WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month Annie DiRusso pretty rapidly went from fan to friend and collaborator of fellow Music City artist Ruston Kelly. This month, both DiRusso and Kelly released albums featuring the other one, and they special guested at sold-out club shows just days apart. But their personal and professional synchronicity has roots back in 2018, at least for then Belmont University student DiRusso.
After seeing Kelly live that year, she fell in love with his songwriting and even made a playlist with only his music, called “Rusty Time.” She wasn’t listening to much Americana-leaning music then, or “any men,” she confessed. But these songs of Kelly’s would soundtrack some of DiRusso’s formative college experiences and her time coming up as an indie artist in Nashville.
Jump to early 2023 and DiRusso was touring her God I Hate This Place EP when Kelly released the lead single and title track for his forthcoming LP The Weakness. DiRusso was instantly captivated. Also instantly — literally the same day — she was invited to open for him on tour. “I fell to the floor,” she said.
Kelly explained to me why he was so taken by DiRusso’s music: “It kind of had the grunge sensibility I grew up listening to, but she seemed to carry that energy in a new, refreshing way…feminine but with a wealth of power behind it.” He found an immediate kinship with her and her bandmates on those few southeastern tour dates that worked around DiRusso’s tour. They joked around on the bus playing Mario Kart. “These are people that I want to be around all the time,” he remembers. “We spent that whole week hanging,” said DiRusso, dreamily recalling the formation of a “such a beautiful friendship” that spring.
After that it was history, said DiRusso, with friend hangs when they could manage them back in Nashville, but no official co-writes until DiRusso’s now iconic “Party July,” the extended summer that yielded a bunch of songs on her LP Super Pedestrian. “Wearing Pants Again” is one such song. Despite their established friendship, she was nervous to collaborate more officially with Kelly, who’s about a decade older and with more years logged as a working musician. So they tried to make it easy-going and social, just optimizing a pretty summer day drinking and telling stories with guitars in-hand.
It’s true that Kelly’s no stranger to the “clock-in, clock-out, 9-to-5 metropolitan Nashville songwriter thing,” but this was different, he agreed. Deciding to write was more so a way to guarantee they would get together. With their “analog journals” (DiRusso’s words) opened up in the living room, both artists funneled their lived experiences into this gorgeous ballad. DiRusso teed up Kelly to tell me the meaning behind one of his lyrics, “He’s a shark among men, he kissed me in the kitchen,” which is a memory from a wild Hollywood party he once attended that included eyebrow-raising interactions with A-list celebrities.
Kelly joined DiRusso at her Nashville record release show on March 6 at the Blue Room to sing this one, demonstrating their powerful vocal harmonies.
Since the fruitful “Wearing Pants Again” session, Kelly also enlisted DiRusso to duet on his Dirt Emo Vol. 2 cover of the Avril Lavigne song “Complicated.” This EP was released just a week after Super Pedestrian, March 14, and DiRusso said it was “really special” to contribute to the refashioning of an iconic song from early this century. “Imagining Ruston Kelly singing ‘Complicated,’ dream scenario. I feel very honored to be on that track.”
Kelly said she was an obvious fit for this duet, not just for her singing chops, but the overall vibe. “She might laugh at this,” he told me, “but she has such a cool and fresh sense of style, and to me it’s very reflective of that early 2000s [time]. I know Gen Z fashion is leaning into the early 2000s aesthetic but I thought she did it really uniquely well. Also [given] her general aesthetic musically,” he added, “there wasn’t anyone else I wanted to sing this with me.”
On March 12, Kelly brought out DiRusso at The Basement East — where she first saw him play some seven years ago — to sing “Complicated.” He bragged on his friend before the packed house: “Let me just shamelessly plug that your album came out, like, three days ago. Super Pedestrian. Check it out! It’s actually really good.” The crowd cheered.
“I’m always grateful to this town for bringing people like Annie into my life,” Kelly said, explaining how his family and his girlfriend have all met her and loved her. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, same with the rest of the world’…she’s just golden.”
Watching these two independent artists sharing local stages as equals, both playing to adoring fans and with new releases all-the-rage nationally, reminded me that DiRusso had demurred about writing with Kelly in 2023. “It’s not that he’s a real songwriter and you’re some apprentice,” I offered, unsolicited. “You are a songwriter. You believe that, right?” She smiled as she answered, “Yes, I do believe that. After writing a record, I do believe, ‘OK, I’m a songwriter.'”
