We Never Gave Reckless Kelly the Respect They Deserved

I've been thinking about this since seeing Reckless Kelly this month at FitzGerald's in Berwyn, Illinois...

How did we let one of the greatest bands in Red Dirt music spend nearly 30 years being "your favorite band's favorite band" instead of becoming a household name?

Seriously.

Willy Braun is one of the best songwriters this genre has ever produced. Cody Braun can make a fiddle sing, cry, and kick you in the teeth. Joe Miller might be the coolest human alive. There should honestly be a cartoon character based on Joe Miller. If you've seen the band live, you know exactly what I mean. (At least give us Joe Miller merch).

And then there are the things that pop into my head while I'm watching them. My ADHD brain can't help it. Does Cody braid his own hair? Does Willy tuck his boot-cut jeans into his boots because he's making a lifelong stand against skinny jeans? How many instruments, collectively, can they play?

But underneath all of that is something I've wondered for years.

Why didn't Reckless Kelly become as big as Whiskey Myers? Why aren't they filling the same venues as The Red Clay Strays? Why weren't they the band everyone knew?

They have the songs.

They have the musicianship.

They have the high-quality live show.

They have three decades of consistency that very few bands can match.

Maybe they're too authentic. They never seemed interested in chasing whatever Nashville or social media decided was cool. They just kept writing incredible records and putting on incredible shows. Maybe that's why the people who do know Reckless Kelly are so fiercely loyal. They feel like they belong to us.

As the band steps back from full-time touring, I can't help but think we should have done more. We should have dragged more friends to shows. We should have talked about them more. We should have celebrated Willy Braun as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation instead of assuming everyone already knew.

Because they didn't.

Reckless Kelly deserved every bit of the respect they've earned. They also deserved a whole lot more attention than they ever got.