Speaker 1: Pushkin. On her intimate new album, Wary and Strange, Amethyst
Speaker 1: Kia sings her heart out about losing her mom to
Speaker 1: suicide and what it's like being the only black person
Speaker 1: in the room at country gigs. I want the fans
Speaker 1: and won my face in the Greek, but I'm black pie.
Speaker 1: I want to sweet that down right. I'm a beat,
Speaker 1: but I'm black Pine. Amethyst Kia has always been caught
Speaker 1: between different worlds. Growing up with massive anxiety as a
Speaker 1: teenager near Chattanooga, Tennessee, she started learning Green Day and
Speaker 1: Tory Amal songs alone in her bedroom on guitar. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she built up her chops and courage and began performing
Speaker 1: bluegrass standards live, catching the attention of recent guests at
Speaker 1: the pod In Banjo Extraordinaire ran In Giddins, who put
Speaker 1: Kia in her band in twenty eighteen. Nearly two years later,
Speaker 1: Amethyst Kia started working with Phoebe Bridges producer Tony Berg
Speaker 1: on what would become her newest album, Wary and Strange.
Speaker 1: The project expertly fuses Kia's love for nineties alt rock
Speaker 1: with her old time country sensibility. Amethyst Kia performs two
Speaker 1: of her new songs on today's episode and talks to
Speaker 1: Bruce Headlam about what it was like for a black
Speaker 1: teenager to come out as gay in a white Christian
Speaker 1: Southern town. She also explains how learning of the West
Speaker 1: African roots of bluegrass helped reaffirm her place in Americana music.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmontain. Here's Bruce Headlam with Amethyst Kia. There
Speaker 1: are many things I love about your album, but we'll
Speaker 1: get to the songs in a second. But the sound
Speaker 1: of your album, it's so textured, but so interesting in
Speaker 1: the sounds you apply to different songs. Often when people
Speaker 1: do that, they bring in a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: noise and effects. They don't seem integral to the songs,
Speaker 1: but yours do. Did you conceive of them with so
Speaker 1: many different sounds? With the string arrangements, it sounded like
Speaker 1: you have flutes, or it may have been like an
Speaker 1: old melotron. Flutes were melotron. So this album went through
Speaker 1: like sort of three different stages, with what is out
Speaker 1: now being the final stage and making this album, I
Speaker 1: was kind of going through like a bit of a
Speaker 1: musical identity crisis because I was like I was dealing
Speaker 1: with writer's block. I was in therapy trying to like
Speaker 1: unpack lots of repressed feelings that were like holding me
Speaker 1: back creatively. So there was just a lot of like
Speaker 1: stuff that I was trying to figure out during the
Speaker 1: making of this record, and my final conclusion for what
Speaker 1: I wanted the record to be is I wanted to
Speaker 1: combine my folk music influences from when I was in
Speaker 1: college and then also combine my lifelong love and obsession
Speaker 1: for alternative music. Because the way that my songs are
Speaker 1: when I write them, I don't sit down and think
Speaker 1: about I'm going to write a country song or I'm
Speaker 1: going to write a rock and roll song. My focus
Speaker 1: had always been on how am I going to range
Speaker 1: us on the guitar. I didn't have the resources or
Speaker 1: the mental capacity to even think beyond that. So meeting
Speaker 1: up with Tony and his years of experience of like
Speaker 1: working with within multiple genres of music, he would have
Speaker 1: these ideas of these different sounds to use to layer
Speaker 1: that I never would have thought of. For example, in
Speaker 1: Hangover Blues, you Know, we had recorded you know, the
Speaker 1: rhythm track for it, and he disappeared for a minute
Speaker 1: and came back with this tourist kind of trinket that
Speaker 1: a friend gave him from Burma. It had a little
Speaker 1: button and it had Tibetan chants. So that part in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the song on the record where you
Speaker 1: hear the guy kind of chanting that's from this little
Speaker 1: from this like tourist toy. Like no sound, regardless of
Speaker 1: where it came from, was off limits. Then also there
Speaker 1: was you know, obviously the using the melotron for different things,
Speaker 1: like with fancy drones. Just the way that he thinks
Speaker 1: about music and thinks about sound played such a pivotal
Speaker 1: role in like how this record turned out, and it
Speaker 1: really clicked with me because all of my favorite records
Speaker 1: are records that have like just weird, little nuanced layers
Speaker 1: of sounds. You know, every time you listen to the record,
Speaker 1: you hear a new sound that you maybe you didn't
Speaker 1: recognize before. The sound reminded me of old LPs, you know,
Speaker 1: from eighties or nineties. Yeah, and I'm wondering, are those
Speaker 1: some of your favorite albums. A lot of my stuff
Speaker 1: that I fell in love with is definitely from the nineties,
Speaker 1: like Radiohead, Records, Tori Amos Records, BORC Records, and it
Speaker 1: was like magic to be had no idea how any
Speaker 1: of that happened or how any of those sounds were made.
Speaker 1: Working with Tony, I was like, Okay, this is how.
Speaker 1: And then there's this one really cool thing called a
Speaker 1: Kalida loop. They're not made anymore. It's really hard to find.
