Kelsie Watts was born into a musical family, and at just two years old her parents knew she was destined for the stage.

Her first love was musical theater, where she had the opportunity to be the lead in school plays while also performing in her church choir. She went on to study opera, vocal performance and commercial music at Belmont University, but during her sophomore year she found herself inspired by artists such as Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga and Mariah Carey. Suddenly she realized that she wanted to write and perform her own music.

“I developed the dream to sell out arenas and give people a place where they feel like they belong,” she said. “Although, I will say, I owe all of my vocal technique to opera. Studying classically is a big reason that I sing like I can and not have vocal damage.”

High school would be the last time she took center stage. That is, until she made her Broadway debut as Queen Jane Seymour in the globally acclaimed SIX The Musical.

Watts was performing in a variety show on the Nashville Showboat a few years ago when a woman in the audience handed her a business card. That woman was SIX Musical Director Roberta Duchak. Watts had never heard of the musical, but after listening to the West End recording she immediately fell in love.

SIX The Musical is a British musical comedy that gives a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII. It is presented in the form of a singing competition that allows each wife to share their story in order to determine who suffered the most at the hands of their husband. After debuting on the West End, it made its Broadway debut in 2020 and has toured the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.

In early 2023, Watts was invited to a week-long intensive workshop for SIX. They dove into the music, choreography and script, but at the end of the week Watts didn’t believe that anything would progress further than that.

“I took the experience as a blessing to learn so much from elite instructors in the industry and to better my craft,” she said.

It wasn’t until October of 2024 that she would hear from her manager that she had been offered the role of Jane Seymour. She remembers the day clearly, as she got the call while out running errands with her husband. The salesperson assisting them in their purchase celebrated with them as she hung up the phone.

When she was first introduced to the character of Jane Seymour she admits that she made premature judgements on who she was. But as she delved into the character, she began to appreciate her. She even performed the character’s song, “Heart of Stone”, as her audition for Duchak.

She loves that she is able to bring so much of herself to the character of Jane Seymour. However, she also has to keep in mind that she was a real person and the show’s ultimate goal is to give these women their identities back.

“I love meshing my pop vocal style into a character, but also love bringing in my awkwardness,” she said. “It makes it so fun! The most challenging part was finding a way to be vulnerable so quickly. There are many parts of Jane I relate to and I had to make a decision to allow myself to feel in order to bring out the authenticity of the character.”

Kelsie Watts never gave up on her Broadway dream, and with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of perseverance, audiences can see her every night at the Lena Horne Theatre.

Tickets are available here.

Photo courtesy of Joey Wharton

Promoting the release of new music can be equal parts daunting and exhilarating, but for Whitney Caroline, her 2022 burwell EP was nearly the end of her musical career.

Her debut EP, boxes, was written and recorded in the throes of grief after the passing of her mother. It took a serious toll on her mental health and by the time it was released, she had enough. She stepped back to focus on herself, and during that time she came across a nonprofit organization that centers on grief counseling. She immersed herself in their services, eventually taking on a role at the organization. Stories of other people’s grief and overcoming gave her hope, and she wished to give that hope to others.

"Now I feel pretty at peace with depression enough to talk about it,” she said. “I journeyed through and found light at the end of the tunnel. Having something that I believed in to focus on was really good for me to keep me busy, to get out of my head and find any way to express my passion in a way that was making a difference.”

Immersing herself in this new role changed the way she looks at the boxes EP. She can hear the emotion that was channeled into those songs, but it is honestly something that is too sad for her to currently listen to. She is in a different headspace than she was when she created those songs, and she chooses to focus on honoring her mother versus grieving her. She believes there is a line between processing and dwelling, and a bit of time has passed where she understands that now.

“There’s not really anything you can do when you lose a loved one, but having this job has been a tangible way for me to process,” she said. “It doesn’t really affect me the way that it used to. I don’t know if you ever fully heal from grief; I think you process it and you manage it but you don’t ever fully heal. It’s still there - it doesn’t go away - but grief is not really a challenge anymore.”

Working through the stages of grief eventually brought her back to music, and particularly a song that she wrote in 2017. “sing it back” was always a song that she believed in, and when she rediscovered it, she found the message was still relatable.

The inspiration behind it was a time in her life where she felt like she was shouting into the void, asking for answers and receiving nothing in return. The luxury of hindsight is seeing how answers came when they were supposed to, but being in that moment and pleading for a sign can feel useless. Faith, hope, whatever it may be; “sing it back” is about trusting that everything will work out the way it’s intended.

