You Used to Live Here

Kelley Mickwee spent more than a decade before this solo debut working as half of the Tennessee-based folk duo Jed & Kelley and as a member of the all-female Texas group The Trishas. Once the implications of a Trishas hiatus became clear, she began working on the songs presented here. Her longtime friendship with songwriter Kevin Welch led to “River People,” a song inspired by a documentary about Muscle Shoals, Ala.'s music scene. Mickwee knew her adopted hometown of Austin wasn’t quite the place to get the sound she craved, so she headed back to her real hometown of Memphis. With engineer Kevin Cubbins and mostly Memphis musicians—including multi-instrumentalist Tim Regan (her husband), pedal steel player Eric Lewis, and bassist Mark Edgar Stuart—she recorded this album live in less than two days in the living room of a mansion formerly owned by the late Civil War historian Shelby Foote. The sound is pure old-school country-soul. It’s a mixture of cowrites and a few covers, and Mickwee proves to be a major vocal talent.