ABOUT KELLY RICHEY
Blues-rock guitarist. Handpan artist. Healing arts practitioner.
Kelly Richey’s Journey in Music and Wellness
From Guitar Solos to Soulful Healing
Kelly Richey is an acclaimed guitarist, handpan musician, writer, and healing arts facilitator. For over three decades, she has balanced a celebrated career as a blues-rock guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist with teaching thousands of students of all ages and skill levels.
Today, she continues to perform—blending guitar and handpan in rich, acoustic sets—and offers music-based wellness programs that include sound baths, guided writing circles, retreats, and one-on-one coaching or spiritual direction.
- Over three decades as a touring rock and blues guitarist
- Taught thousands of guitar students worldwide
- Private & group guitar lessons for all levels
- Handpan workshops and one-on-one training
- Music-based wellness programs for creativity, connection, and stress relief
Find Your Own Rhythm
Music becomes powerful when it comes from within. Explore your authentic voice through guitar, handpan, and mindful creativity—where expression matters more than perfection.
Grow Through Sound & Stillness
Every note and every pause has purpose. With guided lessons and healing arts practices, discover clarity, balance, and a deeper connection to yourself.
A Journey of Heart, Not Hurry
Transformation takes time. Move at your own pace as music, mindfulness, and creativity lead you toward purpose, peace, and meaningful personal growth.
My Journey
Decades on Tour
A life as a rock ’n’ roll guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist.
The Turning Point
Embracing personal growth and beginning a healing journey.
The Blend
Discovering the handpan and the power of music as a healing tool.
IN HARMONY
Teaching, performing, and facilitating programs that unite music, creativity, and mindfulness.
EXPLORE MY JOURNEY
Kelly Richey stands as a beacon in the music industry, known for her relentless dedication and electrifying presence. Described as “Stevie Ray Vaughan in a woman’s body, with Janis Joplin screaming to get out,” her music isn’t just heard, it’s experienced.
Throughout her career, Kelly has shared the stage with legends like Lonnie Mack and Albert King and opened for icons including Joe Cocker, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Lita Ford, Little Feat, Foghat, REO Speedwagon, George Thorogood, and James Brown.
A powerhouse guitarist, prolific songwriter, and recording artist, Kelly has released 16 albums and performed over 4,000 shows, traveling more than a million miles across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she has inspired thousands of students worldwide in both guitar and handpan mastery.
During her years on the road, Kelly embarked on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth. She became a Certified True Purpose Coach, Writing Facilitator, and trained in the art of Spiritual Direction, uniting her life experience with her passion for healing and transformation. Over the past decade, she has deepened her practice, helping others find clarity, purpose, and peace through creativity and music.
In 2019, Kelly discovered the enchanting handpan, weaving its mystical tones and healing vibrations into her performances. Today, she shares its transformative power through the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Healing Arts Program and at yoga and wellness events. Kelly’s story is a testament to the unifying and restorative power of music, inspiring all who cross her path.
From guitar solos to soulful healing
Alongside performing, Kelly has taught guitar for more than three decades, reaching thousands of students through private lessons, school programs, and instructional series on TrueFire. Since discovering the handpan in late 2019, she has built a second body of work as a handpan musician and healing arts practitioner, weaving it together with her work as a certified Spiritual Director, True Purpose Coach, and writing facilitator. Today she offers guitar
Find Your Own Rhythm
Music becomes powerful when it comes from within. Explore your authentic voice through guitar, handpan, and mindful creativity — where expression matters more than perfection.
Grow Through Sound & Stillness
Every note and every pause has purpose. With guided lessons and healing arts practices, discover clarity, balance, and a deeper connection to yourself.
A Journey of Heart, Not Hurry
Transformation takes time. Move at your own pace as music, mindfulness, and creativity lead you toward purpose, peace, and meaningful personal growth.
A life told in six chapters
Roots in the Church
Long before the stages and the records, music was the center of Kelly’s life. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, she grew up in a Southern Baptist church where her mother played piano, her aunt played organ, and her uncle was the preacher, and she spent her childhood playing and singing there. Her family was deeply committed to civil rights; her uncle’s congregation was among the first in the area to integrate, and the church held joint revivals with the African-American community nearby. When Kelly was six, the church burned to the ground, widely believed at the time to be arson, though it was never proven.
The Black gospel music she grew up hearing and singing left a lasting mark on her, and it is one of the central reasons the blues would go on to claim her so completely.