Speaker 1: I keep checking reverb dot com to see if anybody's
Speaker 1: trying to sell one. But like, you can basically record
Speaker 1: any sound and then go back and like flip it around,
Speaker 1: manipulate it, like change the pitch. Seeing all of sound
Speaker 1: as a way to be musical was just an approach
Speaker 1: to music that I never really took in a studio setting,
Speaker 1: and so I learned a lot. And for me, he
Speaker 1: said a high bar of like what a producer should be.
Speaker 1: I know what I want now when I go in
Speaker 1: the studio. I want someone that just really thinks outside
Speaker 1: of the box the sound. So okay, well that's outside
Speaker 1: of the box. Let's talk about the box your songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I notice you have a guitar. Would you like to
Speaker 1: sing one? Yeah? I would love to anything you like?
Speaker 1: All right, we'll do uh hangover Blues woke up this
Speaker 1: money feeding baby had the worst hang oh blue, I
Speaker 1: don my baby had it come. And if I did
Speaker 1: it all over again, I do the same damn thing
Speaker 1: in it. And if I did it all bark again,
Speaker 1: I do the same damn than its. I like sweet
Speaker 1: pleads right up, Gray lor knows I like to look,
Speaker 1: but I was scared to think that my baby had
Speaker 1: it down. We know you had my hands and knees
Speaker 1: and lon she get them into speechless time You had
Speaker 1: my hands and knees and norn she get them into speechless.
Speaker 1: Hay time dum. Then my baby hated game now. And
Speaker 1: if I did it all over again, I do the
Speaker 1: same damn bang And if I did it all over again,
Speaker 1: I do the same damn banging it Hi, sing damn Bangingyhi,
Speaker 1: sing damn dang Hi. This is gonna seem like a
Speaker 1: silly question because anybody who's had a hangover those would
Speaker 1: inspired that song, right, But what inspired that particular song.
Speaker 1: When I left Chattanoogain moved to Johnson City, I like
Speaker 1: went back in the closet because I was like, I
Speaker 1: went from a medium sized Bible belt town to a
Speaker 1: small Bible belt down, so I was very like concerned
Speaker 1: about how that would play out. I came out I
Speaker 1: was gay in high school, Like my sophomore year in
Speaker 1: high school, were you dating? Then? I went on some dates,
Speaker 1: but my social anxiety was so was so crippling that
Speaker 1: like I could never get past my anxiety to really
Speaker 1: like do anything beyond like going out on the day.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of low self esteem, so like
Speaker 1: sharing myself in an intimate way with someone was just
Speaker 1: beyond the pale for me because I had such poor
Speaker 1: self image of myself that part of me in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways was like how can anybody like me?
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, not a great mental space to be in.
Speaker 1: But but then I went back in the clausem early twenties,
Speaker 1: and then I kind of just stayed there for like
Speaker 1: seven years, which wasn't the intention. So by the time
Speaker 1: I was in my late twenties, I was like something
Speaker 1: about the year twenty seven. They say that when you
Speaker 1: turned twenty seven, all of your cells and your body
Speaker 1: have totally regenerated. I don't know. I've not looked up
Speaker 1: the science, but I've just had conversations with people and
Speaker 1: like there may be something to it, because I feel
Speaker 1: like at the age of twenty seven, I just decided
Speaker 1: to like not care anymore about how people felt, and
Speaker 1: then I kind of just started dating do my own thing.
Speaker 1: I started. I had my party phase in my late twenties,
Speaker 1: which is a weird time to do that. I'd had
Speaker 1: like a few drinks here and there, like in my
Speaker 1: early twenties and into my mid twenties, but I didn't
Speaker 1: start like drinking or actually get drunk until like my
Speaker 1: late twenties. In my mind, I was like, well, I'll
Speaker 1: be more interesting if I drink. But Hangover Blues was
Speaker 1: like the beginning of that phase. So it was when
Speaker 1: things were still fun, at least in my mind. Things
Speaker 1: were fun. But the line in the song that talks
Speaker 1: about I like to look, but I was scared to
Speaker 1: death that came from a line from The Great Gatsby.
Speaker 1: There is this idea of like being so attracted to
Speaker 1: someone but also being terrified of them at the same time.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the way a relationship should work.
Speaker 1: I don't think you should ever feel tar about it
Speaker 1: if the personally I don't know any other way, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there was like this exciting exhilaration about it, like
Speaker 1: you know, this this person that is like just was
Speaker 1: so opposite for me in every single way, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there was something about it that was
Speaker 1: just terribly exciting to me. So that was referring to
Speaker 1: like a person that I was dating at that time.
Speaker 1: You said you had writer's block. Was that a result
Speaker 1: of the social anxiety? Do you think possibly? I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say between like two thousand and nine all
Speaker 1: the way up until like twenty twenty fourteen. You know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a lot when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: I wrote a lot of poems, song ideas, and songs,
Speaker 1: but I kind of stopped and just focused on traditional
Speaker 1: music because when I started studying the roots in the
Speaker 1: cultural history of American music, I realized I need to
Speaker 1: really own in on this. I was lacking grounding in
Speaker 1: my musical journey because I'd spent so much of it
Speaker 1: kind of on my own, listening to different things that
Speaker 1: I needed to learn how to play with other musicians
Speaker 1: and learn how to be a performer. But the real
Speaker 1: songwriting didn't really like start happening until I was probably
Speaker 1: I would say probably twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Then by
Speaker 1: the time twenty eighteen rolled around. That's when like the
Speaker 1: writer's block was happening. Because I was really in deep
Speaker 1: in this like on again, off again ambiguous relationship with someone.
