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Kelly Willis is Back Being Blue, to take a colour-coded cue from the title of her seventh album.

It’s a shade she wears well, though long-patient fans might just say: You had us at back. They’ll take a new Willis record in whatever hue it comes, now that it’s been 11 years since her last solo release, 2007’s Translated from Love. The Austin-based singer/songwriter has hardly been MIA in the intervening years, having recorded and toured as part of a duo with Bruce Robison. But she’s setting the duet Mm.Oo. aside for do-it-alone mode, at least as far as the spotlight is concerned. (Robison hovers just outside it this time, as producer.). Hers is a solo voice again, but it’s not necessarily sotto voce: This is an album of songs about lonesomeness that also happens to be a cracklingly good time.

This will be Kelly’s only Scottish Date

Presented by Lonesome Highway

“I attempted to make music that could fit in any era. But leans on the simplicity of the music that firstinspired me. Roots rockabilly country blues, to narrow it down for you! Kind of a Nick Lowe meets Skeeter Davis meets Crystal Gayle. Sounds that were in full blaze when I first moved Austin”

(Kelly Willis)

“Kelly Willis looks back to country music before Nashville embraced power ballads and cute happily-ever-after songs. She has an old-fashioned country voice with a twang, a breathy quaver, a break or a throaty sob whenever she needs one”

(New York Times)

Kelly Willis