Premiere: Billy Keane's Feel-Good "Girl Ain't Mine" Is Breathtaking, Soul-Shaking Blues Rock at Its Finest

A spirited, feel-good blues rock song of life, love, and letting go, singer/songwriter Billy Keane’s “Girl Ain’t Mine” is a radiant reminder to smile and enjoy the ride – wherever it takes you, and whoever you’re with.

Stream: “Girl Ain’t Mine” – Billy Keane

We can’t control how love comes or when it goes, but we can always sing a song about it.

And when Billy Keane declares “the girl ain’t mine,” we feel the weight in his words – as well as a resounding, beautiful warmth; for as much as the singer/songwriter had his heart captured and shattered by a passing fancy, he understood their situation – recognizing his ultimate place as a footnote in her larger life story, as she would become one in his. Just because someone doesn’t stay in your life very long doesn’t mean they don’t have a lasting impact, as we hear firsthand in Keane’s latest single. A spirited, feel-good blues rock song of life, love, and letting go, “Girl Ain’t Mine” is a radiant reminder to smile and enjoy the ride – wherever it takes you, and whoever you’re with.

Girl Ain't Mine - Billy Keane — Girl Ain’t Mine – Billy Keane

she held my hand
kissed me all night
I felt her rising
with the morning light

and I watched her go
There ain’t no sadder sight
Yeah, I wish we had more time
But the girl ain’t mine

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Girl Ain’t Mine,” the grittiest, grooviest go-with-the-flow song we’ve heard this side of 2020. Featuring Brain Kantor on the drums, Miles Lally on the bass, Ian Giles on the Hammond organ, and David Tanklefsky tearing it up on electric guitar, the latest offering from Berkshires, Massachusetts-based singer/songwriter Billy Keane is breathtaking, soul-shaking blues rock at its finest: A smoldering, sonically and emotionally charged fervor that hits hard and leaves a lasting mark.

A self-described wanderer, Billy Keane was born in Australia, raised in Connecticut, and now lives out in woodsy Western Massachusetts. He began releasing music in 2020 and has spent the past four years relentlessly honing his artistic voice – one that pulls from the folk, rock, blues, and Americana traditions. He released his debut album Too Much to Let It Go in 2022, followed just a year later by his sophomore LP Oh, These Days (he also released a live EP, Billy Keane and The Waking Dream: Alive at Bousquet Mountain, in-between the two studio records).

In 2023, music industry trade publication Hits Daily Double named Billy Keane one of their “new and developing artists to watch” – alongside folks like Chappell Roan, Geese, The Beaches, CMAT, The Warning, ROLE MODEL, and Nation of Language. Keane and his backing band The Waking Dream have made a name for themselves onstage as well, supporting acts like Molly Tuttle & The Golden Highway, The Bones of J.R. Jones The Gin Blossoms, and Town Mountain.

Keane and his bandmates’ talents can be heard and felt throughout “Girl Ain’t Mine” and this past July’s single “Just Before the Morning,” and while both tracks are stylistically rather different from one another – one leans deep into the blues, while the other dwells more in a rock-soul space – both songs highlight raw, human passion and connection more than anything else.

And of course, David Tanklefsky’s gut-wrenching guitar skills.

“I suppose the progression is a bit crooked, but crooked things are the ones that hook the best,” Keane says of his latest release, cracking a smile as he does. “I think this is more of a playful song, than anything else. I’ve been so blessed to have many people come into my life who have opened my heart in one way or another. I’ve rolled a lot of cigarettes on a lot of porches with a lot of people, ya know?”

“‘Girl Ain’t Mine’ is trying to speak to that, in a groovy, vibey way,” he explains. “The narrative is about spending a night with someone, falling in love with them, but all the while knowing they weren’t yours, they weren’t there to stay, and that in their leaving, they were actually just acting out the fuller story as it had always been written… You can’t lose something that was never yours, and as the chorus says, she was never mine. But I’m still grateful for the time we spent, and the opportunity to love.”

Like the trout lily flower
bloom in the spring
like the chimes and the bells
when the wood thrush starting to sing
she’s a feather on the wind
free as an angel sigh
It’s the grand design
and the girl ain’t mine

Atwood Magazine recently caught up with Billy Keane to dive a little deeper into his songwriting and sound. Stream “Girl Ain’t Mine” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and if you like what you here, you can find Billy Keane’s entire catalog wherever you get your music.

