Kelsea Ballerini reveals new EP, 'Rolling Up The Welcome Mat' discussing divorce
29-year-old country superstar offers revealing look into depth and scope of career, life motivations
Marcus K. Dowling"Kelsea Ballerini faces truth, pivots, then creates the best possible outcome. In that moment, amidst the tears and regrets, she packs up, moves on, moves into the house that she truly wanted. So simple, but it also refracts the reality of so many people who face what they were told they wanted turning out not to be what they truly desired."
In a press release, the Grammy-nominated, Country Music Association award-winning author and singer-songwriter behind September 2022-released studio album "Subject to Change" has released the just-described song "Penthouse" among five other tracks for "Rolling Up The Welcome Mat," an EP described as "honest" and "intimate" "postcards and polaroids" from the artist who, alongside recently appearing at New York Fashion Week, has a CMT Storytellers episode debuting on Feb. 16.
"Rolling Up The Welcome Mat" is available for purchase or streaming via https://orcd.co/rutwm.
Notable too is her November 2022-announced divorce from Australian country performer Morgan Evans. This followed four years of marriage after 18 months of dating.
In various manners, all six songs concern themselves with "sorting through her life completely on her own terms."
"I was writing by myself for most of the project, and it was nice to trust myself again," Ballerini writes. "Ironically, I started writing music because my parents got divorced; that was my therapy. Rolling Up The Welcome Mat was how I processed everything. It's the way I got my feelings out of my body and heart and put them to music, which is the purest way I could've handled it."
A short film Ballerini wrote and directed, alongside co-director Patrick Tracy, filmed in a white, minimalist environment, offers "a deeper tableau and sense of the emotions" that went into creating the EP.
After returning from a tour of the United Kingdom in March, Ballerini will launch the second US leg of her HEARTFIRST Tour, which alongside a handful of dates on The Judds: The Final Tour, spend the rest of the spring on Kenny Chesney's "I Go Back" tour, plus opening for Shania Twain on tour dates (including Nashville's GEODIS Park on June 7, 2023).