Finding the Guitar
Kelly was also raised with undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD, and traditional education never quite knew what to do with her. Music did. She started piano at five, moved to drums in her early teens, and picked up her first guitar at fifteen, auditioning for her first band within four months. By nineteen she was on the road professionally and never looked back. What schools could not reach in her, the guitar could; it gave her an identity, a language, and ultimately a life’s purpose.
Nashville, Arista & The Road
In the mid-1980s, Kelly moved to Nashville to play for the folk-rock group Stealin’ Horses. After relentless touring and countless showcases, the band played SXSW in 1986 and signed to Arista Records, touring nationally alongside major acts of the era and opening for James Brown at MTV’s Daytona Beach Spring Break.
In 1990 she stepped out on her own and formed the Kelly Richey Band, a three-piece power trio that would define the next chapter of her career. Fronting her own band, she shared the stage with Lonnie Mack and Albert King, and opened for Joe Cocker, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Walter Trout, Little Feat, Foghat, REO Speedwagon, George Thorogood, Average White Band, Robben Ford, and Warren Zevon.
Decades on Stage
For more than thirty years, Kelly fronted the Kelly Richey Band, building one of the most respected independent acts on the American blues circuit and earning the nickname “Queen of the Road Warriors” for her touring schedule. She performed over 4,000 shows across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, released 16 albums on her own label, Sweet Lucy Records (founded 1994), and logged roughly 900,000 miles on the road, at one point performing 275 days a year. Her work drew national and regional recognition: her band was named Best Rock Band at the 1999 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards and Best Blues/R&B Band at the 2002 CAMMY Awards, and CityBeat named her Cincinnati’s Best Local Musician in 2000. In 2011 she received the Hot Mommas Project Arts Award. USA Today called her a “blazing guitarist,” and Guitar Player highlighted the “fiery solos” and “fast, powerful picking hand” she credits to her years behind a drum kit.
A Parallel Career in Teaching
Through it all, she was also teaching. Kelly began giving private guitar lessons in her early twenties and never stopped, building a teaching career spanning more than three decades and reaching thousands of students. She has led workshops in schools, universities, music stores, and community centers across the United States, Canada, and Europe, served as an Artist on Tour for the Cincinnati Arts Association with a Blues History assembly program, and for years ran Music for Change, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping music education alive in underfunded schools. In 2013 she joined TrueFire, one of the largest online guitar instruction platforms, producing the acclaimed series “Blues Grit” and “Focus On: Blues Rock Power Trio,” and she hosts her own subscription video classroom, Kelly Richey’s Cutting Edge, with more than 600 videos.
The Turning Point
Around 2010, after years of relentless touring, Kelly stepped off the road for a year-long sabbatical, and what she found in that stillness changed the direction of her life. She got sober, reclaimed her health, and began a rigorous course of study in healing, coaching, and spiritual practice, becoming one of the earliest practitioners certified through Tim Kelley’s True Purpose Institute as both a True Purpose Coach and Group Leader. She trained in Parts Work and Voice Dialogue, and in 2012 published Whisperings: A Collection of Poems from Blues Guitarist Kelly Richey, 89 poems drawn from more than 5,000 journal entries spanning three decades. In 2015 she became a certified writing facilitator with Women Writing for a Change in Cincinnati, and in 2019 she completed a three-year Spiritual Direction training program at Wellstreams Spirituality Network, adding the formal credential of Spiritual Director.
Awards, honors
& milestones.
Three decades of touring, teaching, and recording — recognized by press, peers, and the students who show up every week.
Best Rock Band
Cincinnati Entertainment Awards
Source · CityBeat / CEA
1999
Cincinnati's Best Local Musician
CityBeat
Source · Annual Best Of Cincinnati
2000
Best Blues / R&B Band
CAMMY Awards
Source · Cincinnati Area Music Awards
2002
Hot Mommas Project Arts Award
For contributions to music & the arts
Source · Hot Mommas Project
2011
The handpan
The handpan became the natural vehicle for everything Kelly had been gathering: the healing arts training, the spiritual practice, and decades of hard-won experience, all brought together into a broadened offering built on the idea of music as medicine. Her private sound bath sessions, held in her studio and on location throughout Greater Cincinnati, draw on handpan, crystal and Tibetan singing bowls, gong, Native American flute, and gentle percussion to support relaxation, emotional balance, and grounding. For nearly six years she has collaborated with nurse practitioner Tami White, including weekly Chair Yoga broadcasts for the Cincinnati Arts Association and ongoing sound healing work with veterans through the VA Hospital.
- Private & group handpan lessons
- Guided writing programs
- Sound baths in studio & on location
- Spiritual Direction sessions
Music as medicine, connection, and transformation
- Studio in Milford, OH · Online worldwide