Billy Keane and the Waking Dream have also announced a smattering of shows coming up in September and October – find tickets and more information at billykeane.com!

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:: connect with Billy Keane here ::

Stream: “Girl Ain’t Mine” – Billy Keane

A CONVERSATION WITH BILLY KEANE

Atwood Magazine: Great to chat, Billy! For readers who are new your music, how would you describe yourself to a first-timer?

Billy Keane: Thanks for the opportunity, and thank you for such thoughtful questions. These days, I’ve been describing my music as “soul folk.” Generally I’m writing from a place rooted in folky sounds, with some flavors of country or rock blended in. Though – and hopefully this comes through my listeners – I try to do it all within a soulful context. I sing from that deep part of myself. Our live shows bring in another layer of improvisation and free musical communication, which is a lot of fun for us as a band, and keeps things fresh and interesting for the audience, some of whom come to many of our shows every year.

How did you get started writing songs, and what is your relationship like with the songwriting process?

Billy Keane: I’ve been writing songs for a long time, much longer than I’ve been recording them or even writing them down. I’m sure i’ve forgotten as many of my songs as I remember. Sometimes they come back to me. I think I began writing simply to express whatever it was that I was feeling or experiencing in a way which felt the most aligned with my spirit, which has always been to hear it musically. Today, many years later, I always try to come back to that place. My relationship with the process gets clouded if I try to write with any other notion in mind beyond simply trying to express as soulfully and accurately a given theme as possible. I also enjoy expanding that relationship to include other writers, in co-write scenarios. I hadn’t engaged in co-writing until really just a few years ago, when I was invited to several different writing residencies, but I quickly fell in love with that process as well. Individually though, which is still how I do most of my writing, whether its genesis is manifest through a rhythm or melody, or some lyrical idea, I try to always hone back in to that concept of intentional, full, and heartfelt expression of a particular theme.

Likewise, what pulls you to soul, blues, and Americana - these styles that seem to be staples of your music?

Billy Keane: Ya know, I’m not sure that it’s anything more than the fact that these styles of music are what I have been most readily exposed to over the years, and they’re the styles that I can most honestly produce and create within. If you come to visit me in my home, or in my tour van, you’re as likely to hear jazz or classical (contemporary stuff, generally) on the stereo as you are to hear soul or folk or country, but I don’t have the chops to hang within the jazz or classical worlds. Recently I was talking about Ray Charles with Brain Kantor, the drummer who is on most of my latest tracks, including “Girl Ain’t Mine,” and who tours with my band The Waking Dream. Brian had felt that he heard some Ray in my singing, which for me was an enormous compliment, as I fell in love with Ray’s voice when I was very young, 5 or 6. I think some of his soulfulness, and some of the rhythmic bedrock of his music in some ways still define the edges of what I consider to be the upper limits of the soul’s ability to express itself through music. But I was also listening to James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin a ton, eventually Nick Drake, and on and on. So really I think I’ve grown with these styles of music, and I’ve found myself rooted there to an extent.

“Girl Ain't Mine” is an especially bluesy track, with some phenomenal guitar playing to boot. What’s the story behind this song?

Billy Keane: This was a fun one to write. The acoustic guitar finger picking rhythm kind of just came to me one day, and I worked it around like a ceramicist might until it held the shape that felt the most right. I suppose the progression is a bit crooked, but crooked things are the ones that hook the best. The lead guitar playing, performed by David Tanklefsky. all came out in the studio.

Like I said, the guitar work on this song is really something else. Can we talk a little about those riffs? What was your vision going in to the recording, and how did you guys make that vision a reality? How much of these solos are pre-planned, and how much are spur of the moment?

Billy Keane: Thanks so much for these kind words. All of the electric guitar playing on this one is David, and I agree, his playing is exceptional. There are several riffs throughout the track, and they all came about in different ways. The initial electric groove is a line David had been playing at our live shows since I developed the song, a year or so ago. When I was producing the track at Brian Kantor’s studio, we tracked the drums/bass/organ and my acoustic finger picking all fairly quickly, and left space for the lead playing. I sent the rough track to David and asked him to take some time with it, to let the sounds kind of sink in and steep a bit in his mind. When we got him into the studio a few weeks later, he had several ideas rolling around, all of which were great, though we ended up really writing the thing together on the spot.

