Arriving today (January 23) as her first release since signing with Snakefarm/Universal, Kezia Gill's ‘All on Red' album channels more than 15 years of hard-earned experience into a bold blend of country, blues, Irish folk and Americana, resulting in a sound that’s both deeply rooted and confidently modern. It's a culmination of Gill’s relentless work ethic, magnetic live performances and fierce self-belief, noting its seamless fusion of British heart with Nashville muscle and storytelling that feels authentic and ambitious throughout. Read our review right here.
Tracks like the blazing opener ‘Life You Always Dreamed Of' and gritty standout ‘Dublin’s Outta Whiskey' showcase Gill’s fearless sonic range—from rock-leaning energy to soulful country depth—while songs like ‘Love You Next' and ‘Barbed Wire' reveal a rich emotional breadth that finds her exploring vulnerability, resilience and personal truth. With top-tier Nashville musicianship and an instant creative synergy with producer Alyssa Bonagura, ‘All on Red' doesn’t just reflect where Kezia Gill has come from—it boldly signals where she’s headed next, setting a powerful tone for her growing influence in country music on both sides of the Atlantic. We caught up with her recently to talk all about it.
Lovely to talk to you today Kezia, thank you for your time and happy new year, if we can still say that?
I think we are still on the cusp, happy new year to you too!
Did you and Lloyd have a restful and relaxing Christmas?
Absolutely not! (laughing) We actually spent most of the festive season redecorating and buying flat pack furniture so it was a kind of voluntary hell! It's literally the only small window we had to get it done whilst everyone else was taking a break.
Congratulations on your fifth consecutive ‘Entertainer of the Year' award from the British Country Music Association. That's a nice way to start off the year.
It's a lovely way to start the year. Once you win an award like that three, four times you start to think about when you are going to lose it to some of the wonderful up and coming talent in this country but I was proud to be able to take it home again.
‘All on Red' is fantastic, congratulations on that – what a statement record it is!
Thank you. This whole record was really about me just going hard or going home. For a long time I've been building something, all independently and, dare I say it, at an amateur level and I just knew that if I wanted people to see me as something more, something legit then I needed to produce something legit.
There's always going to be a part of me that is always just a girl from Derby, right? But there's definitely something in me now that thinks if something isn't 100%, if it's not the absolute best then I'm not going to put it out there. I think maybe in previous years that's where I've gone wrong a little in a quest to just keep delivering – I've had a few stabs in the dark that haven't always paid off. I've got a great team around me now and everything is discussed ad infinitum – my life has become one big email thread! (laughing) I love it, I love bouncing around ideas and having a team of people helping to make Kezia Gill the best that she can be.
Presumably signing with Snakefarm and Universal has helped you get to that next level as well?
Yeah, massively. I'm really proud of what I was able to achieve independently but there is no denying that you are going to hit a glass ceiling eventually. It's not just finances, it's expertise, it's knowledge, it's as much saying no to things as it is saying yes, right? They really hold their own when it comes to things like that.
There's a phrase in the press release that says ‘All on Red is a Nashville record with a British heart.' Can you expand on that a little and where do you hear the British heart beating most on the album?
I think it's my authenticity. There's nothing on the record that is not something I wouldn't do or say or have felt. I'm an absolute Country fan, I love songs about trucks, the Bro-Country movement and small town life but that wouldn't be authentic for me to sing about. I'm a Derby girl with an Irish heritage.
The record needs to compete with what's coming out of Nashville so we decided to have it made there but the British heart is my upbringing and my writing. When I write about being a kid it's not being a kid on a farm on a dirt road in Ohio it's a terraced street in Nottingham. It's still Country music, it's heart, it's stories, it's me and what I know.
Tell me about the creative connection you've had with Alyssa Bonagura, who produced the album, because that seems to have sparked something different this time around as well.
We were actually introduced by a friend of mine, Jade Helliwell, who had worked with her before. I knew Alyssa as an artist only at that point. We were at the Black Deer festival and Jade mentioned that she would introduce me to her. Like all great meetings, we were in the beer tent, and we hit it off straight away, we had a pint and a deal was signed!
