The only music Brian Kelley has made professionally has been with Tyler Hubbard, as part of Florida Georgia Line. So his upcoming new solo album is definitely a new direction for him, and likely never would have happened if he hadn’t had so much time off the road last year, because of the pandemic.
“I feel like I’ve reconnected with my guitar and my instrument,” Kelley shared with his record label. “I stopped playing with a pick, and I didn’t plan on that. I just started playing a bunch this summer. [I] would walk out to our porch, and I had this smaller guitar. I could just kind of walk around carrying it and it was super easy. And then the next thing you know, I tried to play with a pick and I’m like, ‘That feels crazy.’ I used to play with a pick all the time and that felt really weird.
“So, just a different kind of thing for me,” he continued. “[I’m] just really enjoying trying to better myself on the guitar and play a bunch of different songs I never learned before, and just try to work on my skills a little bit. And I think that’s also helped me through quarantine and through this time help my songwriting. So, I’m just excited about kind of a creative rebirth in a sense.”
Kelley might be working on an album by himself, but both he and Hubbard insist that Florida Georgia Line will be together for a long, long time.
“We’re going to continue to make music as much as we can,” Hubbard said when announcing their separate ventures. “As a matter of fact, we’re probably going to be making even more music now. We’ve enabled ourselves; we’ve created this freedom around ourselves to kind of do whatever we want to do creatively and musically, So it’s a lot of fun.
“We’re going to still do stuff together… It’s a beautiful place to be to venture out, and have a voice of our own,” he added. “Have an individuality a little bit. We’ve always been a package deal, which has been amazing, but I think there’s freedom at this age and in this time and where we’re at, to be able to not always be a package deal.”
A title or release date for Kelley’s album has yet to be announced. Hubbard has a duet with Tim McGraw, “Undivided,” which will be out on January 12. Florida Georgia Line’s new album, Life Rolls On, will be out on February 12.