Four years ago, Reckless Kelly announced their retirement from the road-dog grind that defined the band’s career. The Idaho-turned-Austin outfit have spent the time since winding down a touring schedule that had them playing upwards of 180 shows a year.
Now, with only eight gigs on the books for the rest of 2026, Reckless Kelly’s version of retirement appears to be taking shape.
“It’s a lot more fun to look forward to every show now,” Willy Braun, Reckless frontman, says. “We had been to the point where, a lot of nights, we were just trying to get through it. Now, we’re genuinely having a really great time playing.”
Throughout the process, the five-piece made it clear that Reckless Kelly will soldier on as a band. They recorded and released Last Frontier in 2024, the group’s 11th studio album since 1998, and are now revisiting music they recorded on a pair of labels — Sugar Hill and Yep Roc — in the mid-2000s. The group released Alternate Routes, a double EP featuring re-recordings from that era, in May. It’s the same principle that major artists like Taylor Swift and John Fogerty followed in re-recording their own material to bring songs back under their control. At least three of the 12 tracks on Alternate Routes are still regularly played by Reckless Kelly in concert: “Ragged as the Road,” “Seven Nights in Eire,” and “Wicked Twisted Road.”
“It was mainly songs that we didn’t own,” says Cody Braun, Willy’s brother and band co-founder. “There were a couple of times we wanted to re-release a record that had been out for 20 years, and we would call the record label, and they would say, ‘We don’t own that anymore. Now it belongs to this record label,’” he says. “You chase it down and say, ‘We want to do this,’ and they say, ‘We have no money or time to spend on this thing.’ This lets us reclaim those songs again.”
Reckless rose to prominence after forging a large following in Texas in the pre-streaming era. Other artists in the scene — Pat Green, Charlie Robison, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Randy Rogers, and Wade Bowen — landed major-label deals. Reckless had that option too, but chose Sugar Hill after the label promised not to change the band’s heavy rock-edged sound. The group’s signature albums, 2003’s Under the Table & Above the Sun and 2005’s Wicked Twisted Road, both dropped on Sugar Hill’s watch.
Regardless of the deal’s impact on Reckless’s long-term royalties, both Braun brothers agree that signing it was the right move. “This was our reason for going with an independent label,” Willy says. “Really early, we got courted by a bunch of major labels from Nashville, but they were straight up telling us, ‘We’re gonna have to change your sound, and you’re gonna have to play ball.’ No, thank you. Sugar Hill let us do what we wanted as far as the songs and the sound.”
“They believed in the band,” Cody says.
Reckless may be keeping a minimal schedule now, but their annual festival — Braun Brothers Reunion — is in its fifth decade and has weathered the recent contraction trend that has plagued music festivals. This year’s event is set for Aug. 6 through 8 in Challis, Idaho, and will feature Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars as headliners, plus a third headlining set from Silverada, which will double as the band’s album release party. Shelby Stone, Hayes Carll, and Bruce Robison are also on the Reunion lineup.
Away from Reckless, both Brauns are finding new avenues to explore as artists. After nearly 25 years in Austin, Willy spends the bulk of his time in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. He played a run of acoustic shows during the spring and continues to write songs. Cody can be found gigging in and around Austin as a support act or fiddle player and has gotten heavily into producing. He has credits on recent releases from Roger Clyne, Tylor & the Train Robbers, and Hayden Redwine; he and Willy co-produced Alternate Routes.
He’s also aware that the DIY musical world that gave rise to his band was rendered largely obsolete by social media. “I don’t know the record industry anymore, or how you put out a record, or if it’s all singles,” Cody says. “My advice to any young artist would be to do everything that you can on your own — until it takes off and you don’t have the time or the manpower to do the things you need to do.”
Most importantly, Cody tells up-and-coming bands to know their value and always negotiate.
“Understand what your worth is. You can write your own fucking ticket,” he says. “If a record label comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna make you a huge star and you’ll make a hundred million dollars next year,’ yeah, do that. But if you’re just out doing your thing, keep doing that.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous is available now via Back Lounge Publishing.
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