Alyssa just gets the sound that I want to make. She wasn't trying to make it too shiny or too American – she just nailed it and also co-wrote four of the songs on the album, to the point where she inspires me to be a better writer as well now. Those songs were written about three days before we were due to go into the studio and start recording and so I actually bumped songs I already had to get them onto the record, I knew that they were that good! I've always been about lyrics and when it comes to music, sometimes, I find that stifles me but Alyssa has a real talent with melodies and chords and so she was able to pick up the guitar and take care of the music whilst I sang the lyrics.
‘Whiskey in a Wine Glass,' for example, which is one of my favourite songs on the album, she just played that riff over and over again and I started freestyling lyrics and out of that came the song! Alyssa allowed me to be the best that I was capable of being up to that point so far!
I'm a big fan of albums that open with a huge statement song and you've nailed it with ‘Life You Always Dreamed Off.' Tell me about the inspirations behind that song.
Thank you. It sounds like a cliche but this is the gods honest truth: it came to me in a dream! I woke up singing the song! It was really early, like 5am and I am not a morning person but because it was in my head I got up and wrote it down in 20 minutes. This felt different to other songs – that idea that if I work hard enough I will wake up in the dream that I just dreamt for myself. That was quite a powerful inspiration – to be able to wake up and know that you are living in the dream you've always wanted to live in. ‘Tell me I can't and I will prove I can” – I love writing lines like that!
Do you think it will open the live shows as well, seems like a good choice to me.
It will! I can give you the exclusive on that right now! (laughing) Yeah – again, there is no other song that could set the scene for the journey we are going to go on in that 90 minutes. We've been working on tour stuff for next month, the tracking, the intros, the setlist – it's going to be a good show.
You've mentioned ‘Whiskey in a Wine Glass' and I'll throw in ‘Money in the Bank' that also has a big southern rock, almost Brothers Osborne-esque vibe – which is a new sound for you – was that Alyssa bringing out that side of you?
You know what it was? I've always been a huge fan of southern rock but I've never really had the resources to get that sound authentically. The tipping point for me was having access to the musicians who played on the record in Nashville. People like Rob McNelley, who won ACM musician of the year, played guitar on the album and a lot of these guys have played with artists like Brothers Osborne and Ashley McBryde, in that rockier space.
Having those amazing Nashville players play on these sounds made them sound like where they are from, you know?
On the flipside of that, songs like ‘Dublin's Outta Whiskey' and the pipes and whistle in ‘Barbed Wire' really dig into your Irish heritage. How important was that to showcase on this album?
It's always been important to me. I always say, deep down, somewhere, everyone is a little bit Irish! (laughing) I am, on paper, only a quarter Irish, it was my grandfather who was Irish. For me, it was my upbringing, the music and my family – every Sunday we'd all come together and take the instruments off the wall to play, that's what my Irish heritage represents to me. And the whiskey, of course! (laughing)
With ‘Barbed Wire' it was a last minute decision to put the whistle on there. I didn't know whether it would sound too gimmicky and it was Alyssa that said let's just try it. As soon as I played it she was, like, ‘well that's going on the record then!' (laughing)
There's a kind of Grunge-esque 90s feel to ‘Barbed Wire' too which is new for you.
When we first brought it into the studio it sounded like a Bond theme song! (laughing) We were worried that it sounded too much like a movie song so we decided to dirty up the guitars a little but in doing so, we captured a kind of 90s, almost borderline Rock Indie sound but then the whistle comes in……. it makes me feel of bands like The Cranberries and I'm all about that and I think it fits on the album amongst all the Country songs even though it has its own identity.
And that's why I think the album is so versatile. Because then we come onto songs like ‘Love You Next' and ‘Gut Feeling,' which could have been written by the guys in Lady A.