My manager snapped a polaroid of that process, which maybe he can send you a copy of. I’m grateful for that image. Often what the process ended up looking like would be me singing a melodic idea, a line, and david would kind of immediately pick up on it and play it – he’s got a great ear – and then we’d analyze the line a bit and make little adjustments until it felt right. He’d take a whack at tracking whatever part we were working on, usually nailing it, if not on the first take, then on the second, and then we’d move on. I comped together the solo a little bit, simply because David left us with so many great options from several different passes.

This follows “Just Before the Morning,” another stunner that served as your first new song of the year. Why did you choose to ‘come back’ with this track, following Oh, These Days last year?

Billy Keane: Again, thank you for the kind words. Actually, I released a track called “returning to the garden” in February, which I wrote last summer and then recorded in the winter with my friends, and musical heros, The Mammals. So I suppose that was my first new song of the year. And then we put out a live track called “Front Porch Swing” in May or June. But yes, I’d say that “Just Before The Morning” would be my first new studio track of the year that has only myself and The Waking Dream musicians on it. I do have a bit of a backlog of songs which have yet to be recorded, so it took some consideration to decide which two to produce first. However, as soon as I wrote it, or as soon as it came to me, really, I knew Just Before The Morning needed to be one of the next songs I was to release. I wrote it as we were, are, all struggling with witnessing the devastation in Gaza, that terrible conflict, the immensity of the suffering and loss of lives that is taking place there. I felt compelled to express a message that was intended to remind us of the need for hope, not that by “hoping”, we can somehow avoid facing these darkest moments, not some naive hope like that, but a bigger kind of a hope, one which recognizes the utility of even the smallest of goodnesses, a dedicated kind of hope, the kind which inspires us to action that we can continue to work towards a better world, even while we come face to face with its most heinous facets. Anyway, it felt important to share. If it can remind even just one person that they have the right to remain hopeful, I’ll be glad for that.

Back to “Girl Ain’t Mine,” listen, I’ve had my share of heartbreak and love; tell me about the emotions that inspired this song. Is it based on a real story? Did writing this track help alleviate any of that pain?

Billy Keane: I’m sorry for whatever heartbreak you’ve experienced, though as you’re suggesting I think, both love and heartbreak are important parts of the living experience. I suppose in a way this song is based on a lot of real stories, but thankfully, none that were too entirely devastating. I think this is more of a playful song, than anything else. I’ve been so blessed to have many people come into my life who have opened my heart in one way or another. I’ve rolled a lot of cigarettes on a lot of porches with a lot of people, ya know? “Girl Ain’t Mine” is trying to speak to that, in a groovy, vibey way.

The narrative is about spending a night with someone, falling in love with them, but all the while knowing they weren’t yours, they weren’t there to stay, and that in their leaving, they were actually just acting out the fuller Story as it had always been written. That’s what the last verse is trying to entail, with the springtime imagery. “Like the trout lily flower, bloom in the spring, like the chimes and the bells when the wood thrush starting to sing, she’s a feather on the wind, free as an angel sigh. It’s the grand design, and the girl ain’t mine.” In other words, you can’t lose something that was never yours, and as the chorus says, she was never mine. But I’m still grateful for the time we spent, and the opportunity to love. Know what I mean?

What do you love most about this new song, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?

Billy Keane: I really dig the groove of this one. Brain Kantor playing the drums, Miles Lally on the bass, and like we talked about already, David Tanklefsky’s electric guitar work are all so dang catchy. A fella named Ian Giles played the Hammond B3 for this one, which also just hits such a nice spot for me. All of their playing gave me a solid pocket for my acoustic finger plucking and the vocals, and I really do love that. It just feels good to me, and I hope it feels good to whomever listens to it. So, I suppose I hope listeners take that away with them, their feet stepping, or their heads nodding to the rhythm. Heartbreak or otherwise, the girl or the boy is yours, or they ain’t yours, but still the groove goes forward, we keep singing, we keep dancing, we keep yearning for those opportunities to have our hearts opened. I hope that’s what they take away from it.

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