Kellylee Evans

It is the story of a natural and brilliant rise: Kellylee Evans, who grew up in her uncle’s house and at home with soul music.
“She was part of the environment, like a member of the family. That’s why I never had to teach her. So I have no references, no preferences. I just love her, that’s all. For me, soul music is a feeling that goes in the veins of those who listen to it. It is indefinable. »

It was precisely this extra soul that enabled this enlightened amateur to seduce jazz double bassist Lonnie Plaxico and win over the jury of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Vocal Competition: Most recently she signed with Fight Or Flight, then with Good Girlen 2010. Between jazz and soul, between Lizz Wright and Erykah Badu, the young Canadian traces her voice. She presents this album to French audiences, who are captured by her energy on stage.

This album she presented to the French audience, caught up by her energy on stage, and two years later with I Remember When (2013), a record she sealed with pianist and arranger Eric Legnini. Legnini came up with the idea of recording an album consisting essentially of covers of hip-hop classics in soul jazz mode, and she realized this project by borrowing from Eminem and Stromae! She is on her way up… Unfortunately one event would change everything. On June 8, 2013, the singer is struck by lightning. Forced to sit in a chair, this experience will be the trigger for a change of direction in her life: it will be, literally and figuratively speaking, an electric shock.  “I had to learn to express myself differently. I no longer had the ability to walk around the stage, to go into the room and make the audience sing or dance. I also learned how to ask for help in my life outside of music. That was perhaps the most important thing. As a result, my relationships with my family, my friends, and even my fans are much deeper as I no longer call it an accident, but an event. I have no desire at all to experience it again, but I am still grateful for everything that this experience has brought me! »

In other words, the more time we lose in speculation, the more we have to go. Come on!
The separation has been accepted. And the Come on! (2015) testifies to this. In the last few years, since Kellylee Evans wrote her own history, she has been a survivor who decides to take her life into her own hands and assert her femininity and her desire for love loud and clear…In music, unlike the previous one, which was about spicing up songs at the top of the charts, the intention is clearly “pop”, which brings her ever closer to the divas of the soul and even the muses of r&b. “I wanted the whole album to be cheerful, lively and danceable,” says the singer, “I wanted it to be more like a live album. And that’s what strikes me – there’s no room for the superfluous, no doubt, no doubt, that makes all the difference in style in productions that are too often “dehumanized”.

True to the tradition of Great Black Music, with a passion for the sounds of today, Kellylee Evans is celebrating her great comeback in 2019 with a cheering repertoire in which dance and energy are the key words. Her culture and her love of jazz are never far away, giving way to a definitely modern soul, a completely supposedly urban groove. But most of all, we hear the unique voice and infectious smile of the most generous artist of her generation: Kellylee Evans speaks to everyone with a joy of singing that deserves to be shared!

“Boundless energy and a radiant voice!” Ouest Franc

“The story of a rise in power”. Libération