Vérité strikes up a connection with the debut of June’s Room

Kelsey Byrne, who records and performs as Vérité, has in recent years sought out alternative ways to approach touring outside of the traditional album cycle, experimenting with headlining concerts at comparatively intimate venues that allow the musician to approach things with degrees more spontaneity.

Toward the end of 2023, for instance, Byrne rehearsed 35 to 40 songs with her band for a small concert in New York City, performing tracks by request as audience members shouted out titles. “And people would call out songs that I hadn’t played in a year, and it was like, fuck,” said the New York-born singer and songwriter, who will perform two sold-out shows at Ginger Rabbit on Friday, Feb. 13. (These concerts mark the debut of June’s Room, a new concept spearheaded by Mercedes Wallace of June House, which every other month will feature an artist performing for a small audience in an intimate, individually tailored setting.) “So, we were learning on the spot, which was a whole different breed of chaos.”

At Ginger Rabbit, expect a less frenzied, equally intimate experience, with Byrne centering the connection between artist and audience that guided her earliest onstage forays as Vérité more than a decade ago. 

“When you’re doing a bigger scale of tour, you’re combating so many factors. There’s the scale, where just by the sheer volume and number of people, you can’t meet them all,” said Byrne, who has gravitated to the stage from childhood, recalling how her father accompanied to countless singing competitions and talent shows an hour’s drive or more from the family’s home. “Then you’re also combating fatigue, where you’re just fucking exhausted. There is a point on every tour where every artist will just go into an automated state, like, ‘We’re doing this thing.’ And that can be great. I love touring; it’s my Olympics. But with something like this, I’m just sitting there playing piano and there’s nothing in between [me and the audience]. … And so, I get to go on chaos and vibes, and I get to pivot and engage in whatever way I see fit, where in doing a bigger tour, you can’t deviate from that map at all.”

Wallace launched June’s Room with the idea of fostering this kind of connection, working alongside the chosen artist to build out a show in which every element from the lighting to the drink menu is designed in collaboration. “June’s Room actually came from talking about how we’re so connected digitally that we are getting less and less connected physically,” said Wallace, who has partnered with Ginger Rabbit to host June’s Room on an every-other-month basis, with the next event taking place in April headlined by a yet-to-be-determined performer. “And this is our way to preserve and foster that sense of intimacy, by creating a concert series that can allow us to break that third wall, inviting the audience and artist to sit together in something that feels like your living room.”

Wallace also envisions the event filling a gap in the Columbus music scene, attracting artists who might otherwise bypass the city en route to Cincinnati or Cleveland. Additionally, she hopes June’s Room can become an intriguing additional stop for artists whose tours visit some of the city’s larger venues. “It’s like, ‘Go sell out [Kemba] Live, and then come to June’s Room the next day, strip your set back, and do it for 60 people with nothing to hide behind,’” she said.

For Byrne, this opportunity presented itself at the ideal time, with her last album, Love You Forever, having surfaced in 2023, and a new LP currently in the works. As with this show, the in-progress record has thus far been shaped by the musician’s desire to reconnect with the sense of freedom she felt in the earliest days of her career.

“My cousin Matt [Politoski], he’ll be playing the [Ginger Rabbit] show with me, and he and I will be producing my next record,” Byrne said. “We’ve been making music together since we were kids, and we’ve been having these conversations about how both of us are returning to this state of play with the music … where it’s like, this shit can’t be so serious all the time. Part of the beauty of making music is the energy of the moment, where you speed up, slow down, hit a wrong chord. That actually is like jazz, where you can spin off and ride that energy.”

Byrne has welcomed the return of this youthful energy, which she said the industry had all but drained from her over the last decade, where even in building her career outside of traditional label structure she said she still felt beholden to a particular path in terms of how to make music, who to make it with, and how to deliver it to an audience. “And I don’t know if it’s just getting older or if it’s being 10 years into a career, but now it’s like, ‘Fuck it. This actually needs to be … engaging and interesting for me as an artist and a creator and a player,’” she said. “So now I’m way less concerned about the outcome in terms of those traditional metrics of success and I’m way more concerned with asking, am I having fun? Are you having fun?”