Rare is the six year-old who finds it natural as breathing to dash over to a piano and pound out herown jumping, two-handed version of Ray Charles’ R&B groundbreaker “I Got a Woman” or ChuckBerry’s pioneering rock ‘n’ roll anthem “Maybellene”. Kelley Hunt was that little girl. Rarer still is whatshe grew into—a real, live roots R&B singer-songwriter. In the world of bluesy, bodily music, thereare plenty of people known for their singing, or for their playing, but far fewer recognized for songwrit-ing and fewer still for all three. Hunt has a rich, full-bodied voice that always strikes you as the per-fect medium of expression for whatever she chooses to sing. And on keyboards she can be her ownauthoritative, muscular rhythm section and an exploratory improviser. But she writes with the musicalintelligence to absorb an array of early, plugged-in popular music and make it new, applying tradi-tional underpinnings to contemporary social and political subjects in her very personal way. And shecan step back and write a fierce hip-twisting, groovecentric, righteously rootsy dance number. Shedoes it all with passion and a commanding stage presence - and makes sure she brings her audi-ence along with her.

On paper, Hunt is an independent act who’s made an impact in the roots world and beyond; a KansasMusic Hall of Famer who’s won over crowds from international blues and jazz gatherings to AustinCity Limits Music Festival and Seattle’s Bumbershoot, performed on Prairie Home Companion no lessthan six times and sold close to 150 thousand albums on her own independent label.

But no list of accomplishments could do justice to the bold spirit of what Hunt does, a spirit she’schanneled into GRAVITY LOVES YOU, her fifth overall album and the third she has co-produced.Recorded in Nashville with top-tier roots and pop players like James Pennebaker (Delbert McClinton),Mark Jordan (Van Morrison), Dave Roe (Johnny Cash), Tim Marks (Taylor Swift) and Bryan Owings(Shelby Lynne), the dozen originals spin narratives and summon moods that leave no room for timid-ity. Though they’re a diverse batch of songs in theme and style, says Hunt, “they all get around to‘find the life that’s true to you. You’re not gonna fall off the end of the earth if you just take a giantleap of faith. Let the ‘gravity’ that pulls you toward your true self work for you. Do it. Like, do it now.’”

The seeds of that attitude were sown by her uniquely unbounded and thoroughly musical upbringing.She was, first of all, born in Kansas City, Missouri, a place then still faintly buzzing with the down-home-meets-uptown energy of a blues and jazz scene that boasted the likes of jump blues shouterBig Joe Turner and boogie-woogie pianist Jay McShann.

As for Hunt’s own bloodline, her mother sang on the radio with a jazz trio as a teen, and went on to

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steal the show with big bands and theatre productions in the region. “When I would see my mother sing,” Hunt says, “everybody in the place would go silent. Because it was almost like she lost herself.And I thought, ‘Well, hey, that’s how you do it.’” Her father played standup bass in the Navy, and later made his own proper washtub bass which, for the record, he still plays today.

Each summer when a local jazz program drew musicians of all ages, races and stripes to town, Huntrecalls her parents hosting lively and diverse parties in their home, which inevitably evolved into jamsessions. And thanks to her older siblings she got hip to Motown, Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf early onin grade school. “The first time I heard Howlin’ Wolf I was in maybe third grade,” she laughs. “And itjust scared the hell out of me and I just played it over and over. And the first album I ever bought, infourth grade, was a James Brown album” (PRISONER OF LOVE, to be exact - which she still owns).

All during this time Hunt was working out her own ideas on piano. “I grew up in an atmosphere whereboundaries just didn’t matter and people were okay with the joyful aspect of musical expression, nomatter what it sounded like or what style,” she says. “And I was fully accepted as a wild little kid thatwould just leap up and start banging out something on the piano. I was never told to tone it down,shut it up, never laughed at.”