Speaker 1: It was consuming all of my emotional energy. This person
Speaker 1: didn't really even end up being amused to write songs about.
Speaker 1: It was just this person just blocked out my creativity
Speaker 1: like altogether. It wasn't until after working on Our Native
Speaker 1: Daughters that's when the writer's block started to lift, and
Speaker 1: I really started to like get some momentum with writing
Speaker 1: some new songs and then also like deciding to record
Speaker 1: some of the songs that I'd written and like have
Speaker 1: a record of all original material and also sort of
Speaker 1: reconcile these two musical sides and just make something completely
Speaker 1: fresh and new and something that really represented who I
Speaker 1: am as a musician and where I really was in
Speaker 1: that current moment. We should talk a bit about the
Speaker 1: other side, because you went to study at Eastern Tennessee
Speaker 1: and you took a bluegrass course, I think without really
Speaker 1: knowing much about bluegrass, right right, Yeah, yeah, I took
Speaker 1: a blue grass guitar class with Jack Toddle. Classical didn't
Speaker 1: isn't really appealing to me because the way that I
Speaker 1: learned music didn't really align with how they taught it,
Speaker 1: and so it just didn't really interest me. But with
Speaker 1: blue grass guitar, it was an opportunity for me to
Speaker 1: take a music class and not have to worry about
Speaker 1: oral skills and theory and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And the way that I learned was like recognized and respected.
Speaker 1: So it started there, and then as I kept digging
Speaker 1: more and more, I started seeing, like, you know, the
Speaker 1: entirety of like American roots music and how it plays
Speaker 1: such a huge role in all American music, and also
Speaker 1: having it revealed to me the West African influence in
Speaker 1: country music and in bluegrass music and all these musics
Speaker 1: that people have identified with being like southern white Christian,
Speaker 1: like all of my favorite things basically were happening at once.
Speaker 1: I could pursue music in a way where my way
Speaker 1: of doing it was was recognized, and I was like
Speaker 1: having my entire idea of music and history and culture challenged.
Speaker 1: And I was also seeing where I fit in as
Speaker 1: a black girl who grew up in like you know,
Speaker 1: conservative white Christian you know area, where I fit in
Speaker 1: in this world and in like the larger story of history,
Speaker 1: You didn't know about the West African influence. All I
Speaker 1: knew about bluegrass was the Beverly Hillbillies. That's literally all
Speaker 1: I knew. So I walked in completely unaware of anything,
Speaker 1: you know, with an intellectual curiosity to just like see
Speaker 1: what all of what's all this bluegrass about? And then
Speaker 1: it led me into old Time? Do you remember what
Speaker 1: the songs were that first captured you or were their
Speaker 1: performers from old time that you just gravitated towards. I
Speaker 1: would say Doc Watson, the Carter Family, learning about like
Speaker 1: Leslie Riddle and how like he played such a huge
Speaker 1: role in development of like the Carter Family and there
Speaker 1: and their success Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. The one
Speaker 1: band that really kind of solidified for me I need
Speaker 1: to pursue this is the Carolina Chocolate Drops because they
Speaker 1: were the first black stream man that I'd ever heard of.
Speaker 1: They were all like living, breathing in the here and
Speaker 1: now and the way that they played the music was
Speaker 1: so exciting and like once I saw them, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm an advocate that you know, representation matters. Seeing
Speaker 1: someone that looks like you doing something is something that
Speaker 1: you know A lot of people kind of take for granted.
Speaker 1: It was just a really inspiring moment where I was
Speaker 1: just like, all right, well, I'm going to stick with
Speaker 1: this old time thing because like there's something to it
Speaker 1: and it's giving me this sense of purpose that I
Speaker 1: didn't really feel I had prior. Amazing. And then later
Speaker 1: when you played with Our Native Daughters, you played with
Speaker 1: Rihanna and Giddens. Yeah, so with Rihanna and Giddens. I
Speaker 1: actually met her prior to Our Native Daughters. She saw
Speaker 1: me perform at Cambridge Folk Festival on like a there
Speaker 1: was like a YouTube video. This is in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: She always looks for like a people of color to
Speaker 1: open for her, and her agent reached out to me,
Speaker 1: so I actually got to meet her and like opened
Speaker 1: for her, which was amazing. I mean, she's such an
Speaker 1: incredible performer and is such a brilliant mind. So when
Speaker 1: she asked me to do Our Native Daughters, first of all,
Speaker 1: the answer was a resounding yes. Because I had a
Speaker 1: shut up and sing policy for really really long time.
