Swearingen & Kelli Premiere the Music Video for Their Triumphant Single “Goodbye”

For Swearingen & Kelli, it has not been an easy path to where they are now. But they’re damn glad they wound up here. Today, the pair unveil their new music video for “Goodbye” from their new EP Build Myself Up From the Ground.

Led by AJ Swearingen and Jayne Kelli, they combine heart and harmony to forge a distinctive but traditional sound. “Goodbye” is plaintively played and sung by Kelli, with Swearingen providing some melancholic depth with his backing vocals. There’s a sombre but haunting nature to the song, which is characteristic of the general nature of the EP. Build Myself Back Up From the Ground is composed of songs deep from the duo’s vault that they always wanted to release but couldn’t decide what form that would take. The songs all started to fit together with a certain feel, and it felt right to release them as a body of work.

Elaborating on that point, Swearingen & Kelli comment:

“‘Goodbye’ is one of those songs from the vault that we wanted to see the light of day. We chose to record the track at 432 Hz, a frequency that is softer, calmer, and emits good vibrations, according to some studies. It’s a subtle difference that some may not detect, but the song felt better to us that way. In the spirit of this record, which is a DIY labour of love, we recorded the music video ourselves in part of our home studio in Tennessee.”

In the leadup to Build Myself Up From the Ground, Swearingen & Kelli encountered many obstacles along the way. The global pandemic helped create a housing shortage, which was made more challenging by a condition Kelli was diagnosed with. She found out she had multiple chemical sensitivities due to mould exposure. This resulted in them living like nomads for most of a year. They made attempts at living in Tennessee, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. They were all short stays because of the amount of mould present in each home. In the Michigan home, they narrowly avoided disaster when they were exposed to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. Luckily, Kelli had the wherewithal to know something was wrong, and the couple quickly left.

They have now found a place to settle in the south of Nashville, where they set up a home studio. And although Swearingen suffered a personal setback with the death of his father soon after, all of these trials and tribulations provided the creative drive and inspiration to create a really nice set of songs that they both feel really good about.

Swearingen and Kelli “Goodbye” single artwork