Reckless Kelly life and biography

Reckless Kelly is an Austin, Texas based Americana band. The band was formed in Bend, Oregon, but moved to Austin in January 1997.

Reckless Kelly's roots reach back to Idaho and Oregon, where brothers Willy and Cody Braun paired their state-required education with a musical school of learning taught by their father. Muzzie Braun and the Boys (that also included other members of the Braun clan) took to the stage, playing western swing regionally, as well as on the Grand Ole Opry and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

By their late-teens, the Brauns had been bitten by a rock and roll bug and started their own band in high school. After their first incarnation hit the skids, they ran into Nazz and formed a new alliance, one that would shape their sound. The band played one final show in the Pacific Northwest before packing the bags for Austin, Texas.

For a band weaned on monthly gigs in the few venues Bend, Oregon, had to offer, Austin created a whiplash effect, with stages available seven nights a week. Prone to familial musical habits, the members of Reckless Kelly took up residence in the same home, leaving only for nightly gigs, including the acoustic sets that Willy says helped the band further define its identity. The band later picked up guitarist David Abeyta and bassist Jimmy McFeeley.

Their self-released debut album Millican (1998) sold over 20,000 units, and the Austin Chronicle named them the "Best Roots Rock Band" three years in a row. Following a live album and another studio album on their own label, they released Under the Table and Above the Sun on Sugar Hill in 2003. The band is named for the 19th century Australian bank robber Ned Kelly.

Wicked Twisted Road was released in 2005, and the next year the live album Reckless Kelly Was Here captured the band's stage presence. Bulletproof was released in the summer of 2008 on a new label, Yep Roc Records, and includes tracks critical of and reflecting on recent sociopolitical unfoldings, such as the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. In 2010, Reckless released an album of songs by one of their musical heroes, Pinto Bennett. Somewhere in Time, in the band's own words, highlighted their love of "straight-up honky tonk". The band regularly returns to Austin to play before capacity crowds at venues like Nutty Brown Cafe & Amphitheatre.

Younger brothers Micky and Gary Braun are frontmen of their own band, dubbed Micky & The Motorcars.

Reckless Kelly - Break My Heart Tonight :

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