'Speaking of Music': Kendall Keeling

Kendall Keeling is an Atlanta-based singer, songwriter and synth aficionado engaged in creating power-pop music. Her favorite synthesizer is a 1970s Micro Moog, which she often features in her songs over driving layers of fuzz guitar. A life-long music lover, Keeling spent ten years working in a record store starting in her teens and later started her first band, Nancy Drew Blood, with an all-female group of her best friends. The lineup evolved over several years as an outfit known as the Velvet Overkill 5. Keeling embraces dark themes in her writing and cites her fandom of horror as an influence on her lyrics and aesthetics. Comparisons to 90s-era rock queens like Courtney Love and Shirley Manson wouldn’t be out of place on first listening to Keeling’s music. But she sets herself apart in the featured track “Inside” by her other project Cement Scabies, delivering a more moody, understated vocal style alongside her distinctive Moog sweeps woven through the mix. Keeling credits Atlanta with a significant role in defining her musical trajectory, from her obsessive listening to WRAS 88.5 since the 1980s, seeing shows at 688, working at Turtle’s Records, and eventually marrying another local musician, Steve Beach. 

The couple is embarking on a new musical collaboration, but in the meantime, listeners can enjoy Keeling’s music from the Velvet Overkill 5, Cement Scabies and Nancy Drew Blood at https://thevelvetoverkill5.bandcamp.com.