Speaker 1: You know, this was an opportunity to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a way that I can talk about this history
Speaker 1: that I've known about and had discussions about, but never
Speaker 1: ventured into singing about. Because of the audience that I
Speaker 1: had garnered, I was worried that I was going to
Speaker 1: get backlash that I wasn't one of those like, you know,
Speaker 1: safe black people that just you know, smile and dance
Speaker 1: and don't say anything to rock the boat. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the role that I put myself in. So this
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to just like throw caution to the
Speaker 1: wind and step forward with like four amazingly talented black
Speaker 1: women and have that courage and strength to like talk
Speaker 1: about this about the Transtlantic slave trade and how it affected,
Speaker 1: you know, the America's But at the same time, it
Speaker 1: was also like I went from opening for Rhiannagtens to
Speaker 1: now like being a colleague, and so that was also
Speaker 1: very intimidating because I'm just like, oh my God, Like
Speaker 1: who am I to be on this project? Like at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it was just kind of
Speaker 1: like I'm you know, I went for it. Anyway, even
Speaker 1: though I was very nervous and very like, you know, intimidated,
Speaker 1: I was also like, well, I have to do it.
Speaker 1: I have to this is so important. What I got
Speaker 1: from that experience was so much more than I think
Speaker 1: I even realized I was going to get. It was
Speaker 1: for the first time I actually had this sense of
Speaker 1: like telling the story of my ancestors, like I've heard
Speaker 1: people use the term ancestors when talking about doing things,
Speaker 1: and that seemed like such a foreign concept to me,
Speaker 1: because I spent so much of my life seeing myself
Speaker 1: as like a loan on an island for a really
Speaker 1: long time because of my social anxiety, and then with
Speaker 1: my fear of rejection, I built walls and kept distance
Speaker 1: emotionally from people so I wouldn't get disappointed by them
Speaker 1: later because I just didn't trust people to ever truly
Speaker 1: care about me, to actually be in a situation where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know what, there is so much more
Speaker 1: to this world than just me and how I'm feeling
Speaker 1: and what I say and do and how I am
Speaker 1: does affect other people. Feeling a connection with something that
Speaker 1: is hundreds of years old and all of us as
Speaker 1: women of color, still feeling the repercussions of what the
Speaker 1: Transatlantic slave trade like established for how black people should
Speaker 1: be treated and viewed, and seeing how that still affects
Speaker 1: us in our daily lives. Knowing the people before us,
Speaker 1: all that they had to endure, and then for me
Speaker 1: to be able to have the opportunities that I have now,
Speaker 1: it's like, the least I can do is sing a
Speaker 1: song and whatever backlash were to happen. So what like,
Speaker 1: if the people before me can handle what was thrown
Speaker 1: at them, being brought over on a slave ship, being
Speaker 1: whipped and beaten, being segregated, being chased out of office
Speaker 1: during reconstruction by white supremacists, if all of those people
Speaker 1: can survive through that, for me to be here now,
Speaker 1: like I really don't have an excuse to not do
Speaker 1: my part in this aspect of history. Did that help
Speaker 1: your writer's block too? Oh? Yeah, it really did. It
Speaker 1: gave me the courage to like write and speak about things,
Speaker 1: not just about how I'm feeling personally, which that's obviously
Speaker 1: very important, but to be able to like look outside
Speaker 1: of myself and like make commentary about things that I
Speaker 1: see that I and really like stating what my beliefs
Speaker 1: are about certain issues. So a lot of my newer
Speaker 1: songs that I'm writing now involve a lot more like
Speaker 1: social commentary than my previous records. So there's still gonna
Speaker 1: be like the deeply personal stuff that'll always be part
Speaker 1: of what I write, of course, But now I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid to, like, you know, speak my mind on certain
Speaker 1: things anymore, which such a relief. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with Amethyskia after a quick break. We're back with more
Speaker 1: from Amethyst Kia and Bruce Hudlam and just a quick
Speaker 1: heads up. This segment contains discussion of suicide. Do you
Speaker 1: want to play another song? Yeah, let's do it. This
Speaker 1: one is called Firewater. Melancina always seemed a work for me,
Speaker 1: wistful and uncertain on my dreams. Starts farms into shapes
Speaker 1: that never lieve. Strange anderarything all see, I'm a ghost
Speaker 1: in the alle, in the room, everywhere I go in
Speaker 1: pending Dude, how many spirits does it take to lift
Speaker 1: the spirit? I don't know. I don't know because I
Speaker 1: bought every spirit and I'm still laying here, crying on
Speaker 1: the floor on the flood. So can you just leave me? Bee?
Speaker 1: Being drenched in fire water won't save me? How forsake
Speaker 1: the path of bealth Fleet? Can't he to sleep me?
Speaker 1: Be pens of stairs on the only crowns I've ever green?
Speaker 1: The dog I find the answers that I need city
Speaker 1: lights on the own stars. I have seen how many
Speaker 1: nights until I find and he can breathe? How many
Speaker 1: spirits does take to lift the spirit? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, as I bought every spirit and I'm
Speaker 1: still laying here crying on the floor, hunger flood. So
Speaker 1: can you just leave? Maybe being drenched the fire and
Speaker 1: water won't see me? Forsake the path of felth flee.
Speaker 1: Can't he just leave? Can you just leave? Can you
Speaker 1: just leave me? Maybe you learned a lot of Eastern Tennessee.
