We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelsey Blackstone a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kelsey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

As a singer-songwriter, I get a special attachment to the songs I create. Many times, the song passes through a lot of trusted hands to get from my journal to streaming platforms. I usually have a lot of people that I have to thank because of their meaningful collaboration with me and the song, whether that’s the other musicians who recorded parts for it, the producers, the mixing engineers, the cover artists, and so many more!

Less than one week ago, though, I put out an original song that was a bit different from my past releases due to the sound and release process. It’s my first solo song I’ve released and it’s called Leaving Boston. It’s about moving away from the city I called home for almost seven years: three weeks ago I moved to Nashville, and while it’s been really exciting to begin pursuing my music career further, it’s also really bittersweet. I’m really going to miss the people and places that I love so much.

Before I left Boston, I worked with Boston-based producer Jeff Wang from Model Peril Sounds. He helped me record this live track with just me and my piano. When I heard the track mixed for the first time, I knew I wanted to release it. Shortly after the move, I got busy one afternoon making a collage of all of my friends in Boston to use for the cover art. Then I sent it off to distributors and here we are!

In the world of endless autotune and overdubs, I personally enjoy hearing more of the live sound from time to time, and this live, intimate recording served that purpose. There’s a lot of pressure to look and sound perfect these days, so I know this release goes against the grain a little bit. But at the end of the day, I’m trying to communicate honestly and authentically with the world around me, to get people together and to feel less alone, and I hope it helps even just one person going through a time of tough transition. Writing, recording, and then releasing Leaving Boston has helped me through it too.

Leaving Boston is available everywhere you stream music, and you can check out my YouTube for the live video from our recording session. I’m everywhere @kelseyblackstone :)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a musician and songwriter originally from CT. For the last seven years I lived in Boston going to school and then beginning my music career. Now I’m new to Nashville and trying to keep myself and my music moving forward!

Growing up I was lucky to receive training in a lot of different musical areas: I’m classically trained on piano and cello, and have studied jazz, music theatre, pop, and rock vocal styles. I also listened to a lot of retro rock and pop music from the 60s and 70s. The thing that inspires me most about some of the musicians from that time is that they were able to create positive social movements and bring people together in community – my ultimate goal is to create my own version of this with my music at the center.

Like a lot of other musicians today, I definitely have a multi-genre sound in the songs that I write and release into the world. Most of the time though, I try to keep it up-beat and positive. While there’s many aspects of my music career that I love, nothing feels as good to me as performing on stage. Whether it’s with my 6 piece band or just me and my piano, my goal is to always entertain and uplift my audience.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society can be supporting it’s artists in a lot of important ways. With the threat of AI taking away jobs from various creative industries, people can make sure to directly support the real people making art. Paying people their rates, not committing copyright infringement, and crediting reposts others may make on social media with the original artists info.

For musicians specifically, we need a better way to make money off of streaming platforms. It’s no secret that most of the available/popular streaming platforms run off a business model that helps pay people in suits, rather than us artists who are creating the music that people want to listen to. We need more accountability from people in these places, as well as; ticketing giants who charge for fees, venues who take a % of artist merch sales, the list goes on. Creatives of all kinds are always trying to be convinced to do everything for free or for as little money as possible – people need to start realizing that creatives are people who have to pay bills just like everyone else.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Something I wish I realized earlier on was how many opportunities you can get from just asking for them. Some of the biggest shows I’ve booked in my career so far are ones I got from simply asking someone already involved with the show on Instagram or email. I was unaware at first how much of my time was going to have to be spent on email, finding people to contact and asking them for various things. All in all, my advice to someone starting out is don’t get too distracted envying the resources you don’t have, but use the ones you do have to your advantage.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kelseyblackstone.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelseyblackstone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelsey.blackstone.52/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8s3IRmJ3vNl-uCuF20nAJA
• Other: Leaving Boston (Live): https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/kelseyblackstone/leaving-boston-live

Image Credits
All live performance photos were taken by Caroline Daniels at Faneuil Hall in Boston, MA.