Inspired by Nature: Sara Jean Kelley

Country/Americana/bluegrass singer-songwriter Sara Jean Kelley loves the natural world, values family roots, and continues to explore varied musical landscapes. Some of her solo work has been described as having a “dark sensibility” and “slightly melancholic sense of humor,” but don’t be fooled; the versatile singer with a husky tone to her voice is as at home in singing alternative country as she is with delivering bluegrass harmonies.

While she loves singing and instrumentation, Kelley said she gets excited about writing lyrics. From an early age, she’s been focused on this in the music she loves.

“The way I fell in love with songs is through the words,” she explained.

As a young girl, she was lucky; her childhood home was filled with music and musicians. A Nashville native, her upbringing involved constant exposure to the Nashville music scene as the daughter of singer-songwriter Irene Kelley. Being surrounded by inspiration was a daily happening. Her mother is a performer and has also penned songs for some of the big names in country music.

While Kelley said she grew up “listening to The Carter Family and Lester Flatt,” she’s “always leaned more toward the singer-songwriter stuff, like Patty Griffin.”

It’s no doubt partly due to the example of her mom’s penchant for crafting words. She’d see it and hear it in the house. Not just from her mother, but from so many other musicians. They were always at her childhood home.

“We’d host jams at our house,” Kelley said. She said when her mom would be at Nashville’s legendary Station Inn when she was a baby, she’d be there, too, sitting on someone’s knee. The business was inextricably tied to her early years, and choosing a career in performance was a natural progression.

Kelley’s first solo records started over a decade ago with her first record release, which she described as “more country” than later recordings; it was heavy in dobro and pedal steel. Her next work veered into what she calls a more rock-oriented collection. She said it was “more energetic, more produced.” It wasn’t until her third release that she felt she hit her perfect groove connecting to what she loves most. “Black Snake” – released in 2021 – was an EP of independent Americana that, up until that point, best defined Kelley as an artist. It had the most apparent singer-songwriter vibe. “I’ve been performing off that [record] the last few years,” she said.

“I use a lot of natural imagery. I’m a metaphor junkie,” she laughed, talking about what lit a spark for her creatively.

Right now, she’s mainly focused on a new project: Women of Kelley. For the first time, she has teamed up with her mother and sister (Justyna Kelley) to form a female bluegrass trio. She still gets to do the writing she loves, but this time, it’s a collaborative effort. That group dynamic is one of the things she likes about this new project.

“The thing that’s the best is just having a built-in support system. It was always just me,” Kelley said, of the solitary nature of doing solo work. “But now, not everything that needs to be done is on just one person. It’s also an excuse to spend more time together.”

Women of Kelly have released a single, and Kelley said that while there’s no set date as of now, the full album—produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Shannon Sanders—is expected to drop before the end of 2025.

She’s excited to see where Women of Kelley goes in the future, but still has plans of her own; she hopes to put out another solo singer-songwriter record soon. When the pen and paper beckon, there’s no stopping a writer who wants thoughts of the inner world to become a sonic reality. When those thoughts reflect the richness of the natural world, that reality is even more meaningful. Themes of nature have always been a passion in both country and bluegrass, and Kelley is a part of that continually evolving tradition.