Kevin’s songs have been covered by a long string of artists over the last 40 years, including Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings, Patty Loveless, The Judds, Bobby Bare, Ray Price, The Highwaymen (Willie, Waylon, Cash and Kristofferson), Linda Ronstadt, Solomon Burke, Garth Brooks, to name a few. In 2018-19 Chris Stapleton recorded and released his song “Millionaire”, which stayed on the Billboard Chart for over 50 weeks and made it to #2.
Kevin came out from behind the curtain in 1990 and recorded two records for Warner/Reprise, Kevin Welch and Western Beat. In the mid-90s he co-founded the Americana flagship indie label Dead Reckoning Records, and released Life Down Here On Earth, Beneath My Wheels, and Millionaire, which was cut in Denmark and Nashville with the band known then as The Danes. Along with label partner Kieran Kane came 11/12/13: Live in Melbourne, and then three successive records with Kieran Kane and Fats Kaplin, You Can’t Save Everybody, Lost John Dean, and Kane Welch Kaplin. The trio were nominated two years in a row for Best Group by the Americana Music Association.
In 2008 he relocated to the Hill Country of Texas and made one record outside of the Dead Reckoning fold for his friend Jimmy LaFave, A Patch Of Blue Sky, and later, back to Dead Reckoning with the most recent, Dust Devil.
Over all those years he toured constantly with the Reckoners, or with Kieran and Fats, or with son Dustin Welch (Whisky Priest, Tijuana Bible, Amateur Theater) with occasional collaborations with daughter Savannah Welch (The Trishas), and in between times traveled and performed solo all over the world. Daughter Ada skillfully avoided the music business altogether and is back home in Nashville.
In 2017 he married his sweetheart Sarah Whitaker, and later that year he became a father again, when Sarah gave birth to their beautiful son Henry David Sharktooth.
They reside, along with twins Sam and Charlotte, and their big brother Bryn, in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales Australia, close to the sea and the sand.