Speaker 1: The picking is just fabulous on that, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, a lot of my fingerstyle picking was
Speaker 1: very much classically influenced. But once I started learning three fingerstyle,
Speaker 1: what's also been done is like Merle Travis style. Then
Speaker 1: it really opened things up for me. And then I've
Speaker 1: also been a fan of like percussive fingerstyle. I just
Speaker 1: love guitar and the different ways to play, so I
Speaker 1: kind of picked things up from here and there and
Speaker 1: have fun with it. So do you remember your first guitar? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my first guitar was a late eighties Fender Acoustic and
Speaker 1: my parents bought it for me at a place and
Speaker 1: Ring Gold, Georgia called the sound Post really really nice guys.
Speaker 1: That was like in North Georgia, not far from where
Speaker 1: I live in Chatanooga. Literally the first ten years of
Speaker 1: playing guitar, there's a thing inside some next of acoustic
Speaker 1: guitars called trust rods, and you can tighten it. Apparently
Speaker 1: the trust rod was like super loose when I got it,
Speaker 1: and so for years I just adapted to having to
Speaker 1: push down really hard on the strings. And I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I think it was one of my
Speaker 1: band directors at East to State University, because I had
Speaker 1: played other guitars and I'm like, for some reason, the
Speaker 1: other guitars are like a little bit easier to play,
Speaker 1: what's up with this one? And then my professor told me, oh, well,
Speaker 1: your trust rod is completely loose. And then it tightened
Speaker 1: because I was about to get a whole new guitar.
Speaker 1: So you had a really high action on the guitar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the action was pretty high, but like I didn't know
Speaker 1: any better because I just played the same tar for years.
Speaker 1: And that's when I found out that my trust rod
Speaker 1: was too loose. I got it fixed, and then it
Speaker 1: just it played like a dream. So I just played
Speaker 1: this late eighties Fender for a really long time, and
Speaker 1: then I eventually bought a Martin Maha any O nine,
Speaker 1: which is basically like the sustainable Forrest version of a
Speaker 1: D eighteen. So that was like my first like guitar purchase,
Speaker 1: even though it took me two years to pay it
Speaker 1: off of my credit card. I have no regrets, so
Speaker 1: probably good for your hand. Yeah, it'd be like a
Speaker 1: guy playing like a trombone without a mouthpiece for ten
Speaker 1: years and someone says, you know, it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: if you Yeah, if you put this up. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: I was so like my music playing was such an insular, private,
Speaker 1: like isolated thing that like I just wasn't My music
Speaker 1: experience didn't really involve other people or other like ideas,
Speaker 1: so like I was kind of just a guitar hermit.
Speaker 1: I guess I was on my island playing stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just didn't play with anybody else until college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't really. I didn't play with anyboy else I had.
Speaker 1: Like there was this one time there was like a
Speaker 1: talent show. This girl that I was friends with and
Speaker 1: also had a huge crush on. She played bass and
Speaker 1: sang and she wanted to play Zombie by the Cranberries,
Speaker 1: so I played. I played guitar. I didn't even sing
Speaker 1: with us, because at the time I didn't even think
Speaker 1: of myself as a singer. Really, everybody in that school
Speaker 1: lost their minds and people were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're a tar playing so good. And it was the
Speaker 1: first time I'd ever been like complimented outside of like
Speaker 1: my parents. So I was sort of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like this was really easy. It was my first step
Speaker 1: in having to learn how to like take a compliment
Speaker 1: and also realized that like, just because I do something
Speaker 1: all the time doesn't mean that other people do it,
Speaker 1: you know. So there was that first moment of realizing, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: like I do something that is really special to other
Speaker 1: people's eyes. What was the first song you played when
Speaker 1: you got that Fender guitar. After a month or two
Speaker 1: however long that was of learning CG and D learning
Speaker 1: strumming pattern, the first song that I learned to play
Speaker 1: was good Written's Time of Your Life by Green Day,
Speaker 1: and it was so exciting. I just remember, like that
Speaker 1: song was so controversial at the time, because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were like they sold out, Like
Speaker 1: are they still punk anymore? Because they played this acoustic song.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for me, like I grew up in a household
Speaker 1: where it was all kinds of music being played, so
Speaker 1: to me, if I like something, I like something. So
Speaker 1: I kind of liked the idea that the first song
Speaker 1: I learned was like this quote unquote controversial moment in
Speaker 1: green Day's career. It's a damn good song and it
Speaker 1: had all the chords that I learned. I learned like
Speaker 1: lots of like pop punk songs like you know, Blink
Speaker 1: one at two green Day. Once I started taking classical guitar,
Speaker 1: it opened like the dexterity up on my hands. And
Speaker 1: then I became obsessed with Tory Amos when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: So then one time I recorded this cover of Blood
Speaker 1: Roses on like this little tape deck thing, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wish I still had because I
Speaker 1: have no idea what happened to any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I recorded, like a bunch of like Tory Amos covers
Speaker 1: and they're probably melting in some trash somewhere. I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that you loved listening to field recordings. Was that
Speaker 1: a big part of Eastern Tennessee. Yeah, my band instructor,
Speaker 1: I'm Ryan Drotti. I joined the program. That was when
Speaker 1: like at that point there was like a lot of
Speaker 1: bluegrass band sections, so he put together like the first
Speaker 1: Old Time Pride band, and the pride bands were the
Speaker 1: bands that like got to play more than the three
Speaker 1: required band shows. All of us were new to old Time.
