<< Back 11/20/02 Alt-country’s Kelly Willis packs sad songs with stunning vocals By Jay Hardwig Great vocalists don’t need much room to make their case. Forget the overwrought wailing of a Diva’s Last Stand: sometimes a single note says it all. So it is with Kelly Willis, who can pack a lot of emotion into the smallest spaces. Understated yet undeniably strong, Willis’ weary alto combines a songbird’s sweetness with a lover’s regret, touching on both heartache and hope. It is a voice that matures with each effort from the alt-country queen. If mature seems an odd choice of words for an artist in her early 30s, consider that Willis signed a major-label deal — with MCA Nashville — when she was only 20. Her three Nashville albums were critically acclaimed (if a little slick), but they never found the next-big-thing audience that MCA was banking on. By 26, Willis had been dropped from MCA; soon after she left Nashville to settle in Austin. “Fading Fast” was the title of her next offering — an EP for A&M — a title might have seemed prophetic if the four short songs weren’t so damned good. Next came “What I Deserve,” an album that was written, recorded, and in the can before it ever found a label. Willis eventually sold the goods to Rykodisc; the album found daylight in 1999 and became her most successful release to date. Now comes “Easy,” a languid and sometimes lush collection of small gems, gentler than “What I Deserve” but no less rich. In addition to that heartbreaking voice, “Easy” highlights Willis’ growth as a songwriter: keepers here include the plaintive “Not What I Had In Mind,” a beautiful lullaby in “Reason To Believe,” and the seductively submissive title track. More engaging still is “Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim,” a Kirsty MacColl cover that manages to be delightful and sassy and wise all at once. (“Don’t come the cowboy with me, Sonny Jim/I know lots of those and you’re not one of them/There’s a light in your eyes tells me somebody’s in/And you won’t come the cowboy with me.”) Even “Cowboy” manages to throw a bit of sadness in the mix; “Easy” is never more than two steps from sorrow, despite Willis’ claim that she’s as happy as she’s ever been. And why not? Her album’s drawn rave reviews, her husband is alt-country trouper (and “Angry All the Time” writer) Bruce Robison, and her first son Deral arrived last year. Part of that sorrow is surely Willis’ realization that her voice is uniquely suited for the sad, slow song; part of it is the memory of old wounds. “I think one ordinary average heartbreak is enough fuel to last a lifetime,” Willis says. We can only hope so: with “What I Deserve” and now “Easy,” Willis reminds us what country music can be. She’d be a fool to stop now.