Just last week Ruston Kelly announced his highly anticipated third album, The Weakness, and today, he is excited to announce a headlining tour sharing the same name, beginning April 12th at Louisville’s Mercury Ballroom. The tour will see him playing NYC’s Webster Hall (April 21st), Chicago’s House of Blues (April 29th) and Los Angeles’s The Fonda Theater (May 14th), and ending with a hometown show at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater (June 2nd) with Jenny Lewis opening. Tickets go on sale this Friday, January 27th at 10:00AM local time. VIP packages are available beginning 12:00PM ET today, which include an intimate soundcheck performance and Q&A, plus more. Visit https://www.rustonkelly.com/ for more information.
Kelly’s new album, The Weakness, 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. The Weakness is set to be released April 7th on Rounder Records. Pre-order for the album is available HERE.
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.”
Out today, the album’s first single and title track is a potent burst of energy that emerged from a moment of cathartic self-reflection typical of Kelly’s writing process. “I started working on that song and the refrain just kept coming to me – ‘We don’t give in to the weakness,’” he recalls. “The overall narrative of the record is that there’s a variety of weaknesses that I need to deal with, and a variety of strengths that I need to bolster. I truly do believe that acknowledging your weaknesses and digging deeper to understand yourself goes hand-in-hand with becoming a greater human being.”
Driven by Kelly’s raw yet graceful vocal work, “The Weakness” unfolds with a brooding intensity that echoes its spirit of gritty perseverance. “I’ve always wanted to do a big rock song that feels like it would completely destroy an arena, and I’m really proud that we were able to assimilate that into all the different sounds we were exploring on this record,” the artist says.
Kelly will support The Weakness with The Weakness tour dates, listed below. He will also be joining Noah Kahan on select dates this year. Visit www.rustonkelly.com for tickets and more information.
The Weakness Tour Dates:
April 12th – Louisville, KY – Mercury Ballroom ~
April 13th – Birmingham, AL – Iron City ~
April 15th – Raleigh, NC – Lincoln Theater ~
April 16th – Charlotte, NC – Underground ~
April 17th – Washington, DC – 930 Club *
April 19th – Richmond, VA – The Broadberry *
April 20th – Asbury Park, NJ – Stone Pony *
April 21st – New York, NY – Webster Hall *
April 22nd – Philadelphia, PA – TLA *
April 25th – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
April 27th – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird #
April 28th – Grand Rapids, MI – The Stache #
April 29th – Chicago, IL – House of Blues #
April 30th – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue #
May 2nd – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre #
May 3rd – Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot #
May 5th – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory ^
May 6th – Seattle, WA – Showbox ^
May 7th – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall ^
May 9th – Eugene, OR – WOW Hall ^
May 11th – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore ^
May 12th – Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up ^
May 13th – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theater ^
May 14th – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom ^
May 16th – Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf ^
May 18th – Dallas, TX – The Echo Lounge and Music Hall #
May 19th – Houston, TX – House of Blues #
May 20th – Austin, TX – Stubb’s #
May 22nd – Kansas City, MO – Knuckleheads #
June 2nd – 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 17th – Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, Atlanta, GA – SOLD OUT
June 18th – Firefly Distillery, Charleston, SC – SOLD OUT
Aug 31st – Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY – SOLD OUT
Sept. 12th – KEMBA Live!, Columbus, OH
Sept. 13th – St. Louis Music Park – Maryland Heights, MO – SOLD OUT
Sept 15th – TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park, Indianapolis, IN – SOLD OUT
Sept 16th – Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill, Sterling Heights, MI – SOLD OUT
Sept. 17th – Budweiser Stage, Toronto, ON