SPOTLIGHT: Kelsey Waldon Shares Memories of Monkey’s Eyebrow
Stacy Chandler
Posted On October 9, 2019
Photo by Laura E. Partain
As our feature story on October 2019 Spotlight artist Kelsey Waldon explains, her new album, White Lines/White Noise, has a lot to do with “home” — in many senses of the word.
On the song “Kentucky, 1988,” it’s home in the literal sense. The place — Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky, along a bend in the Ohio River — where Waldon grew up. There’s lots of lovely imagery in the song: knotty pines, gravel roads, sandy riverbanks. But like any childhood tale told honestly, there’s pain amid the beauty, and Waldon doesn’t shy away from that on her songs. But good or bad, as she sings in “Kentucky, 1988”:
This is my DNA, no matter how far I get away
There’s just some things that will never change
Kentucky, 1988.
Hear more about the song, and Waldon’s upbringing in Monkey’s Eyebrow, in this video:
And now listen to the song in its entirety, from Waldon’s new album, White Lines/White Noise, on Oh Boy Records.
