“We have booze, trays, worms, lures, all the good stuff here in Florida at our house,” says Brian Kelley. Advertising sign via Zoom, from his converted pool room (and sometimes songwriting room) at his Florida residence. “When it's open for songwriting season, I call it the Song Saloon. when it's fishing season, it's the Tackle Shop or the Tackle Box.”
Kelley's willingness to combine various aspects of his life is distilled in his new solo album, Tennessee True, out May 10 via Big Machine Records. These rural images of creeks, ponds, fishing lures, dirt roads and many outdoor-oriented brands, from Mossy Oak to John Deere — feature in songs like “Dirt Road Date Night,” “Acres” and “How We' re Livin'”.
As the Florida half of the duo Florida Georgia Line, Kelley helped usher in the “bro-country” era of country music with a string of FGL hits, including two songs that would be certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, which meant overselling. 10 million: 'Cruise' and Bebe Rexha collaboration 'Meant to Be'. The duo won 16 Advertising sign Country Airplay No. 1 and more than 13 billion global streams and played to more than 4 million fans in arenas and stadiums.
After Florida Georgia Line went their separate ways after a breakup in 2020, both Kelley and Hubbard embarked on solo careers — which Kelley says “isn't easy, in a sense, being a new guy, a new voice” — noting that Hubbard had handled most of the lead vocals on FGL. “My lead vocals weren't out there, so it was a fun challenge. You discover who you are, musically.”
Although Kelley released his debut solo album, Sunshine State of Mind, due in 2021 via Warner Music Nashville and his own label Nashville South, considers his new album to be his “true debut.” The album's “See You Next Summer” reached the top 30 on Country Airplay.
Kelley took a deliberate, painstaking approach to pouring his Tennessee Trueeventually co-writing eight of the dozen songs and collaborating with writers such as Thomas Archer, Matt McGinn, Kaitlin Owen, Blake Pendergrass, Jimmy Robbins and Michael Tyler.
“I didn't care what their songwriting credentials were, I just wanted to write with more people and I wanted my circle to grow. I wasn't holding anything back,” Kelley says of the new project. “I want people to see that I'm no different than the people who listen to this record — I love to work hard, I love family, I love God and I love country. Hunting, fishing and the outdoors are how we navigate our lives.”
For Kelley, the songwriting process isn't like a day spent at the lake catching fish.
“You don't know what you're going to get — you might get half a song, you might make it. It's about showing up, even if you don't feel 100% or inspired. With songwriting and fishing, it's about how patient you can be until something inspires a line or a title.”
Working with mega-producer Dann Huff (Keith Urban, Megadeth, Faith Hill), Kelley eschewed much of the hip-hop inflected sound of his work with FGL, instead relying on a more acoustic and rock-oriented (but still radio-polished) instruments.
“Dann has a way of characterizing each individual artist sonically in their own way,” Kelley explains. “You could talk about Rascal Flatts, you could talk about Keith Urban. He's made so many great records and they all sound different. He liked how hard I wanted to push on this album and make some songs a little heavier. On “King Ranch,” he sent five different guitar solos that he had played. I picked one and he said, “Oh, you're an '89 metalhead with that solo.”
Although most of the album is based around casual, outdoor fare, the album's closing song – and its accompanying video – have garnered speculation and controversy. After Kelley released “Kiss My Boots,” which he co-wrote with Dylan Guthro, some listeners speculated that the song's vengeful betrayal lyrics were aimed at his former FGL bandmate Hubbard. Those murmurs grew with the release of the music video, which featured Kelley chasing a snake and ended with a scene of Kelley, in clear view of his “Florida” belt buckle, peeling a peach (Georgia's official state fruit, Hubbard's home).
Kelley wouldn't say if the song was about Hubbard, saying, “The song started with the line 'she goes out with the whiskey,' and we were just channeling that feeling of standing up for yourself, and that means a bunch of different things to all of us who wrote it.” that day,” says Kelley. “Everybody has a few people on their 'Kiss My Boots' list, especially in this industry. This was an opportunity to let the fans, the listeners know that another one of my truths is that I've been through things in my life, I've had struggles and navigating how to be a healthy adult or take the high road. I wanted to give people an anthem, an outlet.”
Kelley shot the video on his wife Brittney's family farm in Musella, Georgia, the same place where another album track, “Acres,” was written.
“We were there and Dickey's Peach Farm is right down the road—so we thought it was a cool moment because the character I play, the guy who catches snakes, just went through hunting and killing that snake,” he says. “I think people could take it a lot of ways, but for me I took it as once you get the snake, you're relaxed and you wait for the next call and I'm done for a second. I thought it was cool, but that's the freedom of putting art out into the world – people can take it however they want.”
He says the video's theatricality was intentional. “I didn't want to act or sing – I didn't want to sync anything and make it like every other video we've all done. I wanted it to be a work of art. I went to Belmont [University] in Nashville and got my degree in entertainment industry studies, which was movies, music, television. So it's nice to live all these things and put my touch on everything I do.”
Kelley offered more details about what led to the duo's breakup Bussin' With the Boys podcast on Thursday (May 9), saying the duo originally agreed to wait to release solo music until after their fifth studio album. Kelley said that in December 2020, he received a call from Hubbard informing him that Hubbard would be releasing a collaboration with Tim McGraw. that song, “Undivided,” was released in January 2021. Then, after Kelley's solo album was released in June 2021, Kelley says Hubbard contacted him and “it became known to me that we were done.” Kelley added, “It resulted in no music for the foreseeable future, now we're not even going to tour… I'm here to tell the truth, I'm not here to try to burn anything, anything, I'm here to stand up for myself and my family, and like I said, the fans. [Billboard has reached out to Hubbard’s camp for comment but has not heard back as of press time.]
In addition to their separate solo careers, another sign of FGL's divergent paths is the recent, sudden closure of their Nashville bar FGL House (which opened in 2017), in addition to the previous closure of their music label Tree Vibez and of their Old Camp Whiskey. But Kelley has slowly built up his own business hub in recent years, including the Tribe Kelley Surf Post in Grayton Beach, Fla., and the Papa Surf Burger Bar in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. (Kelley and his wife, Brittney, partnered with Jason and Brittany Aldean in the Burger Bar venture). The Kelleys bought an old coffee shop during the COVID pandemic and had already conceived of the name for Papa Surf Burger Bar.
“We got a good deal on the place before all the real estate went crazy,” he says Advertising sign. “We knew there was a need for a burger joint and we love real estate, architecture and interior design, so it was great to renovate this house and blend the old with the new. Hopefully this is one of the many Papa Surfs to appear along the coastal areas, but this is kind of the flagship.”
He also notes that his entrepreneurial tendencies run in the family: “My dad is 81 years old and he's still looking at small real estate things. I'm like him — I just like to work and create.”
