Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch & Fats Kaplin   -  Biography

Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch are both highly regarded singer-songwriters in Nashville, even founding one of the city's first independent record labels, Dead Reckoning. They united with longtime friend and violin player Fats Kaplin to collaborate on several albums, including You Can't Save Everybody (2004) and Lost John Dean (2006).
Best known as one half of the new traditionalist country duo the O'Kanes, Kane was born in Queens, N.Y., on Oct. 7, 1949. By age 9, he was drumming in his older brother's rock band, while in his teens he turned his focus to bluegrass and folk, performing at festivals throughout the Northeast. At 21, Kane relocated to Los Angeles where he labored as a songwriter and session guitarist. By the late '70s, he'd moved on to Nashville where he landed a writing contract with Tree Publishing Company. A deal with Elektra followed, but despite notching a pair of Top 10 country singles -- "You're the Best" and "It's Who You Love" -- he found himself at odds with the label and soon returned to composing.
Teaming with fellow Tree staff writer Jamie O'Hara, he formed the O'Kanes in 1985, issuing three albums and scoring a half-dozen Top 10 singles before disbanding four years later. Kane resurfaced with a more austere, folk-influenced sound in 1993 with the solo effort Find My Way Home on Atlantic. He then formed the Dead Reckoning label with Welch, Tammy Rogers and Harry Stinson, issuing the album Dead Reckoning in 1995. Six Months, No Sun followed in 1998, Blue Chair was issued in 2000 and Shadows in the Ground was released in 2002.
Welch left his Oklahoma home at age 17 to pursue a life in music, settling in Nashville in 1978 after years of traveling. He soon signed on as a staff writer at Sony/Tree, over the decade authoring songs for artists including Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller, Trisha Yearwood, Ricky Skaggs, and the Highwaymen.
Welch's self-titled solo debut finally appeared on Reprise in 1990, followed two years later by the acclaimed Western Beat. Country radio remained resistant to his downbeat, acoustic style. Welch's first album for the Dead Reckoning label, Life Down Here on Earth, arrived in 1995, and in 1999 he returned with Beneath My Wheels. Between 1999 and 2001, Welch recorded the Millionaire album with friends from Denmark called the Danes and released it in the U.S. on Dead Reckoning.