Premiere: Kelly Augustine delivers divine story of ‘Second Chances’

We all deserve second chances, and it’s never too late to make amends. Life is an unexpected expedition of mistakes, forgiveness, love and empathy. We may fight a few demons along our path, littered with tears, broken bones and words left unspoken, but if we wait long enough, a time may come when you’ll appear out of the woods of darkness into the morning light. Strumming lonesome, but silvering, cords on her acoustic guitar, folk newcomer Kelly Augustine unfolds a tale of one man’s addiction and the demise of a relationship ⏤ and how years later, he earned his redemption. “Second Chances,” premiering today, wades through the watery depths of the story with great reverence, and Augustine is as an angel come to earth to spread the good word.

“Old habits die hard and I’ve always loved your nickname / It’s been a real long time / Since I was yours and you were mine,” she steps into the role as protagonist with a cool, empathetic demeanor. She’s simply the vessel through which two lovers are shredded apart and then glued back together. She then presses forward, “And I’ve been thinking / I love you too much for too little too late to be how this story ends.”

Augustine, once a practicing physician assistant, but who soon grew weary to pursue her art, so she quit, draws upon a very real encounter for the song’s overarching storyline. “I had a patient who told me that he and his wife had been married very young. After they got married, he became an abusive alcoholic, and she left him. He felt terrible about how he had treated her and never stopped loving her,” the singer-songwriter, who hails originally from small-town Oklahoma, tells B-Sides & Badlands. “He said she was always his ‘one true love.’ Years later, he finally got sober. He went to find her and won her back.”

Such unending adoration, akin to George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” works the emotions on high gear. But Augustine’s portrayal of forlornness leads a long, winding road back to absolution, the chains cracking and fading away into rust and down into the soil. “I loved his resolve in wanting to make things right and her willingness to forgive him and start over,” she adds. “She told me that he ‘saved her.’ What beautiful redemption that the same person who inflicted such pain on her came back into her life later and saved her. I had to tell their story.”

“Second Chances” anchors Augustine’s forthcoming debut album, Light in the Lowlands, expected in April and produced by Wes Sharon (The Turnpike Troubadours). This is only the beginning of the kind of needle-moving, evocative songcraft that changes the course of peoples’ lives. “It’s more important that the songs inspire us to something better, to love ourselves better, forgive ourselves more easily, and to show that same compassion to others,” says Augustine, whose voice is as razor-sharp as her penmanship. She calls to such torched influences as Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan (who “taught me about music as a powerful and persuasive force,” she says, “that songs can change things”) and Lyle Lovett, whose songwriting greatly guided her own hand in structure and composition.

Augustine will undoubtedly make you a believer.

Listen below:

Photo Credit: Scott McCormick

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