Speaker 1: So what we would do when we first started bringing
Speaker 1: songs to band practice, it would be like, you know,
Speaker 1: versions of traditional songs that were sung by like you know,
Speaker 1: Bruce Molski or Alison Kraus or like some other contemporary
Speaker 1: musician that had covered a traditional song. But what Roy
Speaker 1: wanted us to do was to dig a little bit
Speaker 1: deeper and listen to source recordings, like the earliest known
Speaker 1: recording of a song, because there's a lot of nuance
Speaker 1: and dynamic differences that source recording has that if you
Speaker 1: just play the contemporary person's version of the song, you're
Speaker 1: missing out on an opportunity to make that song your
Speaker 1: own song. So if you listen to the source recording,
Speaker 1: you then have the ability to like take that song
Speaker 1: and like make it your own instead of you like
Speaker 1: Bruce Molski when he plays something, he's put his stamp
Speaker 1: on the song. So it took us a while to
Speaker 1: get used to that. But once I did get used
Speaker 1: to it, you end up hearing the melody and you
Speaker 1: forget about, you know, the fact that it was on
Speaker 1: a wax cylinder. It's more than just learn a song
Speaker 1: and play it. You're actually learning about the history of
Speaker 1: the song in the many different ways that it was played,
Speaker 1: and it just creates like a richer experience, you know,
Speaker 1: with interpreting. I should mention on the album that's got
Speaker 1: a beautiful string arrangement. Yes, so there are songs that
Speaker 1: do have string arrangements on them and those were written
Speaker 1: by a woman named Aaron Dalton. But on Firewater in particular,
Speaker 1: that was the melotron. Again, it was yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was interesting because like when we recorded the song initially,
Speaker 1: like there wasn't any like strings at all in it.
Speaker 1: Then when I heard it again when they sent like
Speaker 1: the you know, the first set of mixes, I heard
Speaker 1: that edited and I'm like, oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to keep that, you know, and found
Speaker 1: a way to make it so that like it's almost
Speaker 1: like it's in the middle of the record, so it
Speaker 1: feels a little bit like an interlude before getting into firewater.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's gorgeous. Your album is a book ended
Speaker 1: by a song, Soapbox. Yes. Did you think of the
Speaker 1: album as a coherent whole or were you thinking of
Speaker 1: songs individually? I think in the beginning it was definitely
Speaker 1: the songs were thought about more individually, because the songs
Speaker 1: were all written between a span of like, you know,
Speaker 1: between twenty sixteen and like twenty nineteen, So like, there
Speaker 1: were some songs on there that I've been playing for
Speaker 1: years but just hadn't recorded yet. It wasn't really until
Speaker 1: I wrote the last two or three songs for the
Speaker 1: record that I started to see like a coherent connection.
Speaker 1: I remember I was actually to dinner with my girlfriend
Speaker 1: one time and she's like, you know, this is kind
Speaker 1: of like a breakup album, because quite a few of
Speaker 1: the songs deal directly with like relationships that I've had
Speaker 1: had in the past. The other songs in there were
Speaker 1: dealing with trauma, like Wild Turkey. So the whole album
Speaker 1: essentially ended up being like less breakup and more just
Speaker 1: me fighting to figure out who I am and fighting
Speaker 1: off feeling weary and strange. So Soapbox was like the
Speaker 1: very last thing that I wrote for the record, and
Speaker 1: it's more or less a proclamation of me breaking out
Speaker 1: of fear of verticule and backlash that had kept me
Speaker 1: silent for so long as far as you know, speaking
Speaker 1: about how I feel about things. So that song kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, really sealed the deal on it
Speaker 1: being more conceptual than I think it I originally intended
Speaker 1: it to be. So it is a breakup album, then
Speaker 1: you're breaking up with that fearful side of yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I love in this albums there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different voices. Like the song You Just had a
Speaker 1: beautiful old Carter style fingerpicking, but the lyrics are very contemporary,
Speaker 1: where you've got other songs like Opaque, where it seems
Speaker 1: you're pulling from like old flood songs like these very
Speaker 1: old songs are being Oh yeah, definitely with Opaque. Well, really,
Speaker 1: most of that song is actually a dream that I
Speaker 1: had for some reason. I was in my childhood home
Speaker 1: in Chenooga and I opened the front door and what
Speaker 1: I describe in the first verse of wearing an opaque coat,
Speaker 1: you know, the scene in American Psycho Patrick Bateman is
Speaker 1: wearing like his kill raincoat. That's the kind of coat
Speaker 1: she was wearing. And it was pouring down rain outside,
Speaker 1: and she looked terrified. I reached out my hand to
Speaker 1: like invite her in. She started coughing and choking, and
Speaker 1: she was shaking her head and like backing away from me.
Speaker 1: So washing away was really just referring to like her
Speaker 1: literally like being in the rain, and like just her
Speaker 1: entire her whole persona, her veneer, her whole thing that
Speaker 1: she presented to me as a person was disappearing, and
Speaker 1: I was starting to see, like who she really was.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you say who she really was? Was it
Speaker 1: someone in your life? This was the person that I
Speaker 1: had this sort of like ambiguous on again, off again
Speaker 1: relationship with, And I don't even know if I gave
Speaker 1: me really call a relationship looking back now, and my
Speaker 1: mind I wanted it to be. The other part of it, too,
Speaker 1: was like this person couldn't be what I wanted them
Speaker 1: to be, but I was trying to make it something
Speaker 1: that it just wasn't. I was still like learning how
Speaker 1: to date and also have self respect for myself, Like
Speaker 1: I hadn't quite figured out those two things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody has. But I feel like I'm better about it now.