At 16, her brother’s friends drafted her to play keyboards in their blues-rock band. The moment oftruth arrived the night their lead singer was a no-show for a good-paying gig. “They said, ‘Boy, wehope you can sing, because it’s time to start.’ I was so scared. And I just pretended like I had no fearall night long.”

From there to here, Hunt has traveled quite the roundabout route. She studied music compositionand voice at the University of Kansas for a couple years—leaving once she felt she’d gotten all shecould from the program—gigged in bar bands, started a family and eventually realized what she hadto be doing - making her own music her own way.

Over 1500 live performances and nearly 150K in indie album sales later much has happened to proveshe was right to take that leap. There have been slots on an impressive array of US and internationalfestival stages and song placements in major studio and idie feature films (including a co-score andonscreen role in indie filmmaker Kevin Willmott’s feature “The Battle for Bunker Hill”). The greatJohnnie Johnson - Chuck Berry’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame piano player - became her musicalmentor. She made an album with legendary Nashville producer Garth Fundis and hitmaker GaryNicholson (NEW SHADE OF BLUE EER0703, 2007), featuring a duet with Delbert McClinton, allthree of them people who know a thing or two about the soulful side of roots music. And she found aperfectly unorthodox songwriting partner in Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg - a unionproducing impressive material heard on both acclaimed 2008 release MERCY (EER0804) and onGRAVITY LOVES YOU.

The title track of GRAVITY LOVES YOU is a Hunt/Mirriam-Goldberg co-write built on a wealth of em-powering imagery and brought to life in the supple lifts and swoops of Hunt’s vocal performance, ef-fectively driving home the idea that the possibility of failure is nothing to live in fear of. Throughoutthe album Hunt demonstrates her songwriting agility continuing a new generation of her music firstunveiled on MERCY. Traditional influences are meshed with contemporary overlays and social andpolitical observation. Songs that conjure burning boogie-woogie (“Shake It Off Right Away”), old-school funk (“Too Much History”), percolating R&B (“Deep Old Love”), blues-rock (“The House ofLove”) rockabilly/gospel (“I’m Ready”) and Philly soul (“This Fall”) as well as sophisticated singer-

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songwriter fare (“Music Was the Thread” and “When the Deal Came Down”) and gospely anthems ofuplift (“These Are the Days,” “In the End” and “Land of Milk and Honey,” the latter inspired by Presi-dent Obama’s inauguration) all contently coexist on the same volume supporting the album’s overar-ching theme from different angles. And as was the case with her first four releases, GRAVITYLOVES YOU was recorded and mixed totally analog.

"It's really hard for me to work away from the warmth of 2" tape. And I think it has become a kind ofsignature of my recordings now. It presents its own set of challenges but we were really lucky on the'GRAVITY' sessions. Things were so easy and fluid we actually tracked 20 sides. Of course thereisn't anything groundbreaking about tracking and mixing analog. It's kind of amusing that it gets thisnew kind of novelty. Not that long ago everything was done analog. And we all know there are newtechnologies out there that reduce the cost of getting tape richness and give you digital convenienceand versatility. But it takes a certain breed of cat to get the total analog thing to happen as envi-sioned. And these days that breed is becoming an endangered species. It’s the beauty of live per-formance in the studio - on both sides of the glass. We've been fortunate - the engineering andperforming talent we've had the privilege of working with in the studio really knows that vibe insideand out. They're all really accomplished - huge musical vocabularies, great chops and in many casesresumes that would blow your mind. And they all helped me bring a spirit to this project that really de-fined it. It was a total pleasure making this record," Kelley said.

Kelley Hunt will be on tour throughout 2011 in support of GRAVITY LOVES YOU.

"The thing about making a record you really like, that really feels good to you - you can't wait to get itout there and perform it in person for the people," she added.

To request a copy of GRAVITY LOVES YOU, or to schedule an interview with Kelley Hunt, contact:

Al Berman / Out Loud Talent Management785.841.6000

785.760.2574 mobileajbmusic@earthlink.net