Thank you. Those two are definitely at the poppier end of what I am comfortable putting out. That's Alyssa's incredible production values – she heard ‘Gut Feeling' and ‘Love You Next' and knew what they both needed. ‘Love You Next' doesn't need big guitars, it's got that lovely banjo intro and a bit of Carrie Underwood to it and that's where Alyssa's expertise has elevated this record, she knows just what each song needs.
Did you write ‘Ride or Die' for your ‘Girls Night In' girls – Jade Helliwell, Jess Thristan and Demi Marriner – or is it a more ambiguous song about female friendships?
Me and Jade wrote that one together! It's absolutely about that friendship with the girls. Jade, specifically, I've known the longest, she's the one that knows all my secrets! (laughing) Having such amazing friends in the business makes all the difference, it's a tough industry to hold onto friends in because of the anti social hours and all the rubbish that goes along with it so when you find those friends, you hold onto them!
I also think that ‘Ride or Die' can also relate to anyone else, it isn't just particular to us, it can be sung and seen as an anthem for friendship anywhere and those people who love us for who we are.
So many of these songs would work on American radio and I was wondering if that is part of your overall ‘America Strategy' or is getting you on a tour out there a better way of raising exposure for you?
There's no denying that radio is the key that unlocks America but because of that it's notoriously difficult, even for American artists, to crack. It costs a huge amount of money and even a basic radio press tour is 3 to 4 months of work and expense. As much as I'd love to say that the strategy is radio, I think realistically a tour and more live shows out there is more important to me right now. We are in the process of planning in some showcases in America right now to be able to introduce me to the people in Nashville – that's where it's going to start for me.
The UK tour is next month now. Would you ever consider playing the album in its entirety because I don't know which songs you would leave out of a setlist right now?
We are going to be playing all of the songs but we've just re-jigged the order slightly because on the album we finish with a couple of mellow tracks and I like that on the record because you go on a journey but with a live show it's all about that steady rise and big finish. There will still be some of the Kezia-classics in the set that I would be lynched for if I didn't play them and there is also a cover going into the set – a song that I have always loved – I won't tell you what it is yet but I will tell you that it is by a fellow red head!
You mentioned the end of the album – it obviously finishes with ‘This House Would Sing' which is a deeply personal song for you. Tell me about that one.
It's a song full of joy. I'd had the idea in my notes for a long time and I knew exactly what the song was going to be about – the house I grew up in and the music that I loved. I went to Nashville and stayed with Alyssa at her parents house – it was a beautiful house and her parents came out and met us in the driveway and it was like an old friend coming home, they made me feel so welcome. In every room there were instruments, pictures and posters because Alyssa's parents used to be in the industry (10 top 40 singles – learn more about them here) too and so very quickly I recognised this house as being very similar to the house that I grew up in.
It was next morning at the breakfast table when I said to Alyssa, ‘what do you think of these lyrics – If these walls could talk, this house would sing,' and her eyes glassed over, she got emotional straight away and we sat on her back porch and wrote that song. It came quickly and we were both crying whilst we were writing it, we both felt every line. We played it to Alyssa's parents and they cried and I rang my mum back home and she cried – hopefully I'll be able to get through it when we play it live and just like ‘Life You Always Dreamed Off' had to open the record, this one has to close it down.
Let's finish with one more question – a controversial one maybe – there are so many people out there who believe you should be the first British act to step out onto the main stage of the C2C festival in London, Belfast and Glasgow. What do you think about that? You've earned the right I suspect.
I think the only time that will be right for me to step out onto any main stage is when I am big enough. I would love to be the given an early slot on that main stage at C2C. You could argue that the opening slot doesn't sell any tickets and it would be great for a British artist to come on and play in that slot but I would much rather earn that slot with success and hits rather than be given it because I'm British – I want to deserve that slot and I am going to work my backside off until I can stand on that stage, not as the novelty British girl but because I deserve to be up there.
Check out Kezia Gill's new album ‘All on Red' in all the usual places right now. Her February UK tour dates can be found right here – grab a ticket while you can!
