LISTEN HERE
 
NEW ALBUM THE WEAKNESS OUT APRIL 7
ON ROUNDER RECORDS
 
TORONTO TOUR DATE ON SEPTEMBER 17

TORONTO, ON – March 16, 2023 – Ruston Kelly has shared a third song off his forthcoming release – album highlight, Michael Keaton. The wildly anthemic track spins a real-life incident into the new album’s most fantastically offbeat moment (from the chorus: It’s 3:35 in the morning / And I thought CBD would not get me high / But here I am thinking / What if Michael Keaton killed himself in Multiplicity? / Would that be genocide?). Kelly explains, “That really did happen, but the song’s mostly about experimenting with what it means to be me. At the time I was trying to date again and eventually realized that I needed to step back from that, and just let myself live in that space of thinking weird stony thoughts at 3 a.m.”  Listen to Michael Keaton here.
 
Kelly’s new album, The Weakness, will be released on April 7 by Rounder Records. The new album is a blisteringly honest but profoundly hopeful body of work that ultimately reveals our vast potential to create strength and beauty from the most painful of experiences. Pre-order for The Weakness is available here.
 
Michael Keaton follows the release of previous album tracks, Mending Song – a song that leans into Kelly’s lyrical talent, with Consequence saying it, "details his troubles over a lighthearted riff” – and title track, The Weakness. Writing in Rolling Stone, Jon Freeman proclaimed it a “massive rock anthem,” while WFUV’s Kara Manning praised the “shimmering, slow burn of a song,” with its “ghostly, lushly-conceived rock arrangements.”
 
The Weakness Tour begins April 12 at Louisville’s Mercury Ballroom and will find Kelly playing NYC’s Webster Hall (April 21), Chicago’s House of Blues (April 29) and Los Angeles’s The Fonda Theater (May 14), and ending with a hometown show at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater (June 2) with Jenny Lewis opening. Information about tickets and VIP packages, which include an intimate soundcheck performance and Q&A, can be found at https://www.rustonkelly.com. Kelly will then hit the road with Noah Kahan, with a Toronto stop on September 17.
 
Before Kelly began work on his third album, he moved out of his Nashville home and into an old Victorian bungalow in the small Tennessee town of Portland. There, he spent months on end in deliberate solitude, in an attempt to process a number of life-altering changes he’d endured over the past year, including a very public divorce as well as major upheaval in his immediate family.
 
“I felt a real need to understand myself a little better, and to rediscover the true foundation of who I am,” says Kelly, who candidly detailed his struggle with drug addiction on his 2018 full-length debut Dying Star. Kelly soon immersed himself in the making of The Weakness, pushing forward with the intensely self-aware truth-telling he’s always brought to his music.
 
The Weakness finds Kelly collaborating for the first time with producer/songwriter/multi-
instrumentalist Nate Mercereau (Sharon Van Etten, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers), who welcomed the artist into his Los Angeles-based Studio Tujunga. “The way I’d always worked in the past is that the song comes first, and the production helps to lift its meaning and intent,” Kelly explains. “But this time there was a much greater focus on creating a sonic atmosphere that speaks just as loudly and feels just as emotional as the lyrics and voice.”

THE WEAKNESS TOUR DATES:
April 12 - Louisville, KY - Mercury Ballroom ~
April 13 - Birmingham, AL - Iron City ~
April 15 - Raleigh, NC - Lincoln Theater ~
April 16 - Charlotte, NC - Underground ~
April 17 - Washington, DC - 930 Club *
April 19 - Richmond, VA - The Broadberry *
April 20 - Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony *
April 21 - New York, NY - Webster Hall *
April 22 - Philadelphia, PA - TLA *
April 25 - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
April 27 - Pittsburgh, PA - Thunderbird #
April 28 - Grand Rapids, MI - The Stache #
April 29 - Chicago, IL - House of Blues #
April 30 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue #
May 2 - Englewood, CO - Gothic Theatre #
May 3 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot #
May 5 - Boise, ID - Knitting Factory ^
May 6 - Seattle, WA - Showbox ^
May 7 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall ^
May 9 - Eugene, OR - WOW Hall ^
May 11 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore ^
May 12 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up ^
May 13 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theater ^
May 14 - Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom ^
May 16 - Santa Fe, NM - Meow Wolf ^
May 18 - Dallas, TX - The Echo Lounge and Music Hall #
May 19 - Houston, TX - House of Blues #
May 20 - Austin, TX - Stubb’s #
May 22 - Kansas City, MO - Knuckleheads #
June 2 - Nashville, TN - Ascend Amphitheater $

Support:
~ Annie DiRusso
* Purr
# Briscoe
^ Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners
$ Jenny Lewis
 
RUSTON KELLY ON TOUR WITH NOAH KAHAN:
June 17 – Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, Atlanta, GA – SOLD OUT
June 18 – Firefly Distillery, Charleston, SC – SOLD OUT
August 31 – Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY – SOLD OUT
September 1 - St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater at Lakeview, Syracuse, NY
September 2 - Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY
September 5 -  Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, Bridgeport, CT
September 7 - Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion, Gilford, NH
September 9 - Xfinity Center, Mansfield, MA
September 12 – KEMBA Live!, Columbus, OH - SOLD OUT
September 13 – St. Louis Music Park – Maryland Heights, MO – SOLD OUT
Sept 15 – TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park, Indianapolis, IN – SOLD OUT
Sept 16 – Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, Sterling Heights, MI – SOLD OUT
September 17^th – Budweiser Stage, Toronto, ON

DOWNLOAD – press photo | DOWNLOAD – album cover artwork