SPRINGFIELD – Brian Kelly’s career has always been somewhat of a balancing act.
While he’d like to focus on being more of a full-time musician, he’s a graphic design artist – something he incorporates into his music – and he has even taken on some plumbing jobs to help pay the bills in recent years.
Before that, he was the primary caregiver for his sister Cari, who died in 2020 at age 51 after a long battle with cancer. Even though he was eight years younger, Brian – now 47 – was always close to Cari, as well as his other older sister, Jeanie, as they grew up together in Rivermore, Calif., near Oakland. They were both teachers, and both were very musically-oriented.
“Both were inspirations to me,” said Kelly; after playing at the PublicHouse in Springfield on Wednesday, Sept. 11. “My sisters introduced me to New Wave music in the 80s, but Cori was more of a Bohemian and more encouraging of creative pursuits – just because they’re two different people.”
For a while, Kelly scratched that creative itch by playing in rock bands.
Then his whole outlook changed just before he moved to New York in 2001.
“I saw Damien Jurado play by himself in this small room, the Blue Room in Chico – just him and a guitar, by himself – and he really captivated this group of people,” said Kelly, who also played at the Axe & Fiddle the night after he played in Springfield. “I thought, ‘I wish I could do that.’ That inspired me to not rely on other people to play music. I started writing lyric-driven songs.
“I grew up liking Van Halen, I always wanted to be like Van Halen. I wanted to be a lead guitar player, but it’s so hard to keep bands together. Everything is so complicated, it would be nice to do it by myself.
“When I moved to New York it was like a shift from being a virtuoso to being a really good player, it was more of a conceptual shift for me. The songwriting was more important than the quality of the playing. That was sort of a shift for me.
“A lot of the players I would see weren’t necessarily great players but they had really interesting ideas.”
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That’s the coolest part of Kelly’s music – his original ideas. His “Oceanography” indie-rock music website – which features a must-see video that honors Cori called “Monterrey” – is an impressive collection of work that shines a light on his considerable musical and graphic-arts expertise.
Then there are the songs that resonate with the everyday Joe Fan. Like “Fumer Tue,” when he was 14 and hanging out with friends at the AM/PM store and some 19-year-old guy always bought cigarettes for them. “Sometimes I think back about that guy and I just thought I should write a song about him,” Kelly said.
Or the time when he got a call from a debt collector trying to collect money for a credit card debt.
The debt collector’s name? Reggie Jackson.
Presumably, it wasn’t the same Reggie Jackson who rose to fame as one of baseball’s greatest sluggers with the Oakland A’s in the 70s.
Still, Kelly couldn’t help thinking, “Who am I for him to call me and ask for money?”
So one of his most popular songs is simply called “Reggie Jackson.”
The second full-length Oceanography album, “Thirteen Songs About Driving Nowhere in Alphabetical Order,” was released in 2021. He played six songs from that album during his two Lane County stops. He has plenty of compelling songs for a new album – but as a solo artist, he’s on his own. But hopefully, Kelly says he can make it happen by next year sometime.
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Five years after her passing, Cori still inspires Brian in countless ways. He’s constantly reminded of her. But there’s one thing that really eats at Brian. .
“I have a lot of regrets with my sister,” he said. “She had been sick for so long and relied on me for things so much that it wore me out. Then toward the end I felt I had given so much selfishly that I wish I had more experience with grief to know I’m never going to talk to my sister again.
“When someone is so sick, I kind of felt burdened by her. I regret feeling that way. She didn’t have a significant other or anybody else. But near the end I picked her up for an appointment and she said she wanted to go on tour with me, and even though I knew she couldn’t go, I should have said, ‘Hell yeah, let’s go on tour together!’ I was just so stupid.’”
Kelly says “Monterrey” was written during a very chaotic period in his life, while Cori was sick. “It was just a collection of thoughts and feelings more than a tribute song to Cori, but it kind of evolved into that,” he said.
One uplifting passage in the song goes like this:
“It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.
We’re prone to accidents close to home.”
The hidden meaning is that we often make mistakes and are cruelest to the ones we’re closest to and the ones we love, because we know they will always accept us.
Kelly admits his feelings are perfectly normal, and that most people have difficulty dealing with grief. Still, he pretty much gave up on his sister at the end while she was still in good spirits.
“She relied on me a lot,” Kelly said, “and I should have appreciated that more at the time, and I didn’t.”