Speaker 1: First of all, a terrifying dream. Was it therapeutic for
Speaker 1: you to put that experience into song? Can you kind
Speaker 1: of now it's a song, I can kind of get
Speaker 1: away the emotional weight of it. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that that's kind of what music has always been. If
Speaker 1: something happens and I'm just in a terrible mental health
Speaker 1: spiral and I come across the song, I will listen
Speaker 1: to that song obsessively to the point where I'll have
Speaker 1: to like actually learn the song and play it. I
Speaker 1: did that with Nearly Forgot my Broken Heart by Chris Cornell.
Speaker 1: I had like a breakup situation, and I became so
Speaker 1: obsessed with that entire record. But like, I got so
Speaker 1: obsessed with that song the only way I could get
Speaker 1: it out of my system was like learning how to
Speaker 1: play it and singing it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a bit about Wild Turkey if you
Speaker 1: want so? With Wild Turkey, it took me a couple
Speaker 1: of years to write that song because it took me
Speaker 1: a long time to really truly confront how I felt
Speaker 1: when my mom died. Wild Turkey was my way of
Speaker 1: fully formula recognizing what happened and what I tried to
Speaker 1: do to cope. So once I finally was able to
Speaker 1: like release that song, it was just like, Okay, now
Speaker 1: I really feel like I can talk about it because
Speaker 1: I've allowed myself to process it. And again in it's
Speaker 1: thanks to going to therapy. I have a wonderful therapist
Speaker 1: and getting to the point where I could finally write
Speaker 1: the song about my mother. That's when I can finally
Speaker 1: like talk about her suicide and talk about how it
Speaker 1: affected me and how I suppressed my grief when she
Speaker 1: committed suicide. To me, it meant that like she didn't
Speaker 1: love me, she was tired of me and didn't want
Speaker 1: to stick around, so she like left, And that's when
Speaker 1: I really it is settled in my mind, like there's
Speaker 1: no point in getting close to people, because if my
Speaker 1: own mom won't stick around for me, then why should
Speaker 1: I expect anyone else. So that was something that became
Speaker 1: like this mantra for me of like not letting people
Speaker 1: to get too close, not wanting to talk about my mom,
Speaker 1: not wanting to really talk about what me and my
Speaker 1: dad went through after my mom committed suicide, and like
Speaker 1: you know, just keeping huge swaths of my past to
Speaker 1: myself and to be able to finally express things and
Speaker 1: talk about things, and also realized that like, I'm not alone,
Speaker 1: and you know, while Turkey was at big, big step
Speaker 1: of like releasing that traumatic part of my life that
Speaker 1: I based my entire existence and decision making around and
Speaker 1: not realizing that that was what was causing it. How
Speaker 1: old were you when your mom done? I was seventeen.
Speaker 1: You played at a funeral, didn't you? I did. I
Speaker 1: did write a song for her funeral, and that was
Speaker 1: a song asking why did you leave? Please come back
Speaker 1: to me. I think I might have only cried once
Speaker 1: during that whole period, because another thing I realized the
Speaker 1: other day. I've always been an incredibly sensitive person, and
Speaker 1: I would cry when I was upset. Kids would make
Speaker 1: fun of me for it. So for years and years
Speaker 1: and years, I've just made it a point to not
Speaker 1: cry about anything because I didn't want to get made
Speaker 1: fun of. But I didn't realize that that's what I'd internalized.
Speaker 1: So do you still play that song? No, that song,
Speaker 1: I don't really play that one. I don't think I'll
Speaker 1: ever record it or perform it, because like that was
Speaker 1: a song for her for that moment, and it's not
Speaker 1: a place I really want to go back and revisit.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more from Bruce Headlam's conversation with Amethyst Kia.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Amethyst Kia. I did want
Speaker 1: to ask you about singing, because you know, when people
Speaker 1: hear you, you've got this powerhouse voice. At some point,
Speaker 1: did somebody look at you and say, you know, you
Speaker 1: can really sing? Well? My dad was always really encouraging,
Speaker 1: but you know, when I'm that young, I'm just like, yeah, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really until like college, like I got encouraged
Speaker 1: audition for school band. It wasn't until college when I
Speaker 1: started like singing and playing stuff. It took until like
Speaker 1: my early almost to mid twenties before really fully recognizing that, like, okay,
Speaker 1: people aren't just playing a really bad joke on me.
Speaker 1: They actually do like what I'm doing. Did you get
Speaker 1: training because you've got this huge voice? I mean, the
Speaker 1: huge voice was there from birth. Both of my parents
Speaker 1: have like very strong projecting voices, so I inherited that.
Speaker 1: It's not something that I had to really work at.
