Minnesota songwriter Kelley Smith is a wallflower who fancies old poetry and grandpa sweaters. All at once whimsical and haunting, Smith delivers deeply affecting lyrics with wry charm and a time traveler's voice. Prone to melancholy and daydreaming, Kelley spent her childhood roaming the woods of the north country. To this day, her longing for that landscape runs deep and seems to find its way into her songs in one way or another.

Raised by musicians, Smith always had music in her bones, but it wasn't until she was 40 and a mother of four that her first record, Moon Child (2022), came to be. Since then, she has collaborated with artists such as Charlie Parr, Kelly Hunt, Wild Horses, Sarah Morris, Dave Simonett, Mike Munson and more. Though still a homebody and in the thick of family life, she occasionally tootles around the Midwest to perform in listening rooms, living rooms, haunted hotels, and at community-oriented festivals. Every once in a while she tucks into dive bars with her banjo to play folk songs.

With her much-anticipated sophomore release, “Flowers,” Kelley Smith leans into her exploration of songwriting as a means of disentangling herself. Smith is as gifted an instrumentalist as she is a singer, and her lyrics stand alone as poetry. With “Flowers,” Smith is a vessel of both the stories of her elders and those of her children, singing of universal sorrows and love that "puts on skin and bones." She wraps sparse instrumentation around her expressive guitar work - by way of counter-melodies, a lonely living room piano, and a few special guest players. “Flowers” is out on Nov. 6, 2026 on Liatris Records.

“These organic and unvarnished songs reflect life experiences that could as easily come from past lives as they could from Kelley’s soul.” - Rieder Homestead Concerts.