’m living now and eventually I went out to one and I met my now fiance, Casin Moon. Ultimately through that whole situation, everyone was going through life changes around 2021, and the band disbanded, and we went separate ways. I went on to do the solo thing. Basically what happened is in 2021, you know,

I met Caswyn and we started loving playing music together, but we’re two separate entities. We’re two solo musicians who write original music and we’ve been in bands before and we didn’t really wanna start a band together. We just started playing together. So he would start the set and then I’d end the set. And the music I’m making now is Faith Kelly. I call it spacey folk rock and roll with an Appalachian twist. So during COVID, I wanted to get back to my Appalachian roots because I’ve been on the psychedelic bus for so long. Like folk music, it’s still me, so it’s still kinda weird. And you can’t get rid of, you can’t shake the trippiness that I’d have. And basically, it’s, it’s turned into that. So For F*ck’s Sake came out in 2020.  Caz and I got together and our first tour was in February 2022, and that was a 10-day tour down to Florida. And then we’re like, ‘hey, we like touring, we like playing shows together.’ So then we’re like ‘let’s see if we could do a month.’ So we did a month, August of 2022 and then we were like, ‘well that was fun. Can we do six weeks?’ So we did six

RRX: Do you think being on the road so much and going so many different places every year impacts the music? Do you think that has any effect on the music itself?

FK: My new album Halfway Decent is a lot of songs about being on the road. It informs a lot of the music and it also informs us about how it gives you a better idea of what’s really going on. So you can hear word of mouth from friends and you can watch the news and all this other bull. Or you can go out, and see it for yourself. Yeah, that’s kind of what we did when we went on our first tour to Florida, Politics aside, everyone’s like, ‘oh, be careful down there because they didn’t like the politics or whatever,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m trying to go to the beach, you know, I was trying to go to the beach and play some shows. I’ve never been to Florida, so I was like, ‘I just wanna go check it out. When we came back with all these great stories and a lot of people were just like, ‘oh really? In a pocket full of friends you get out of your fish bowl and actually go. ‘See, you realise that people are actually pretty cool.’

Yeah. It’s not as scary and, and horrible as it, it’s being made out to be. And then also every little town and every state or city, small town, small city, big cities, there’s always a cool little scene and sometimes it takes some digging to find it, but there’s cool people everywhere just trying to do cool sh*t, you know, like the whole journey was like let’s just go see what’s going on.

And then you end up finding yourself jamming with a lot of new people and discovering new music, and then that informs how you play. Here’s a lot of different venues that we play. We’ll play a gay bar one night and then a punk bar, and then a hillbilly bar, and then a group Brewery and then a bistro and they’re like, ‘OK, keep it down so alright, tonight’s show I’m gonna go full rock and roll and head bang and do the back bend and then, okay, today’s show we’re gonna pull it back a little bit, lean more into the folkineness.

CM: Because our music is really different right now. We’re two individual artists. We don’t write together. She does her thing. I’ve been doing mine. We go on a tour and she comes back with a whole album, but it takes me like a decade to write a 3 chord song. Yeah, but I’m better towards an older crowd too, so if it’s a mellower kind of atmosphere. I more or less take the lead on what’s going on, but if it’s more of a funk venue and you know. Super high energy, then that’s when she’ll take over the main although you we have some rockers we stay with you too so it’s kind of cool, because you get with what we do you get two completely different styles that actually work together.

FK: That’s awesome. Yeah, we’ve been called time capsules because we don’t do a lot of covers. It’s all originals, but it’s different. I don’t know how else to describe it, just a different sound.

RRX: Being that you guys have been all over the place, is there any place that has a really kick ass scene that is unsung or underrated?

FK: Oh, Bisbee, Arizona. People think of Arizona, they think of Tucson or Phoenix. It’s like you drive, you get off Highway 10, drive 45 minutes down to the border, and there’s this little town that’s just awesome music scene, a lot of music venues. You can go walk around town any night and find music. Then holy smoke, you know, Florida. It’s funny because people have a view of Florida, what it is,  Margaritaville, blah blah blah. There is a punk scene in Florida that is unrivalled and it’s just so underground. There’s a little town called Stewart, Florida, and they got this place called The Stand. And you’re in this rich Florida looking neighbourhood. And all these punks come rolling out and there’s this really cool music scene. And so you get a lot of these towns, you know, a lot of states to get these raps. Then you really get in there. And you’re like, holy smokes, like Texas, man, we have a lot of fun in Texas too. Texas has Corpus Christi, which has an awesome music scene. We played with the band up in Hoosick Falls, New York. Mallet Brothers I think from these pockets that I would have never heard of these guys unless we played a show with them. And then all of a sudden we played a show with the Mallet Brothers and this whole music scene opens up that we didn’t know about. Another awesome music scene is up in Minot, North Dakota. That’s a place that we try to get to.

 

 

 

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