Eddie 9V. Since his first release in 2019, Brooks Kelly has been charging forward in critical acclaim and building a faithful audience. One fan said, “I caught him wherever he played in Georgia. Then I realized I’ve grown up with Eddie.” Having played with a couple other Georgia blues bands previously, Brooks chose not to use his own name but rather Eddie 9V to stage a unique name to differentiate himself in a long-lived genre.
This show was an energy boost starting off the 2025 concert season. The audience stood or gently swayed and listened during my last two concerts, but Eddie 9V gets the hips moving fast. This show featured seven of 12 songs from his recent 2024 release, Saratoga, and that album may as well be a blue print from the Eddie 9V concert experience, a variety of blues, rock, and soul, and maybe funk, too.
I haven’t followed his lyrics closely, yet, but Brooks confesses they come easily and sometimes do not make sense (“Wasp Weather” has a lyric “I got a big mud house that I can’t keep clean – it’s useless.” It’s a funny line, maybe funnier if was titled mud daubers.) Still, Eddie’s got an edge here. The lyrics sound good, first, and they’re not just rhyming filler to get to the chorus and the next guitar solo.
In fact, though Eddie 9V has plenty of solos, they serve the music, building the heights as guitar solos ought, but without drawing them out inviting guitar god praise. As easily heard on his new album, his true talent is song construction. Certainly there are nods to the genres he loves, but he does well to avoid the blues rock formula so often heard, both musically and lyrically.
Live, it’s a show. You get plenty of stories – hearing “Halo” on the radio for the first time with his grandma, shopping at Dollar General, writing a song in a double-wide, etc. – but for this show, the first of his 2025 tour, it seemed almost an end-of-tour celebration as well. He shared the stage with opener Paul McDonald, Coy Bowles from Zac Brown Band, and Frankie No Name, future guitar legend Zach Person, and Frankie No Name, a singer and collaborator. Keyboardist Spencer Pope, another collaborator, intended to play the first three songs with the band but played the entire show, rarely without a smile on his face.
The night was a phenomenal introduction to the ever appreciative Brooks, who also hangs around afterwards for signatures, selfies and autographs.
Setlist, or near to it:
Paul McDonald is a Nashville based musician whose path has included an 8th place finish on American Idol in 2011, released a solo album in 2018 and is now recording again and touring having found a more organic sound as well as a band that suits his vision.
McDonald delivers an energetic performance that often leads to an emotional if not anthemic delivery. At one point compared with Tom Petty, he has a stage presence similar to Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, but fairly to any number of artists who abandon the microphone stand to regularly engage the fans. His new album will definitely be of interest, and he’s stage-ready for larger audiences.