She originally wrote it with Corey Pavlosky and placed an unfinished version with a music licensing company. When it was chosen to feature on the Amazon Prime television mini series Sweethearts, it gave her the push to head back to the studio with Pavlosky to write a second verse, mix and master the song.

The album art concept was always meant to be a telephone; a symbol of an unanswered call. When she discovered that March 10 was National Landline Telephone Day, it all came together. It was finally time to release “sing it back”.

burwell was a project that nearly ceased to exist. After a deeply emotional debut EP and a few years to sit in those emotions, Whitney Caroline made the decision to make music a part of her journey again. With more new music to come, she hopes listeners find the same sense of hope that she has.

Photo courtesy of Nolita Studios

There is nothing wrong with keeping your head above the clouds sometimes. While the definition may mean spending too much time thinking about impractical ideas, those ideas may not be far off from reality. There are moments that can keep someone on the ground - marriage, sobriety, fatherhood - but being able to dream while staying in the moment can be just as important. At least, it is for Alex Runions.

Runions has spent the past 15 years writing and recording commercial country music that has earned him national recognition across Canada. The milestones of his personal life, however, led to his latest album, Above the Clouds and On the Ground.

Not only would this album become his most personal to date, but it would be the first time that he didn’t write music from a commercially successful standpoint. This time around he intended to focus more on expressing his feelings and less on trends.

“Deep down I could feel a pull that the music I was doing in the past - I’m proud of it and I’m happy with it - just wasn’t really speaking to me anymore,” he said. “There have been a lot of changes in my life around the last four or five years that really brought about some changes in my music as well.”

He credits a few major milestones for bringing him to this conclusion, one of them being sobriety. He found a lot of clarity from this decision, and it inspired him not only to write about it but to dive into his previous work and see if there was enough material to create his third album.

He remembers going into the studio with producer Chris Burke-Gaffney, a frequent collaborator of his. He brought a batch of songs with him and took the time to explain why he felt each song belonged on the album. He received great insight from Burke-Gaffney, including the thought to narrow down the songs about sobriety. The two of them were able to turn the track list into an eclectic mix of love songs, breakup songs and songs about personal life moments.

The album starts somber before transitioning into cheerful love songs and then comes back down into a song that encapsulates the message of the album, titled “Settling Up”. The song brings a sense of hope that the other songs don’t necessarily have. For many of the songs, they have no resolution. They have that sense of grounding, while “Settling Up” is in the clouds.

One of the more grounding songs is “Agreeable Grey”, written primarily by his wife, Erin Hill. Runions said her style of writing tends to lean more towards melancholy, and this song was inspired by real-life events between the two of them.

“That’s a really special experience, just to be able to sit in a room with your partner and be able to collaborate,” he said. “It’s even more special when songs do come to life. That is not something everyone gets to experience.”

A song that ended up being incredibly important to Runions and the album was the one dedicated to his beloved dog, Kinsey. “A Song for My Dog” was written days after her passing, and when he went to record it he became more emotional than he had anticipated. Even speaking about her nearly three years later makes him emotional. He hadn’t realized how much he leaned on her and when that support was gone when he felt like he needed that the most, it made for a powerful recording session.

“I struggled through it,” he said. “I was really in the moment singing the song and the producer was really encouraging it. I don’t think I’ve ever really had that type of moment in the studio.”

Something all these songs have in common is that their intentions were set the moment the songwriting process had begun. Each co-writer went into a session knowing that Runions had no intention of producing a commercial country song. For the few co-writers that couldn’t break that state of mind, the rest were willing and ready to step outside everyone’s comfort zones. The writing wasn’t forced but was encouraged to become something that he would be proud of.

“I essentially compiled the songs that I’ve always wanted to write,” he said. “When you’re trying to sell your music commercially, trying to get it on radio and playing that game, you’re really trapped in this box. I think a lot of these songs I was very excited about even though a lot of the material are these sad songs. I was very excited to finally not write a standard type of song; I don’t think I really ventured too far out but overall I wasn’t worried about the length of a song, I just wanted to make sure that the songs meant something and with the idea of ‘if I’m going through something then other people are probably experiencing it as well.’”

That’s not to say that this album wasn’t challenging. It may have been freeing in terms of not worrying about song lengths or musical trends, but it turns out that those worries were still present. In the past, perfectionism was key to getting that polished pop sound. Moving away from that to get a more organic, Americana vibe was unlike anything he had done before. That did not stop him from questioning himself the entire time or falling back into a commercial ideology, but having a trusted partner in Burke-Gaffney truly helped bring the vision to life.

