Kelly Lee Owens – “Corner Of My Sky” (Feat. John Cale)

Kim Hiorthøy

Kelly Lee Owens – “Corner Of My Sky” (Feat. John Cale)

Kim Hiorthøy

We’re finally only a few weeks away from the release of Kelly Lee Owens’ sophomore album, Inner Song, after it was announced way back in February. Owens has shared a handful of tracks in that time — “Melt!,” “Night,” and “On” — and today she’s back with another song, “Corner Of My Sky,” which is a collaboration with the legendary John Cale.

It’s an engrossing and subtle epic, Cale starting out singing in English and transitioning over to Welsh and singing about his and Owens’ shared heritage: “The miners wheezing in their holes/ The men are wheezing in their holes,” he sings. “As the weather leaps, the weather weeps into the winter.”

Both Cale and Owens talked about working together in their respective statements about the song. Here’s Cale:

It’s not usually this immediate that a productive afternoon brings a satisfying conclusion to a task. Kelly sent me a track she’d written – an instrumental that was a gentle drift – something comfortably familiar to what I’d been working on myself. On the first listen, the lyrics came with ease and a chorus and melody grew out of it. Even the Welsh phrases seemed to develop from a place of reflective memory which was a surprise since I hadn’t written in Welsh for decades. Once finished, I realized there existed a built-in thread we’d created together and apart – and her kind spirit pulled it all together and in quick order.

And here’s Owens:

I knew with this album I needed to connect with my roots and therefore having the Welsh language featured on the record felt very important to me. Once the music for the track was written and the sounds were formed, I sent the track straight to John and asked if he could perhaps delve into his Welsh heritage and tell the story of the land via spoken-word, poetry and song. What he sent back was nothing short of phenomenal. The arrangement was done during the mixing process and once I’d finished the track, I cried – firstly feeling incredibly lucky to have collaborated with John and his eternal talent and secondly for both of us to have been able to connect to our homeland in this way.

Listen to “Corner Of My Sky” below.

Inner Song is out 8/28 via Smalltown Supersound.

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