Connor Kelly and the Time Warp Talk Tour, Trips, Treefort Fest & Latest Release “Scissors”

Coming off of an eventful West Coast Tour, Connor Kelly and the Time Warp are back in Nashville and gearing up to release a few new singles they’ve played live since the start of 2026– starting with grunge rock single “Scissors.”

PHOTOS BY GRACE BRASWELL

In between dive bar karaoke in Carbondale, Colorado and magic mushrooms at Treefort Fest in Boise, Idaho, four piece long-haired Nashville outfit Connor Kelly and the Time Warp are leaning into the greater joys of life on tour. The Knoxville reared, Nashville based alternative rock band has been in the scene since 2018, steadily making a name for themselves not only as staples in the East Nashville DIY Scene, but in the alternative rock scene all across America– and rightfully so. Intertwining a stunning mix of heavily-expressed lyricism and energetic enthusiasm on stage, Connor Kelly and the Time Warp offer more to the music scene than songs that are “easy” to listen to– they’re psychedelic storytellers writing words that read like poetry. 

Band members Connor Kelly, Ben Kelly, Leonardo Faillace and Daniel Ryan met up with Pleaser prior to their show at a staple Nashville hole-in-the-wall venue, OG Basement. Everyone huddled under the metal staircase right outside the venue to avoid the late-April rain. We caught up about the peculiarities of living life on the road, viscerally written lyricism and the weight of a crowd that remembers who you are. 

“The first night we were in Boise, we played a late show. We went on at 11:30 in this little dive bar, and I’d said something like ‘Did anybody see us play last year?’ And everyone was like ‘WOOO!’ I thought, ‘shit, there’s a lot more people here than I thought,’” Connor Kelly told Pleaser. “I feel like that’s a testament to how cool the city is. They value art in a way that’s almost parallel to some European cities.”

It’s no surprise that Treefort Festival, taking place March 25-26 of this year, was stoked to see the return of Connor Kelly and the Time Warp. The band performs with an infectious energy that bleeds into audience members and creates a sturdy sense of togetherness through sets– as any good music should. Evocative lyricism creates a tenacious foundation for the band’s overall presence as artists, with distorted guitar dancing around Connor's conversational delivery of the words he’s pouring out. 

Themes revolving around the current state of the world and the cyclical idea of birth and rebirth are prevalent in Connor Kelly’s lyricism– especially in his latest record, This Egg, which toys with the metaphorical concept that life is all about growth and renewal. 

Lyrics like “I’m a pillar of salt / Cause that’s my default / The smiling teeth of a saw / Eating straight through the wall / You’ve got lines in your face / Love what you’ve done with the place” from the song “Lines in your Face” serve as an existential nod to aging that sits with consistent weight, even as time passes. 

“I’ve written other existential songs where I can sing those lyrics and remember how I felt when I wrote them, but a lot of the time they don’t have the same potency as when I first write them,” Connor said. “But ‘Lines in your Face’ is always potent. It’s always current. How I feel about this song right now is how I feel playing it at some random club across the country. That’s what makes it one of my favorite songs to play.”

After driving the 1,000 or so miles from Colorado to Tennessee at the conclusion of their West Coast tour (spending their 19 hours in the van re-watching the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), the tour concluded in Nashville, where the boys played songs from their latest record This Egg, as well as four new, yet-to-be-released tracks. 

“We’ve been playing a pretty ambitious amount of new material,” Connor Kelly said. “We’ve just been like, fuck it. We just want to play what we’re proud of and what sounds best. And four new songs have made their way onto a lot of the set list, this tour. And I’ve enjoyed playing every second of these new songs.” 

Now, as June rolls around and the thick summer heat replaces the cooler April downpour from our recent interview, Connor Kelly and the Time Warp are preparing to release some of the tracks they performed on their West Coast tour– starting with “Scissors,” out Friday, June 5. The song, according to Connor, is one that’s been resonating with crowds throughout their last tour.

“That one we felt was more crafted. It has a feeling like, ‘holy cow, we did this,’” Connor Kelly said about their soon-to-be released single. 

In conjunction with the release of “Scissors,” the band is stoked to be performing alongside a slew of East Nash rockers, opening for Dexter and the Moonrocks and Cage the Elephant at Jon Bon Jovi’s in Nashville. The lineup, a dream for anyone tapped into the alternative rock scene here in Nash, is a part of a CMA fest spinoff hosted by Rocknite Nashville. It’s been an exciting few months for Connor Kelly and the Time Warp, and Pleaser is excited to see what the future has in store for these East Nash rockers.