In the end, he found that sense of freedom that brought forth an unapologetically Alex Runions album. There is nothing wrong with having your head up in the clouds, hopeful for a better and brighter future. If anything, it helps him live in the moment.

Photo courtesy of Dana Gorab

Artwork courtesy of Ethan Brown

When Senior Marketing Manager Kris English began working at The Salt Shed, Chicago’s indoor/outdoor music venue and creative touchstone, he had an idea before the roof was even installed that combined his love for film and the endless amount of music that would grace their stages.

His day-to-day prior to the opening of The Salt Shed included finding its brand identity, as well as creating unique programming that could speak to the brand. He thought about his passion for film and how he could bring it to the forefront in a meaningful way. A number of venues in the city could screen music documentaries or films about music; this had to be something unexpected. Thus, Crying at the Shed was born.

A concept built around emotional and creative storytelling, the marketing team quickly got to work on the inaugural event in 2024. It absolutely was a group effort, including Alternative Events Program Manager Mary McKeen, who English said was instrumental in bringing the vibe from concept to reality.

English decided to build the programming around Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, partly due to the fact that he had spent years trying to coordinate an event with the film’s composer, Jon Brion. Soon enough, they were announcing the three-day festival nestled on and around Valentine’s Day. They asked their social media following, “Are you all ready to…shed…a few tears?” February 14 included a special solo performance and Q&A with Brion following the screening of Big Fish, while Paris, Texas and a performance by Douglas McCombs of Tortoise took place February 15. The last day of the event, February 16, screened all three films of the Before trilogy.

The inaugural event was a memorable experience for English. Seeing his idea brought to life, and seeing people actually attending and enjoying themselves, was a special moment. He watched along as Brion performed in the city for the first time in more than a decade. He watched the same people sit through Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight - nearly a four and a half hour commitment. It was exactly how he pictured the event and so much more.

“Seeing people come together and share an experience of watching films together, these curated emotional films, was really special,” he said. “It felt like a community; that we were bringing this community together.”

It was important for English and his colleagues to keep the vibe of the event for its second year. They strayed a bit from the tragic love stories to include more that still impacted the viewer emotionally.

“There’s many different ways that you can get emotional when watching films and there’s a lot of stories that can impact you emotionally,” English said. “We wanted to expand the palette a little bit.”

They chose Julianna Barwick for the performance aspect, allowing her ethereal music and visuals to create what English called a "meditative, hypnotic type of an evening.” He felt that she seamlessly fit into the first film of the night, The Tree of Life.

The rest of this year’s lineup of tear jerkers included Bird, Big Fish, Boyhood, Romeo + Juliet, Chungking Express and Two Lovers. Big Fish is one of English’s all-time favorite films, and watching the audience appreciating the film as much as him was his most cherished moment of the festival.

Integral to the success of the event were partnerships with the Music Box Theatre and the Chicago International Film Festival. Not only was their advice and participation a welcome addition to the event, but their audience of independent film lovers had the potential to bring in an entirely new crowd to the venue.

“Reaching those audiences that maybe The Salt Shed isn’t reaching on a daily basis was really beneficial for Crying at the Shed,” English said. “When these influential film groups in Chicago wanted to get behind it, that really made me happy. It was just such a privilege and it has been a privilege to work with them.”

Photo courtesy of Rachel Monteleone

After a nationwide search of over 7,000 auditionees in the summer of 2022, Hits! The Musical toured 48 cities across the U.S. with a cast of 29 extraordinary singers and dancers. The first show of its kind, spotlighting performers aged 10-22, Hits! The Musical gave them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase their star power.

For Belle Bongiorno, she was sure her background in competitive dance would make for a great audition. She was in for a surprise when she was informed that she had been registered as a singer and would only be able to sing at the audition. The surprises continued when she booked the gig.

Her experience with Hits! The Musical flipped a switch for her, and when she returned home from tour she started an all-girl rock band called She the People. She also began working with musical director, composer and guitarist Tony Bruno, who she met on tour. One night when the cast and crew went bowling, Bruno said to her, “There’s something about you that makes people not want to look away.” He watched her as she became a self-taught bass player, honed in on her guitar skills and flourished as a singer. It was a no-brainer that they began working together on what would ultimately become her solo music.

