Medicine For The Soul: Sir Woman
Sir Woman Music
Words by Janine Stankus Photos by Eric Morales
For a musician, being in a band is like having a built-in safety net. If you’re having an off night, you’ve got others to take up the slack. If a performance flops, the blame gets diffused. For Kelsey Wilson, who’s been with a band her whole career, flying solo took real guts.
Since striking out as Sir Woman, this soul-driven songwriter finally feels like she has an important message to share. “I just really want these words to be heard, because they’re medicine,” Kelsey elaborates. And medicine is what the world could use after a particularly noxious year.
Kelsey is actually grateful for the forced hiatus that plucked her from the touring whirlwind she’s been caught in since age 19. She dropped out of college to play violin with a Danish psychedelic rock band, where she met Alexander Beggins. The two formed the Austin-based indie-folk outfit, Wild Child, which sparked a swift following. The rest has been a whirlwind of sleeping on the road most nights and intermittent showers.
Kelsey was writing her own material all along—material she felt “too precious” to bring to the band. Poppy breakup songs were hits with Wild Child fans. In those songs, listeners can almost hear the pull in Kelsey’s voice towards what’s always been in her heart: soul, funk, R&B. “That’s all that I listened to. That’s what I was raised on,” she says. “It’s the reason I’m here on this earth.”
Being forced to be off the road threw Kelsey into a period of total pause, which segued into sobriety, clarity, and the confidence to share her own music. The nature of the songs themselves gave her confidence. “Sir Woman is much more about self-love and self-discovery,” she explains, “filling the gaps that we all have internally before we take from others.”
For Kelsey, that meant letting her “masculine side” take the spotlight and shine. The music industry can be hard on an unabashedly outspoken frontwoman who doesn’t take to makeup, shopping, or bras for that matter. She’s actually had offers from people who wanted to buy her catalog to give to “the right-looking woman.” But handing over her heart and soul would have sullied her message—this is her medicine to share.
In October 2020, Kelsey released a selection of five of her most powerful, positive songs as Sir Woman’s debut EP, Bitch. The title is a testament to her owning her power and the more assertive qualities that she’s been made to feel self-conscious about. Whereas earlier this year, she felt like she couldn’t put anything out that wasn’t going to “save the world,” she now recognizes the importance of imparting her own practice. Kelsey believes society will be turning to poetry, music, and art after a year of forced introspection, and she wants to encourage everyone to use their voices and get their thoughts out: “I think my job here is just to show everyone how capable and beautiful they are.”
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Austin is big on music but still a small city, and Kelsey loves that. She rejects the self-aggrandizing attitudes normalized in more competitive markets: the kind that compel musicians to force-feed each other their latest demos from their phones at the bar. “That just doesn’t exist here,” she says. “You’re not trying to sell yourself all the time; it’s just part of who you are and not your job. That energy just makes me feel so much more supported.”
