Telling his story in thoughtful songs such as “Leave This Town,” Kelly fulfills the promise he showed many years ago, before he traded his musical ambitions for a manufacturing career that provided for his family but never quite fed his soul. “I kept the day job, but there have been very few days in my life that music hasn’t been some part of it, even if only for an hour,” Kelly says.

So, after more than 30 years of multi-year work assignments across eight states and Europe, he stepped away, trading an office for a writer’s room in Nashville.

“’Leave This Town’ goes from contemplating a decision to walk away from the familiar, from roots and relationships, to actually doing it, making a major life change with all the uncertainty that goes with it. If the soul is the truth of who we are, then music is the path to the soul for me,” Kelly says.

After touring with Ruston as his pedal steel guitarist and playing on his last two albums, Kelly was prodded by his son to make a record that captured his own expressive voice. With nine original songs spanning from his teenage years to the present day, Ride Through the Rain introduces Kelly as an artist with relatable real-life songs and a perspective honed over decades.

“It gets a bit surreal when I reflect on where I started to where things are now,” he says. “One of the songs on the record, ‘Old Friends,’ I wrote when I was 18 years old. In the studio, I played the same guitar I had written the song on. Then, for one of my kids to have the capability and desire to pour himself into producing the record is really special. It isn’t lost on us how important those moments were in the studio.”

As for making music together as a father and son, it might be summed up as mutual respect. “We get along very well,” Kelly says. “I’ve been around long enough that it’s easy for me to be Dad and just as easy for me to be a colleague playing music because music is such an equalizer. Ruston really knows what he’s doing, so taking direction from him was a no-brainer.”

Tim Kelly became curious about the guitar after hearing his brother’s vinyl copy of The Ventures’ Walk, Don’t Run. At 12, his father bought him his first guitar at a hardware store for $36. “Once I picked it up, I never put it down, ever,” he recalls. “It was like an instantaneous friend. I spent countless hours learning how to navigate it.”

His math teacher in junior high school, a local music promoter, encouraged Kelly’s budding talent as a songwriter. Later, after hearing Jackson Browne’s version of “Take It Easy” for the first time, Kelly was inspired to learn pedal steel guitar. As a young adult, he played in bands, joined his college pop and jazz ensemble as a guitarist, and won talent competitions as a singer-songwriter around Texas. However, as a newlywed, he made the decision to follow in his father’s footsteps and take a job in the company where his father had already worked for decades.

“My dad enjoyed music, especially country music, but after growing up in the Great Depression, a good job was everything to him and he impressed the importance of that on me,” he says. “Maybe the truth is I lacked the self-confidence I needed at the time to just push through with music in a ‘hell or high water’ kind of way. I don’t regret the decision – well, I guess I did for a while, since music was all I really ever wanted to do, but things seem to work out the way they are supposed to in the end.”

When his job took him to Belgium for four years Kelly created a makeshift studio where he wrote and recorded songs when his wife was back in the U.S. spending time with the kids. “Because we lived in a quiet place, it gave me the opportunity to reconnect in a much more powerful way with my music, definitely more than I had done in many, many years,” he says. “So, when I came back to the States and into a pretty stressful work situation, it made me realize that time truly is fleeting.”

That moment of reflection is especially evident in the album’s lead track, “Better Man,” a poignant ode to his father. In many ways, Ride Through the Rain is a family affair, with Ruston singing on “Leave This Town” and Tim’s daughter Abby Kelly harmonizing on “The Deep.” He credits his son Chip, a creative writer, with inspiring the art direction. Meanwhile, he enlists friends Natalie Hemby, Hillary Lindsay, and Lucie Silvas -- who happen to be A-list songwriters -- on guest vocals. “These women are among the best humans, artists, singers, and songwriters on the planet. I am so honored to have them sing on this record,” he says.

The album concludes with “Free,” a sparsely produced song about a man who’s just left a failing relationship but begins to second-guess himself. Kelly remembers, “Ruston said, ‘If you want people to get a sense of who you really are as an artist, then you need to just step up and play that song, no do overs, no vocal tuning.’ So, in the studio, that was the only take. It’s fitting because that’s the way I started – just a guy singing and playing guitar.”

As for hearing Ride Through the Rain in its entirety now, Kelly observes, “I’m incredibly fortunate and grateful to be able to make a record at this point in my life – and I don’t think it’s the last thing that I’ll do.”