Speaker 1: What I did have to work at though, is to
Speaker 1: know not when to go full blast, because I would
Speaker 1: sing like full blast all the time for everything, no
Speaker 1: dynamic whatsoever. So what I ended up doing is in college,
Speaker 1: I took a couple of vocal instruction classes with the
Speaker 1: current director of the Bluegrest Old Time Country Music Studies
Speaker 1: named Dan Boher. What he said to me was, I
Speaker 1: don't want to change anything about your actual singing voice.
Speaker 1: What I want to do is help you learn how
Speaker 1: to have more dynamic, like if I'm singing an angry
Speaker 1: song versus singing a sad song, to know how to
Speaker 1: like sing in character. So that was my big is
Speaker 1: just like knowing how to reel it in. Which of
Speaker 1: your parents was the music lover? Then both of them
Speaker 1: loved music. My dad was the audio file so he
Speaker 1: had like San suwee three way speakers, He had a
Speaker 1: turntable CD player, he had an integrated ample fire and
Speaker 1: had like the radio and everything like connected to that.
Speaker 1: He used to lead, sing and play hand percussion in
Speaker 1: a band back in I want to say the mid
Speaker 1: to late seventies. Then he ended up picking the management
Speaker 1: career over the music because the band wanted to go
Speaker 1: out to LA and he actually he really liked his job.
Speaker 1: He worked at Sears, but music was always a huge,
Speaker 1: huge hobby for him, like listening and always getting equipment
Speaker 1: and stuff. Now did he have great music at home?
Speaker 1: Because when I grew up, the guys with the best
Speaker 1: stereos had the worst taste in music. They have like
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars systems and like Boston Don't Look Back
Speaker 1: there their only album. Yeah, well that was the like
Speaker 1: with my dad would run into like he wanted to
Speaker 1: try to play in a band again once his band
Speaker 1: moved to LA. But like he like rock and roll,
Speaker 1: country blues, like that sort of mix of stuff because
Speaker 1: the band he played and they did they covered like
Speaker 1: Almond Brothers and like you know, color Santana and like
Speaker 1: Isisley Brothers, orth Winning Fire, like they covered all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. He kept running into white guys that
Speaker 1: all they wanted to do was play like Deep Purple.
Speaker 1: And then when he'd run into other black musicians, all
Speaker 1: they wanted to play was James Brown. His interests and
Speaker 1: the way he thought about stuff, like people just didn't
Speaker 1: really get it, you know. So he had Dolly Parton records.
Speaker 1: He had like you know, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana Prince.
Speaker 1: Then he would also go down these rabbit holes where
Speaker 1: he would find like really obscure stuff like jazz flute players,
Speaker 1: jazz harmonica players. He would just find like out there
Speaker 1: obscure stuff, but it was really good. So he really
Speaker 1: had such a rich musical experience and it just kind
Speaker 1: of tapped him into all of that. Were they certain
Speaker 1: genres of songs that you found you were particularly drawn to.
Speaker 1: I was drawn to murder ballads, and I was drawn
Speaker 1: to some of like the older country blues stuff. Those
Speaker 1: were kind of the two things that I ended up
Speaker 1: getting drawn to the most. What was your favorite murder ballad?
Speaker 1: My favorite murder ballad was Pretty Polly. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: like standard blue dress and old time murder ballad. But
Speaker 1: what I did particularly with that song is I kind
Speaker 1: of traced back all the way to like British Isles
Speaker 1: version of that song. And Pretty Polly was a woman
Speaker 1: that got proposed to by a man. She didn't want
Speaker 1: to marry him, so he kidnaps her, takes around in
Speaker 1: the woods, murderser and berrieser, and then goes on a
Speaker 1: boat and sometimes he escapes. Sometimes he's caught and thrown
Speaker 1: in jail. Those are usually the two endings. The ending
Speaker 1: that I found was the boat sinks and he's drowning,
Speaker 1: and before he dies, her ghost is in the water
Speaker 1: holding a baby and he's screaming and screaming, and that's
Speaker 1: how that ends. And I'm like, hell, yeah, this is metal.
Speaker 1: You know that explains your dream? And I would you
Speaker 1: know enough to remember? God, I was gonna say I
Speaker 1: could try, but I might mess it up because I
Speaker 1: just haven't played it in so many years. Holly, Pretty Polly,
Speaker 1: come go along with me, holl pretty poly come go
Speaker 1: along with me. Fo we getting married? Some pleasure to see.
Speaker 1: My minded is marry nebood part my mind to marry
Speaker 1: and never a part. First time I saw you ruin
Speaker 1: my heart. She jumped up behind him and away they
Speaker 1: did ride. She jumped up behind him and away they
Speaker 1: did ride, leaving her loved ones and family behind. Oh shit,
Speaker 1: I've already I've already messed up. There's a verse that
Speaker 1: I didn't get in there. That's okay, it's fantastic. We
Speaker 1: get the point. Don't mess with Paul. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: big mistake. Thank you. So much for coming in. It's
Speaker 1: just been fabulous. Oh yeah, this has been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: All the best with this album. It's a it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you to Amethyst Kia for
Speaker 1: sharing songs from her new album Wearing and Strange Bruce.
Speaker 1: You can check out all our favorite Amethyst Kia songs
Speaker 1: at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 1: Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: Rick Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Mi Alabelle. Broken Record is a
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Speaker 1: I'm justin Mishmi