It was only within the last six months that they began writing and recording music for Bongiorno. The compliment from Bruno brought her confidence to an all-time high and pushed her to try everything she could get her hands on. That expensive guitar hanging on the wall at the local Guitar Center? It was calling her name.

“I can’t buy an instrument that expensive and then not learn how to play it,” she said. “I [bought] some crazy instruments and I’m really glad I did because it inspired me. Playing on something that plays like butter is much easier than some shitty guitar that you have to get fixed every couple of weeks.”

Despite playing in a rock band and idolizing rock music, Bongiorno decided to go a different route with her solo music. She is a massive fan of pop music that allows catchy lyrics to take center stage and be chanted back to the performer. There is something compelling about pop music and she is looking to explore the genre any way she can.

Her first single, “Flavor of the Month”, was an idea that initially came to her in the shower. It kept replaying in her head until she was able to grab her guitar and bring the idea to life. Once she brought it to Bruno, his addition of synth and drums made them realize that it was the perfect first single. It was the ideal pop sound that she loves, written about self-expression and embracing one’s inner weirdness. It was inspired by her time touring with Hits! The Musical as it was the first time she was truly able to express herself.

Her latest single, “Canon of Events”, is more of an anti-love song. It started with a few chords and the thought of adding a unique melody over it. As the creation of the music was happening, the lyrics seemed to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

She attributes the ease of her lyricism to synesthesia, which is when stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Chromesthesia is when sound invokes color, and both “Flavor of the Month” and “Canon of Events” have a color that is visible on the album art.

“I just say what I’m currently feeling or thinking, and when I hear music I automatically see a color with it,” she said. “That definitely helps me write a lot of my music. I don’t know how it helps. It just kind of sets the vibe of the entire song and it inspires certain words or certain topics.”

Music is a path that is still relatively new to Belle Bongiorno, but it is a path exclusively her own. Her goal of becoming a pop-rock queen has started off steadfast with two singles and is expected to create more once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

Photo courtesy of Ariel Kassulke

There was never a moment that I knew I wanted to make music because it’s something I’ve known for as long as I could know things; for as long as I remember. Maybe it was growing up with parents that love music as much as I do. Parents who always had music playing in our cars and homes, who always sang along, who sang in choirs their whole lives and signed me up for every church, school and afterschool choir that was available. A mom who bounced to ABBA and Rick Springfield and Prince, who showed me the joy of dancing along to music and of the drama and stories music could contain. A dad who loved Journey and the Righteous Brothers and 90s R&B, who preferred singing the harmonies and background vocals to his favorite songs and taught me concepts like harmony and melody/counter-melody. Parents who saw a young child dance and sing along with utter glee to “Bye Bye Bye” by N*SYNC and decided to nurture that seed of love for music.

Like I already said, there was never a moment I realized I knew but there were moments that knowledge solidified, and that it felt more and more like it was something I could do. Like reaching high school and singing in concert choirs, show choirs and musicals and starting to feel more at home with music and stage and performance than I ever had with the sports I grew up playing. Or reaching college and finding my first friends to play in cover bands with, and sing the kind of songs I loved to sing. Or graduating and drifting before making my way back to those friends and trying to write our own songs for the first time. The first time a melody or hook came to mind without much effort. The first time I learned that a hook was the easy part, and the first time I took a melody and actually put the work in to do something with it. The first time writing lyrics that felt competent, then the first time writing lyrics that felt good, followed by the first time writing lyrics that felt true and the first time that writing lyrics felt like muscle memory; like something I’d simply done my whole life. There was the first time I felt proud enough to share my music with the people in my life, and the first time I heard a song I’d finished recording and felt like it could belong next to the song of the artists I grew up loving and respecting. Lots of firsts, but never the first.

It’s not a unique feeling, but making music was something that felt like growing up, falling in love, getting old and dying - something that you just always knew was going to happen, something that was a matter of “when” not “if”. Inevitability.

Photo courtesy of Julian Bracero

It was my 25th birthday, March 22, 2020, when I felt the world stop. COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect in New York and my depression swallowed me whole. Reading felt impossible, my doctoral applications gathered dust and even the thought of turning on the television revolted me. In those early months I was restless and searching for something, anything, when I noticed my very neglected guitar sitting in the back of my closet. It was in the first moments of trying to sing and play, while being absolutely atrocious at both, that I felt more calm and certainty than I had in months and I figured, why not try to learn something new?

