The singer-songwriter says “Georgia Clay,” released last
week, was worth the wait because what happened after Nashville first turned him
down for a record deal prepared him to make the best record of his career.
Kelley, 31, is now married to actress Katherine Heigl, and
they’ve started a family. Both themes play heavily throughout the album.
“It’s about me getting married to Katie. It’s about us
moving three times. It’s about us adopting a little baby girl from South Korea
who is now 2-years old,” he said in a recent interview. “We got her when she
was 9 months old and how that completely changed both of our lives.”
Kelley wrote or co-wrote all 11 tracks. Songs like “Baby
Blue Eyes,” “Don’t You Go,” “Two Cups of Coffee” and “Learning You” reflect his
love for Heigl.
The couple married in Park City, Utah, on Dec. 23, 2007 and
adopted Nancy Leigh, or Naleigh as they call her, in the fall of 2009. Kelley
wrote the song “Naleigh Moon” about the moment where she accepted him as her
dad.
“It was very touching and immediately turns you into a much
more selfless person,” he said. “To be an entertainer, you have to be pretty
self-absorbed, to do it successfully. It just comes with the territory. It’s
what happens. I just remember when she came, I quit obsessing about everywhere
I thought I should be. I just sort of let life happen, and once I let life
happen, things started falling in place.”
Kelley’s younger brother Charles of Grammy-winning country
group Lady Antebellum has seen him evolve as an artist through the years.
“His songwriting, it’s a lot more honest, and I think he’s a
lot less selfish as a human being. I think we all are when we get married,”
said Charles in a phone interview. “It kind of calms you down, makes you kind
of realize what’s important in life. I think a lot of those songs reflect that.”
The Augusta, Ga., native attempted to get a country record
deal when he was a college student at the University of Mississippi, but when
the Nashville labels passed him up, he signed with Hollywood Records and moved
to Los Angeles.
“I was trying to be country from the very beginning, but
everybody knows you’ve got to pay the bills,” he said. “So I let those
bluegrass songs become pop songs for as long as they could.”
He’s now thankful for those unanswered prayers.
Kelley went on to have two top 10 hits on Billboard’s adult
top 40 chart — 2003’s “Amazing” and 2005’s “Only You.” He met Heigl on the set
of his music video for “Only You” when she was cast as his love interest.
Kelley parted ways with Hollywood Records in 2005 and bought
a house in Nashville. He set up a home studio and started his own label, DNK
Records. That inspired Charles to move to Nashville with hometown friend Dave
Haywood, where they soon met Hillary Scott and formed Lady Antebellum. The
group benefited greatly from Kelley’s busy touring schedule and visits to see
Heigl in Los Angeles.
“We were able to just kind of have free reign of all these
instruments and studio equipment and kind of develop our sound on our own,”
said Charles.
Kelley released four albums independently to moderate
success. The experience of running a label made him a more helpful artist for
the label he’s on now, MCA Nashville.
“When you run your own label, you’re your own manager, you’re
the treasurer, the CEO, you’re the vice president. I don’t know. I wore many,
many different hats,” he said. “I’m having the best time of my life only
wearing one hat.”
From watching his brother’s career unfold, Charles Kelley said
he had a very realistic view of how hard it is to make it in the music
business.
“He’s had to hustle kind of his whole career, and I think it
shows how resilient he is as an artist,” said Charles. “He never gave up, and
there were definitely times that I think I probably would’ve thrown in the
towel and called it quits. Josh just isn’t that kind of guy. He stuck with it.”
The song “Gone Like That” gave Kelley his country music
break and led to him signing with MCA in 2009. He wrote and recorded it, intending
to pitch it to another artist, but his publisher told him no one else would do
it justice. That set the ball rolling for “Georgia Clay.”
He is now fully prepared to start from square one as a
country artist. Kelley has been touring with Miranda Lambert and will be
opening selected shows on the North American leg of Taylor Swift’s Speak Now
World Tour this summer.
“There was no ego involved in this at all. ... I love it. I
love the road. I like showing people what I’m made of,” he said. “There’s a
hunger for me to be playing in front of bigger crowds and to have bigger
success.”
