**Finding Light in the Outskirts: A Personal Journey with Kelsey Waldon’s “I’ve Got a Way”**
It was late in the summer when I first stumbled across Kelsey Waldon’s 2016 album, “I’ve Got a Way.” Not in the glossy bin of any big record store, not even through the byzantine algorithms of streaming services. Instead, it was one of those lucky shots: a song embedded in the tail of a podcast about forgotten places, her voice solitary—soft and full of gravel, singing into the void: “Getting there’s the only way to figure out what you’re made of.”
I pressed replay a dozen times. I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone tackle country music so gladly, and so plainly, since the days of Emmylou and John Prine—artists whose truths seemed to live on the same hard streets Kelsey’s songs wander.
The world, at that moment for me, had shrunk to the size of a small apartment and a computer screen, where days blended and questions about purpose pressed like the Kentucky summer heat. I had no way to know what would happen next, professionally or personally. In that chaos, Waldon’s music landed like a postcard from someone who didn’t mind being lost, as long as you kept driving.
“I’ve Got a Way” isn’t just a collection of songs; it’s a map of self-realization. Her lyrics are honest enough to sting but comforting in their plainspoken fortitude. Take the opener, “Dirty Old Town”:
*“Good luck ain’t no friend of mine / The only friend I got is time / I’m tired now but I’ll get by / I’ll keep rolling / That’s my sign.”*
Maybe that’s why it’s always resonated so deeply. For years, I’ve felt dogged by that specter—the doubt that saps at your will to move, the persistent worry that things won’t ever open up. Yet Waldon’s voice, rooted and unpretentious, speaks not of naive hope but stubborn survival. Like her, I’ve stayed up counting pennies or twirling the why-nots until I’ve worn them threadbare.
The title track, “I’ve Got a Way,” is a manifesto disguised as a consolation:
*“I’ve got a way / Of keeping it together / When pieces keep falling down.”*
How much of our lives is spent doing exactly that? Gluing the borders, mending fraying threads, hoping that no one notices the patched seams. In therapy, I’ve been told to “lean into discomfort,” to accept the fear of falling apart. What Waldon presents is the kind of vulnerable pragmatism rarely heard on the radio—she’s not ironclad, nor a sob story; just someone with a toolkit of small, sustainable hopes.
What’s remarkable is the way she’s never too proud to name defeat. In “False King,” she warns:
*“Don’t bite the hand that’s been holding you up / When the world turns cold / Love won’t be enough.”*
The line lingered in the air the first time I heard it, because pride—my own and that of those I’ve tried to love—has always managed to gatecrash the happiest rooms. I thought about ends that left me salt-washed, about how much humility it takes to give up a version of yourself you thought you wanted to be. Her music offered the odd comfort: everyone, it seems, eventually faces the reckoning between what keeps us alive and what keeps us alone.
But not all is darkness; there’s uncanny joy in simple moments throughout the album. “All By Myself” embraces solitude with a shy grin—
*“Sometimes I get lonesome, but lonesome’s alright / It lets you see life in a different light.”*
It echoed how isolation sharpened the outlines of my own days—how the ache of being misunderstood, or simply ignored, makes the rare connections feel holy. Waldon doesn’t wallow; she gives grace to that in-betweenness, even celebrates it. You sense her integrity in every word, as if you can feel the wooden floor of her childhood home under your own tired feet.
Within “Life Moves Slow,” the ache of rural life and internal restlessness collide—a song that lands doubly hard if you’ve ever tried, and failed, to outrun your roots:
*“I tried to move on, but something wouldn’t let me / What was I running to? What was I running from?”*
It’s an elusive admission; for years I tried to cut ties with the ghosts of family, ties of hometown obligation, only to find them persistent as shadow. Waldon acknowledges that the answer isn’t exile, but acceptance—the trick is to stay long enough to know what you love, and then forgive it.
What sets “I’ve Got a Way” apart from so much of modern country is Waldon’s lyrical precision; plain statements are her greatest poetry. The arrangements are spare but never thin—mandolin, pedal steel, those plaintive acoustic guitars like eyelids slowing at the last flicker of dusk. She doesn’t compete for attention; she insists you slow down, pay attention to the resonances between her world and your own.
If I could point listeners to one song to summarize the bittersweet flavor of this album, it would be “Don’t Hurt the Ones (Who’ve Loved You the Most).”
*“Don’t throw away the ones who stayed / Just because you’re in pain / When all is said and done / You’ll want someone to blame.”*
Lord if that warning didn’t hit like a lit match. Years of failed connections and self-sabotage, of friendships let to wither under a surly mood or a prideful silence, rushed up in the chorus. It’s a reminder to be gentle with your people, that intimacy requires as much humility as forgiveness.
If there is a flaw in this album, it’s perhaps a paradoxical one: *restraint.* There are moments when you want Waldon to let loose more, to howl, to call out at the sky, to let the spirit of her words fill the room to bursting. The production, lovely and clean, sometimes feels as if it’s holding her back from catharsis. Maybe that’s the point: that some pain must be nursed in private.
“I’ve Got a Way” never charted, never caught the national spotlight. But its radiance lies in the closeness it cultivates—an album to put on while you pace your lonely kitchen, while you scrape together another day, while you mend quiet heartbreaks. For me, it charted a course back to myself, to seeing defeat not as a sentence, but a season.
If you need wild spectacle, look elsewhere. If you need company in the wilderness, put this on. As she sings:
*“I’ve got a way of keeping it together / When pieces keep falling down.”*
For so many of us, that’s enough.
Kroes den Bock