Before then, music had never been my art. An avid consumer of all things music, yes, but my prior creative endeavours had been quieter. I had wanted to be a painter, and even attained my Master’s in Fine Arts. In those years, music was a companion as I painted and studied but never a language I thought I could speak. I deemed myself too anxious to ever do something as bold as getting on stage. I had never even been able to sing at karaoke.

Yet, in the colder months of early lockdown, something shifted. The loneliness of the pandemic extinguished all my previous creative outlets, leaving me as a hollow echo of someone I once thought I was. Music suddenly became the only thing that made sense. I wrote my first song. I called it “Dead Air” and gained the courage to sing its raw melody over the only three chords I knew to a childhood friend, a seasoned musician and music teacher, over Zoom. He immediately started urging me to write and sing as much as possible, and that encouragement changed my life.

That summer, he brought me to local outdoor open mics. I felt immediately welcomed into a community of artists with a warmth I hadn’t expected. The art world I had come from had been cold and competitive, and here I was suddenly surrounded by people who lifted each other up. I found more and more of myself in the music I was writing.

It was through this community that I met Billy Rymer, who heard me sing and immediately wanted to work with me. To have an accomplished musician believe in me became a tangible pillar of my new reality. Billy and I became fast friends and ended up working together on a few projects before Billy introduced me to Michael, a plucky and optimistic bassist. Michael invited me to start writing and singing for a new project he and Billy were starting; a project which we later named Atomic Life.

As I reflect upon it all now, I can’t pinpoint exactly why music found me during lockdown. Maybe it was the immediacy of playing - the way it demanded my whole self in the moment. Or maybe it was always there, something I secretly carried around below the surface of myself that was jostled loose that spring. But what began as a desperate grasp for peace has become my anchor, my voice and my home. Those first tentative notes played on a dusty guitar led me to where I am now, no longer too afraid to try, even when my voice shakes.

Photo courtesy of Melanie Radford

When post-riot grrrl trio Blood Lemon set out to create their latest EP, Petite Deaths, they wanted to make something more “epic” in nature. They took their ideas to Joshua Tree and the Rancho De La Luna studio. From there, the five-song collection took on the influence of the desert.

“We put ourselves in a studio with an almost-mythological history and we made sure it was in a different city [and] environment than our hometown,” bassist Melanie Radford said. “We also recorded with Dave Catching and Jon Russo who were people that we hadn’t worked with before but really valued their input. It was all part of an effort to get ourselves out of our comfort zones so we could really stretch ourselves more and experiment with different sounds and musical textures.”

The songs on Petite Deaths are just as provocative as their debut self-titled albeit less overtly political. From the creation of their first album, they learned how to highlight each other’s strengths within their songwriting. This time around, they wanted to use that lesson to tell a story: complete with a beginning, middle and end.

“When you have a deep understanding of the musicians you’re working with, you can expand your collaborative songwriting processes and that felt like our intention when creating this EP,” Radford said. “It’s definitely a step forward to a newer, expansive sound for us.”

The perfect example of that is their song, “Mudlark”. It was not entirely finished when they brought it to the studio and they had to play it through multiple times in order to really find the structure of the song. It was the last song being recorded, and with limited time left at the studio, decisions had to be made quickly. This was nothing like their normal songwriting process, but trusting their instincts and understanding each other’s strengths brought the song to a fulfilling close.

It is also the song that Radford was most excited to share. Atmosphere and texture were incredibly important to her when it came to the songs, and the field recordings of desert coyotes howling in the distance is the exact tone she wanted these songs to encompass.

“It’s almost as though you finally get to relax and let the sounds wash over you and sweep you away,” she said.

After recording the five songs in Joshua Tree, they took their time on deciding to release them. They debated saving them for another full-length release but soon realized that these songs could stand on their own.

“It was like the recordings were a special time capsule that we culled together in the desert for four days,” Radford said. “There was no need to go back and add anything because we wanted to keep that special time locked in our memories as they were.”

With the intention of having the songs tell a story, the track listing was crucial. “High Tide” marks an energetic beginning, climaxes at “Mountain’r Lower” and smoothly transitions to “Mudlark” for the conclusion. Each song has its own story, with its own character and conflicts, yet they all come together for a common goal.

Blood Lemon truly challenged themselves on a batch of songs that became Petite Deaths. They turned a desert influence into a series of stories in hopes that listeners find them just as epic as they intended.

“I hope they feel like they went on multiple journeys,” Radford said. “I think if the listener can sit and intentionally listen through the whole EP, they’ll feel like they climbed an epic mountain.”