Connor Kelly & The Time Warp

East Tennessee first, Nashville after

Connor Kelly & The Time Warp started as a Knoxville band, and the city still shows up in the way they are written about. Connor Kelly grew up in the area and went through the Webb School there, and the group's early footprint was the East Tennessee circuit: Sunset on Central, the New Ground Music Festival, Second Bell Festival, Waynestock. By the spring of 2023 they were coming back as visitors. A 10pm set at Barley's in the Old City on 21 April 2023, with the University of Tennessee band Common Interest opening, was billed as a homecoming, and it followed a West Coast run that took in Venice West in California.

The influences quoted around that date were Led Zeppelin, the Flaming Lips and late-1990s post-grunge; the shorthand the band and its promoters have used since leans harder on Pink Floyd, Radiohead and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Bassist Aiden Lamb, asked in 2023 what constant touring had done for the group, put it in one phrase: "You reap the benefits." The core has stayed the Kelly brothers, Connor and Ben, with the base of operations moving to Nashville, where the band is now listed as resident. A Nashville billing in March 2025 named the line-up as Connor Kelly, Ben Kelly, Ashton Browne and Daniel Ryan; later European listings credit Lamb alongside the brothers, so the touring personnel has not been fixed.

Three albums and a mixing credit that stuck

There are three albums. Informal Conversations arrived in 2018 and Distant Forest in 2022, the record that moved them past the local circuit, with more than five million streams claimed by 2025 and a vinyl pressing since sold out. The single "Wake Up", released in June 2023, was recorded partly in Nashville and partly in Knoxville with Mike Armstrong of Lost and Found Records, and mixed by Paul Kolderie. That mixing credit turned into a working relationship.

"Roy G. Biv" and "Lines in Your Face" followed in 2023, "Spineless" and "Enemy" in 2024, along with a Jam in the Van live session recorded in Los Angeles. "Nocamoa" came in 2025. The album they all fed into, This Egg, was released in March 2025: twelve tracks, self-recorded at home, engineered by Lamb and Kelly, then produced and mixed by Kolderie, whose credits include Radiohead, the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr.

Kelly has been direct about what the title track is for. "This Egg is about trying hard not to resent someone you love whose reality is distorted from always getting what they want," he said on release, and on the method: "Everything was recorded ourselves at home and we just got to explore and take our time with making it and being more intentional than we've been in the past." Reviewers picked up the slow build of the title song and the swing in tone after it. Illustrate Magazine described the opener's eerie, slow-burning intensity and called "Imitation Gold" a one-minute fever dream, with "Roy G. Biv" turning grittier and more urgent. Writing for Cage Riot, Sophie Ray filed the album as psychedelic rock with a bit of Appalachian flair and singled out "Lines in Your Face" as gritty, experimental and pure fun. The Radiohead and Elliott Smith comparison recurs in almost everything written about the record.

The road is the business model

The touring has been the constant. Press materials put the count at eight countries, with support slots behind The Backseat Lovers, Moon Taxi, Vista Kicks and Superdrag across North America and Europe. The plan around This Egg was more of the same: US dates through 2025 including Treefort Music Festival and The Echo in Los Angeles.

The 2025 run mixed room sizes. On 2 March 2025 they headlined 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville for Lightning 100's Nashville Sunday Night, an all-ages show at 6:30pm with RobinAugust and Lara Ruggles opening. In February they had played Swanson's Warehouse in Greenville, South Carolina; in October they worked a Florida stretch, Jack Rabbits in Jacksonville on the 11th and Respectable Street in West Palm Beach on the 12th. The pattern was consecutive-night drives between small clubs rather than weekend-only touring, and Cage Riot's summary of the schedule was simply that the band never stops touring.

Where things stand in October 2026

This year has been quieter on record and busier on the road. One new song has appeared: "Scissors", a single released on 5 June 2026 and the first new music since This Egg. The album itself has had a vinyl release, and "Lines in Your Face" is still the track the band's own site pushes to streaming.

Live, they played The Basement in Nashville on 16 April 2026 with Miles Connor and Sabby, and took a festival slot at Carolina Bloom on 22 August 2026 at blume studios in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 40-minute billing from 5:55pm.

The autumn is a German run: Ponyhof in Frankfurt on 12 November, the Schloss-Café at Freiburg's Lorettoberg on 14 November, Kühlhaus in Flensburg on 18 November, then Café Festung in Traunstein on 21 November, doors at 7pm and on at 8pm, €20.68, a 199-capacity room, with the Brooklyn trio Gooseberry supporting. The UK follows in December, and it is one date rather than a tour: The Brunswick in Hove on 2 December 2026, 8pm, £9 in advance and more on the door, over-18s only, with the six-piece Brighton band Room Service opening. Songkick currently lists the band as touring a single country.

Forty minutes, two covers in reserve

The documented sets are short and worked hard. At Jack Rabbits on 11 October 2025 they played ten songs between 9:30 and 10:10pm; at Respectable Street the following night, ten again across 45 minutes from 8pm. Headline rooms get more, with Greenville in February 2025 running to thirteen songs or beyond.

The shape is consistent. "Roy G. Biv" opens, "Nocamoa" and "This Egg" come early, and the run home is "Casket Shopping", "Lines in Your Face", "Retrograde" and "Enemy". Older material holds its place: "Distant Forest", "Love Captivity", "Pins & Needles", "Apothecary", "Avalanche". Covers get dropped into the middle, The Lemonheads' "It's a Shame About Ray" in Jacksonville and the Beatles' "Yer Blues" in Greenville. By setlist.fm's count the most-played songs are "Casket Shopping", "Lines in Your Face", "Retrograde" and "Roy G. Biv".

Staging is whatever the room has. These are 200-capacity clubs and pub back rooms, played with the band's own backline and no production to speak of. The German preview for the Traunstein show described walls of guitar and vocals pitched between melody and distortion, and raw stage energy — promoter language, but it matches what the setlists imply: a loud four-piece playing a tight forty minutes and keeping a cover back.