Long before Kimberly Kelly stepped foot inside a Nashville writing room, the country singer/songwriter shared the stage with Billy Joe Shaver in Texas. The late Texas Country Music Hall of Famer served as a mentor to Kelly and inspired the name of her 2022 album, I’ll Tell You What’s Gonna Happen.
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While walking through the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s exhibit, Kelly stumbled upon a quote from Shaver. The display shared the story of Shaver coming to Nashville to meet with Waylon Jennings. Shaver had songs he wanted Jennings to record, but the singer tried to run him off with $100.
“[Shaver] ended up saying, ‘I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen: You’re gonna either listen to these songs, or I’m gonna whip your ass,’” Kelly tells American Songwriter. “I took a picture of that quote and I said, ‘This is gonna be my mantra.’”
She sent the photo to Thirty Tigers co-founder David Macias, who dared Kelly to name her album I’ll Tell You What’s Gonna Happen, so she did. Fittingly, her 12-song project ends with a cover of Shaver’s “Black Rose” and a voicemail from her mentor.
Kelly met the country outlaw in Texas at the start of her career. A family friend was a realtor who got Shaver out of a deal. He felt indebted to her, so she introduced Shaver to Kelly while she was recording demos for her first album. Liking what he heard, Shaver invited Kelly to play the mandolin for him the following Saturday at Antone’s in Austin.
By 2012, Kelly began co-writing in Nashville after her sister, Kristen, got a record deal. She honed in on songwriting and was influenced by artists and songwriters like Shania Twain and Mariah Carey. “In the Texas scene, they really focused on being a songwriter,” she says. “I wanted to be the next Reba McEntire.”
Kelly continued writing and performing while working as a speech therapist. She and her husband, producer and songwriter Brett Tyler, reached out to publishers to find the best songs for I’ll Tell You What’s Gonna Happen, released via Show Dog Nashville.
“I made it as if it were the last thing I was ever gonna make,” Kelly, who signed to Show Dog Nashville in partnership with Thirty Tigers in 2021, stresses. “Part of being a great writer is realizing that sometimes someone has said it better than you, and that’s picking a song that you didn’t write.”
She recorded songs written by songwriting legends like Bob DiPiero, Karyn Rochelle, Bobby Tomberlin, Kent Blazy, Wynn Varble, and Shaver. She wrote two songs on the project: the heart-wrenching divorce ballad “Person That You Marry” with Lori McKenna and Tyler, and the feel-good barn burner “Blue Jean Country Queen,” featuring Steve Wariner, penned with Tyler and Wariner.
The idea for “Person That You Marry” came from Kelly’s friend, Samantha, who had gone to lunch with someone who was going through a divorce. The man said, “You know the person you marry but not the person you divorce.”
“I said, ‘Samantha, if you don’t write that, I will!’” Kelly recalls with a laugh. At the time, she also was reading a book where a woman’s husband went off to war.
“I thought, I knew you in love, but this is war. … You know the person you marry, but not the one you divorce,” she says.
A powerful story song, “Person That You Marry” highlights Kelly’s talent as a songwriter as well as being able to emote a story that isn’t entirely hers. She and Tyler are happily married, but Kelly says divorce runs in her family.
Kelly’s debut single, “Summers Like That,” showcases another side of the singer. Written by Rochelle and Tomberlin, the heartfelt ballad paints the picture of young love while name-dropping songs by Trisha Yearwood (“Walkaway Joe”), Pam Tillis (“Maybe It Was Memphis”), Deana Carter (“Strawberry Wine”), and David Lee Murphy (“Dust on the Bottle”).
“Every song that it mentions in there I grew up listening to,” Kelly, a member of CMT’s Next Women of Country Class of 2023, recalls. “It’s one of those timeless love songs. … If you didn’t know those song titles, it would just sound like a love story.”
“Summers Like That” is being serviced to radio via Thirty Tigers after Show Dog disbanded its promotion team in April. Meanwhile, Kelly promises she has “other things up my sleeve, too.”
“It seems like everything that’s happened to me has been very unconventional and we keep going,” she says. “My record is a reflection of things that I had gone through emotionally throughout my life experience.”
As much as the record reflects Kelly, it also serves as a tribute to the late Shaver, who died in 2020.
“He was the first person to be like, ‘This girl is good,’ and take me under his wing,” she concludes. “It’s just wild to look back and think that somewhere I was in his future.”
