Kassi Valazza set to wow audiences at Kilkenny Roots festival

There has been a cult-like fascination growing around Kassi Valazza since the self-release of her 2019 debut album Dear Dead Days, which she followed with a surprise digital EP called Highway Sounds last year.

She is seated squarely at the vanguard of new American songwriters strengthening and broadening the sound of country music as she tours with celebrated acts such as Melissa Carper and Riddy Arman.

The Southwestern native resides in Portland, Oregon, a hotbed of songwriters producing albums that both bear the torch and bend the arc of American roots music.

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Valazza’s forthcoming new album ‘Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing’ is a spellbinding collection of songs that dangle like protective magic talismans, catching dreams and glinting light. She hypnotizes listeners with a sturdy, yet gentle, voice and painterly songwriting imbued with an independent spirit.
Though her music plays country cousin to British folk, calling to mind greats like Sandy Denny, a Southwestern American streak carves its way through these solemn, sweetly sung melodies like a canyon.

On the upcoming ten-song set, multi-instrumentalists from Portland’s TK & the Holy Know-Nothings appear in varying roles as Valazza’s backing band: Taylor Kingman (guitars, bass, vocals), Jay Cobb Anderson (harmonica, guitars, pedal steel, bass), Lewi Longmire (pedal steel, piano, bass, trumpet), Sydney Nash (organ, Farfisa, cornet, Wurlitzer), and Tyler Thompson (drums).

The group’s swirling psychedelia combines with Valazza’s gutsy and graceful vocal poetry for a singular sound that washes over the listener like a flash flood, heavy and without warning.

Album opener “Room In The City” introduces Valazza’s high-lonesome, but never lonely world with sharp harmonica and reeling organ. She sings of a touring musician’s longing for home, and a distant lover, with lyrical imagery of open skies, whistling winds, and sepia-toned rock formations.

Using the physical world around her to paint metaphors from the soul, Valazza carries us through her mind and heart, ever the effortless narrator.

“Watching Planes Go By” spins a cautionary tale about the dangers of standing still in life and accepting one’s own fate. The song sets a curious and cosmic atmosphere of psychedelic folk-rock as Valazza reflects on the struggles of moving on.

On “Corners,” fingerpicked acoustic guitar dances with bounding bass and twinkling piano, as twanging telecaster and a gentle backing choir flow behind Valazza like a stream through a lonesome vista.

“Smile” opens with a familiar telecaster honky-tonk squawk and a half-time trot, but Valazza sings in deference to traditional bar-room tales. Hers is about acceptance when love is not enough, about being satisfied having met someone at all, and keeping only a farewell note as a souvenir.

In her careful hands, the typical loved-and-lost tale becomes an ode to self-realization and the liberating feeling of going it alone.

As her journey winds down to “Welcome Song” — the album’s final Valazza-original preceding a perfect closing cover of Michael Hurley’s “Wildegeeses” — tension from the singer-songwriter’s nearly behind-the-beat band pushes and pulls the listener into a whirlwind of stream-of-consciousness lyricism. It’s clear that every line Valazza writes carries extreme weight, every simple word is carefully chosen and placed with intention.

'Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing' captures the romanticism of country crooners with the intuition of a realist poet. Exploring themes of love and longing through metaphors from the natural world, Valazza manages to cut straight to the heart of the human experience, her lucid songs full of delightfully languid characters that haunt the hallucinatory soundscapes her band creates.

Kassi will perform at the Kilkenny Roots Festival on April 29 and 30.