Willy Braun and Reckless Kelly at the Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa
Country-rockers, Reckless Kelly, return to the Cain’s Ballroom on Friday night, June 8. The band features Willy and Cody Braun, brothers who were raised in Idaho on a steady diet of Western Swing, classic Country and straight ahead rock and roll. Eventually landing in Austin fifteen years ago, the band has been making great music ever since, with a sound that is rooted in country, but definitely not limited to it.
Regulars at the Cain’s Ballroom, these boys feel right at home in the hallowed dance hall of Western Swing. “We’ve been there quite a few times over the last years,” Willy Braun noted in a recent interview. “We grew up playing a bunch of old Western Swing with my dad and my brothers when we were kids. The first time we ever played the Cain’s, we flew my dad out because he is a huge Bob Wills’ fan and he was pretty proud of us because we were playing the Cain’s Ballroom.”
Music is in the Braun brothers’ blood. “All of my dad’s brothers and my grandfather played and all my brothers played. It’s kind of the family business,” Willy said. A move to the Texas was inevitable. “We moved to Austin because we heard it was the music capital of the world. We wanted to go somewhere we could play a lot of music and get our act together, tighten up the band a little bit, so we moved down to Austin..and we’ve been there ever since. It’s been a great town to us. It’s an amazing place. We love it. It’s a good town, and the music scene is just unbelievable, so it’s been a good move on our part.”
All of those influences have created a sound that is as much hard driving rock and roll as it is country. “We try to straddle the fence between rock and country a little bit,” Willy said of their music. “We grew up playing country music, but we all listened to rock and roll, too. It seems like we’ve started just drifting a little bit more towards the rock and roll thing for a while…We really kind of identify ourselves a lot more with the traditional country as opposed to the modern country that’s out there, which isn’t really our cup of tea. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe the sound. We like to call it our rock band with a little fiddle,” he concluded with a laugh. “It’s cool. We kind of just try to play whatever we like and we have a bunch of influences that pop in and out. We don’t limit ourselves to any one specific genre. We just try to make good music.”
That good music translates to a great live show. “Well, it’ll be pretty loud,” Willy warned me, laughing. “We try to mix it up a bit. We have a high energy show. Hopefully, there’ll be some people doing a little beer drinking and maybe some dancing. We’ve had everything from crowd surfing to swing dancing at our shows, so you never know what to expect. Probably at the Cain’s, it’ll be more swing dancing.”
For more information on the show, visit www.cainsballroom.com