As The Long Road Festival wound towards its close, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Erin Kinsey. Fresh from her set, still buzzing with energy, she was taking in the atmosphere at one of the UK’s biggest celebrations of Americana and country.
“It’s great,” she told me when I asked how she was finding it all. “UK fans are just incredible. We honestly came in guns blazing, right off the plane and right on the stage. So we’re excited to enjoy it after this.”
That urgency and spark carried into her performance, which drew a crowd that didn’t just drift in and out. They stayed with her.
Erin Kinsey @ The Long Road Festival 2025
From Texas to Nashville at Seventeen
Kinsey’s story is one of bold moves early on. “I was 17, and I moved [to] Nashville, which was about a ten-hour drive from my hometown, and my parents stayed at home. And it felt like a big jump. But also, at the time, I had my eyes so locked in and in love with country music, I wasn’t thinking about anything else.”
On whether Nashville is still essential for the genre, she explained: “It’s the only way to really be integrated into the community. But there’s a lot of people who kind of create their own community outside of Nashville, and do it in their hometowns, or in like, Texas has its own music scene. So you can do it other ways for sure. But it also is really special to be a part of the Nashville community.”
Erin Kinsey @ The Long Road Festival 2025
Collaboration, Inspiration, and Storytelling
When the conversation turned to collaborations, she lit up. “There’s, like, some dream ones, and then there’s some ones I’ve talked about with some of my friends. But dream ones would be somebody like Keith Urban or even like Miranda Lambert … just icons that I look up to so much. It would be so cool to get to work with them in some way. But then I also have a lot of friends in the industry, and I’d love to just like create music with them too.”
That balance of personal and shared artistry carries into her songwriting. “Sometimes songs feel so personal to me that I know I’m gonna sing them … But then, yeah, sometimes you think about somebody else influencing it, or bringing their artistry or ideas.”
She’s noticed, too, how storytelling translates especially well here. “Even, like, the fun, upbeat, you know, love songs that I do, they’re still pretty personal to me … One reason that country music is booming over here, this festival is a perfect example of it, is the storytelling aspect. And I love it when you’re on stage and you kind of give them, you know, the insight to the story — yeah, it kind of makes it a little bit more personal.”
Life on the Road
This summer, Kinsey has barely stood still. “I’m actually on a Europe and UK tour right now. So I have my headlining show in London on Wednesday, and then we play a festival in Amsterdam, and now we’ll wrap it up. But we’ve been in Norway, we’ve been in Sweden, we’ve been in Germany, and then I’m also going back home, and we’ve been on a whole US tour too for most of the summer. So playing a lot of shows and really, really enjoying it.”
On the question of stage size, she was clear: “Every show is completely different … It all depends on where the audience is at and if they’re ready to rock. It doesn’t matter if there’s 20 of them or 20,000 of them, yeah, it’s so fun.”
Looking Ahead
For artists dreaming of their own path, her advice was simple: “Honestly, just keep going, keep releasing songs, playing shows, meet fans, meeting people. As long as you don’t stop, you ain’t quit. So it’s kind of a secret.”
And with a schedule that has already taken her from Texas to Nashville, across the US, and now through Europe and the UK, Erin Kinsey shows no sign of stopping. Watching her at The Long Road felt like catching an artist very much on the rise, one whose road is only just beginning.
Erin Kinsey @ The Long Road Festival 2025
Interview with Erin Kinsey @ The Long Road Festival 2025, Leicestershire, by Henry Finnegan on 24th August 2025. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto
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