Crisis Averted

Jenny Caulfield

Managing Editor

David Kelly has made a career in music for the messages he can send to his listeners, not the money or fame that may come with it.

19-year-old Kelly has been working on his project, Crisis Averted, for the last few years. The project, which was created by Kelly and his father, makes various styles of music, but focuses on rock.

“I always thought that music is how emotions sound,” said Kelly.

Inspired by bands like Primus and Bob Dylan, Kelly has used these influences to create two EP’s, “The Butterfly Defect” and “Freewheelin’ Vol. 1: A Tribute To Bob Dylan.

Kelly, who has been a musician almost his entire life, writes all of the songs for Crisis Averted. He also plays bass, acoustic guitar, lead guitar and vocals. For songs that require drums, Kelly teams up with his father.

“I like to think that we do hard rock and then, like, switch into folk,” said Kelly.

Since the release of both of his EP’s last year, Kelly has spent the last year perfecting his craft as opposed to releasing more music.

“I’ve just been focusing a lot on writing and perfecting the sound I’m looking for. It takes time, and I haven’t been able to get to a studio recently so I can record all of my stuff.”

Although Kelly displays strong passion for the music he makes, he doesn’t plan on making it a career for his future.

“Being pragmatic about it, I always made it for fun, and I don’t look to make millions of dollars off of it. I have a message in my music, and I want people to hear that. That’s all I want, and I couldn’t care less about money.”

Because he is not focused on money, Kelly makes his music strictly for the joy it brings him. Kelly follows his passion and emotion for the work he comes up with because he doesn’t care what others think of his music.

“It’s not really even a labor of love; it’s just what makes me happy is playing music and then having people hear it,” said Kelly. “I want to put a certain kind of emotion into the listener’s mind when they’re listening to a song, and that’s what great artists do.”

Crisis Averted is not Kelly’s first music project, as his first project started at the age of five with his father. “When I was five in 2002, we were in something called Death Charge, and we would record our original songs,’ he said.

After getting the music bug from his father, Kelly followed his path and played drums up until his second year of high school. Constantly surrounded by music, Kelly took classes about music in high school, but has still never had a formal lesson in music, learning everything on his own.

Kelly has been able to cover every genre he can think of including rock, R&B and rap. Going through phases of music, Kelly has the ability to blend the genres together as he wishes with his sound.

“There’s a couple songs on my EP that are rap-based, like, “Slave” and “Trigger” are both heavily rap influenced,” he said.

Besides these blends of genres, Kelly uses his music to deliver his thoughts about politics, including social inequalities and social injustices.

“There’s a lot of songs on my first EP, and almost every song is politically charged,” said Kelly. His songs “Trigger” and “Slave” both have political backgrounds, as well as other songs which deal with topics like homelessness and the KKK.

Although Kelly has not released new music this year because his father moved, he has plans to release another EP, and his single, “Endless Nights”, is currently available on YouTube.