Harleymoon Kemp is turning up the volume!

For Harleymoon Kemp, finding her direction as an artist has not involved sitting down and plotting out the next five years. If anything, it has come from doing the opposite: worrying less, having more fun and discovering what happens when she turns everything up a little louder.

When CountryMusic.co.uk caught up with the London singer-songwriter at The Long Road, she had already taken that philosophy onto The Interstate stage. Increasingly, Kemp’s live shows are colourful, playful affairs where country storytelling meets a growing rock and roll streak, and she has learnt that losing some of her own self-consciousness is the key to bringing an audience with her.

“It took me a couple of years to figure out if I wanted to be the singer, and I thought I was too shy,” she admits, laughing at how unlikely that description now seems.

The change came when she stopped treating performing as something that was primarily about her.

“The show’s not about me, it’s about the audience. They wanna have fun. I’m having fun together with them. It’s like I’m hosting a birthday party. I just wanna be a good host so that they have a good time.”

That philosophy gives her permission to embrace the theatricality of performing too.

“I lose all of my self criticism because I think, yeah, of course I’m gonna put some sparkle trousers on. Of course I’m gonna dance with my eyes closed and play rock and roll, because that’s what I want them to do and enjoy it.”

“It’s like I’m hosting a birthday party. I just wanna be a good host so that they have a good time.”

Now, that increasingly uninhibited live version of Harleymoon Kemp is beginning to determine what happens in the studio.

Following the release of Wash in May, Kemp revealed at The Long Road that she is working on an EP which she hopes will arrive before the end of the year — and she has a pretty straightforward description of where it is heading.

“It’s rock and roll. It’s country rock and roll,” she says. “After playing my shows, I love it loud and I love it rocking and I love dancing. And I thought I need an EP that feels like the live show, and this is gonna be it.”

It feels like a significant clue to the next chapter of an artist whose music has always been rooted in things that actually happen to her. Kemp describes her songs as being almost like diary entries, but says knowing that other people will eventually hear them hasn’t made her more guarded.

“It’s always easy to be honest. I never think about what I’m writing. It’s always from an experience that’s happened.”

She points to My Girls (love me better), inspired by the friends who have been alongside her since her teens. “I wrote [it] just hanging out with my best girlfriends and I thought, these girls have got me so badly. They have got my back no matter what. And I thought I should write a song about that, about that sisterhood feeling.”

Once the idea is there, she says, “it just pours out of you very fast”.

That song also appears to have opened another door. The forthcoming EP, Kemp suggests, will retain the honesty but perhaps direct it somewhere different.

“I think this new EP will have a bit of a twist to it and feel a little bit more empowering,” she says, before adding with a laugh: “Few less man bashes. You’ll be happy to know.”

Country music as a movie

If real life supplies Kemp with the stories, country music gives her the space to tell them properly.

“The thing I love about country music is, it is a story. It is a film,” she explains. “While I’m listening to country music, I’m watching a film.”

It is an observation that makes particular sense coming from Kemp. Before stepping into the foreground as a recording artist, she worked behind the camera as a photographer and director, and she continues to make films alongside her music.

For her, the two disciplines aren’t particularly far apart.

“It’s the same picture that you’re painting. It’s like, what’s the detail? What’s the twist? Where’s the punch and the emotion? It feels like the same art form to me because it all starts with the story.”

Country also allows her to indulge something that clearly appeals to her personality: humour.

“I don’t know any other genre of music where you can describe things in such detail and have twists and punchlines,” she says. “Sometimes I hear a song and they say a joke in a song — not many genres where you put a punchline and a joke in it — and I think, ‘Ha ha, wish I wrote that.’”

Then comes perhaps the most Harleymoon Kemp description of her relationship with the genre imaginable.

“I feel like I joined the circus and I’m never going home with country music.”

Finding perspective away from the noise

Of course, music is only part of the reason Kemp has become an increasingly familiar face. She comes from one of Britain’s best-known showbusiness families: her parents are Martin and Shirlie Kemp, while her brother Roman has built his own career in broadcasting.

In 2025, Harleymoon and Roman stepped well outside that world when they took part in — and won — Celebrity Race Across the World, completing a 5,900km journey through Central America and reaching the finish just two minutes ahead of their nearest rivals.

For Kemp, however, the lasting impact seems to have had less to do with winning than with being temporarily removed from the pressures of ordinary life.

“It was just an amazing opportunity to completely zone out of any noise, any insecurity you had about yourself, any drive, any questions of, ‘Where am I going? What am I doing?’ that we all naturally put on ourselves all the time.”

With little money, few possessions and one simple objective — getting to the next destination — life became unexpectedly uncomplicated.

“The freedom that came with that feeling was actually really incredible,” she says. “I didn’t notice it until I got home, back to London, where I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re so overwhelmed with stuff and pressure that we’ve put on ourselves.’”

She laughs that she discovered she could be quite happy with “just a backpack and a pair of socks”, although the experience hasn’t made its way into a song yet.

“We’ll see! I don’t think I’ve written a story about it yet because maybe I’m still traumatised!”

Following where the fun is

There is plenty happening before the end of the year. At The Long Road, Kemp also announced that she will appear on five dates of the new Road to Nashville tour, beginning at Electric Brixton in London on 10 October before dates in Derby, Sunderland and Sheffield, and finishing in Nottingham on 12 December.

But ask what all of this is building towards and Kemp resists turning it into a grand career plan. That instinct perhaps makes more sense after hearing her talk about both Race Across the World and the freedom she has discovered on stage.

“Honestly, I try not to set myself goals,” she says. “I just go with where the fun is, whatever feels right at the time. Just roll into it.”

It’s an approach inherited, in part, from her father.

“Growing up, it was always what my dad said to us: just find something you love so much and just do that. And if you can make money out of it, great,” she says with a laugh. “Stick with the thing you love and you’ll always be happy.”

For the moment, following where the fun is appears to be working. Harleymoon Kemp has found a version of herself on stage that is louder, less self-conscious and increasingly comfortable inviting everybody else into the party.

Now she is making an EP that sounds like her.

Headline photograph copyright: @niamhlouphotos for @wearepineagency