Sean Keel to Release Intimate Piano EP The Breeze That Brought Them

Austin-based folk and Americana artist Sean Keel returns with a hauntingly spare and deeply personal new EP, The Breeze That Brought Them, featuring three songs written for piano and voice. With nothing but Keel’s unmistakable, time-worn vocals and Gabriel Rhodes’ tender piano work, the EP is a study in restraint—and in raw, unvarnished truth.

“These are the first songs I ever wrote for piano,” Keel shares. “I’d always wished I’d learned as a kid. I finally started at 60.” Though Keel plays piano himself now, it’s Rhodes—acclaimed producer and alt-country royalty in his own right—who performs the parts on the recordings. Son of the legendary Kimmie Rhodes and stepson of pioneering DJ Joe Gracey, Gabriel Rhodes brings a lineage and a sensitivity to the work that allows these quiet songs to breathe and ache in all the right places.

The title track, The Breeze That Brought Them, is a meditation on Keel’s late mother—part elegy, part memory, part prayer. “Ma was pretty much everything,” Keel says simply. The lyrics, evoking blind eyes, falling leaves, and voices lifted in song, feel both earthbound and ethereal: “Dry leaves, the breeze is in them / they’re just dead leaves, but it feels like killing.”

The second track, She Was the Sea, is what Keel calls “an entirely true story”—a child’s memory of sitting in his mother’s lap, turning the tables on storytime, and watching her strength in the face of long illness. Sparse and potent, the song hums with emotional precision.

The EP closes with Intending to Mend Them, a reflection on legacy, memory, and regret. Set against imagery of Wexford swap meets, rust-tinged water, and dreams lost to time, the song lingers in the silences between phrases, where Keel’s voice does the heavy lifting: “Mount Linster. Just a hill that got the wrong name.”

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Keel is not your ordinary outsider. In his 60s, the long-time University of Texas professor, is well-known in the world of research mathematics. He writes poems and short stories, which is revealed in his poetic, storytelling music. In addition to this, he has also written a sword and sorcery novel. He’s made three folk/jazz records with his family band, Bill the Pony, and two albums of “super bare-bones folk-country music.” All self released, and all in complete obscurity.

On the suggestion of a music friend he decided to have his latest record produced by a professional. Surprised by the results, he sent the first mix of the first song to Icons Creating Evil Art, hoping they would post it on their Youtube channel (The 'Discovered by ICEA' series). By happy chance, the label’s founder and owner was the one who listened. Impressed, and in an odd mood, he decided it was time to act on his long brewing scheme of giving a promotional push to a complete unknown.  

The release of a dry scary blue in the end of 2022 was the first step in the experiment, which got great reviews and landed Sean Keel an invitation to come and perform at the Live At Heart Festival in Örebro, Sweden - where he played several shows to full houses, both on his own and with his family in different settings (including a Bill the Pony show).  Keel then followed that up with his latest album ferals welcome in June 2024 and went on to win Kerrville's Grassy Hill New Folk Award 2024 - landing a Texas tour in November that same year together with the other winners of the Festival.

The EP The Breeze That Brought Them is the third in a promised line of five EPs leading up to Sean's upcoming fourth solo album, which is set for a November release. 

LABEL CONTACT

Carl-Marcus Gidlöf
Head of the Snake
Icons Creating Evil Art
Råsundavägen 73, Solna
Sweden
cmg@icea.se

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