Kerri Lick – Texas Americana & R&B Artist

Listen to this episode

In This Episode

There's something about Texas that breeds musicians with dirt under their fingernails and poetry in their bones. Kerri Lick is one of them—a songwriter who describes her music as "honky swamp," a delightfully apt phrase that captures the murky, soulful collision of Americana roots, blues grooves, and something untamed that seems to flow from the Brazos River itself, which she can see from her window in Granbury.

When Kerri settles into the conversation on The Rugged Revival, she doesn't launch into a polished bio or rehearsed anecdote. Instead, she paints a scene: a young girl and her papaw, fishing rod in hand, catching grasshoppers beside a five-gallon bucket while Merle Haggard crackles through the radio. It's the kind of opening image that tells you everything you need to know about where her music comes from—a place where tradition and water and family stories run together, deep and unfiltered.

That papaw was her first guitar teacher, the person who showed her that songs could live in your hands and your voice. He passed when she was eight, but the imprint never faded. In many ways, his ghost haunts every note she writes—not in a melancholy way, but in the way mentors do, quietly insisting that you keep going, keep playing, keep telling the truth.

What's remarkable about Kerri's approach to songwriting is her refusal to stay in a single lane. She cites influences like Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi, and Bobbie Gentry—artists who understood that the best country and Americana songs aren't really about genre at all. They're about lived experience, emotional honesty, and the ability to make your listeners feel something in their chests. Kerri's music channels that same restless creativity, moving fluidly between blues-soaked grooves and folk narratives that read like diary entries from someone driving across Texas at midnight.

The Texas music scene has already begun to recognize her as an emerging talent worth following, which makes sense. There's an authenticity to her work that can't be manufactured or coached. When she talks about her music, you hear someone who has spent time in actual honky-tonks, who knows what it feels like to lose someone, who understands that heartbreak and groove can coexist in the same song. Her recent output shows an artist unafraid to experiment, and with a new album coming in August and a tour lined up alongside fellow artist Presley, it's clear she's in a moment of real momentum.

What strikes you most about speaking with Kerri is her grounded nature. She's not precious about her craft or burdened by it. She's simply doing what her papaw taught her to do—playing songs, telling stories, and letting the blues and the honky-tonk and the swamp all bleed together in ways that feel honest.

For anyone who loves Americana with genuine roots, who wants music that doesn't apologize for its influences or its influences or its messy emotional core, Kerri Lick is worth your time. Listen to the full podcast conversation and hear her discuss her creative process, her connection to the Texas music community, and what's coming next. Then follow her journey closely. The queen, as Presley calls her, is just getting started.