Interview with singer-songwriter Bridget Kearney

                 "In the 12 years she has toured the world with Lake Street Dive, Kearney has fine-tuned many things: adjusting to jet lag, sleeping in moving vehicles, hauling her acoustic bass up and down stairs, keeping her cool in front of cameras, thousands of people and personal heroes. But the skill she has honed most obsessively is songwriting. “For me it's the best part of music,” says Kearney. “That's the best feeling: after those few hours that you spend working on the song, and you have this thing that you've made, and you’re like, ‘Wow. This didn’t exist before. I’m so excited about what just happened.’" Now, at long last, Kearney steps into the spotlight with her first solo effort, the wry, big-hearted pop album, Won’t Let You Down. The record, like its title, promises not to disappoint."

                  "I’ve loved music my entire life, like from a very young age it was something my mom would bribe me with to get me to take naps" Bridget writes of her early encounters with the muse of song. Music is full of power, something Kearney sees as transcending language and cultural barriers in its ability to hit something more direct in us,  "We connect through music and from there, we don’t need many words to understand each other." The process of creation is "very hard to define" Kearney says, "and certainly hard to recreate. Hemingway would say: “To get started, write one true sentence.” And the way that I understand that is that the best advice is to start with a fragment that you really believe in and that really makes you feel something. Whether that is lyrical, rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, what have you, doesn’t matter. So long as it has a strong, true, sturdy foundation of an idea that you can dissect, analyze, develop and rebuild into something whole and new."

                  On Won’t Let You Down, bridgetkearney.bandcamp.com/ which drops March 24th on Signature Sounds, buoyancy is always tempered by melancholy. But just as often, wistfulness is undercut by a twinkle in the eye.  It’s “this cross section of sadness and humor,” says Kearney. “When you're getting over crying, and you just start to laugh.”



AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way?

Bridget: I’ve loved music my entire life, like from a very young age it was something my mom would bribe me with to get me to take naps. She’d say, if you lie down on your bed you get to listen to Raffi and I would do it. And it’s been a really important part of my life ever since then. Working hard at music and getting better at music instilled confidence in me as a young person, because I knew it was something I could do well. It’s also always been a great bridge to friendships. Music can be a very social activity, whether it’s playing in bands or going to shows or just talking to people about what kind of music they like. Many of my best friends are people that I have at one time or another played music with. It’s helped connect me to people I otherwise would have had a hard time getting to know, including many people from other parts of the world, whose language I don’t speak. We can connect through making music together and from there, we don’t need many words to understand each other. 

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

Bridget: My parents played a lot of music around the house, like Paul Simon and James Taylor. Also I had two older siblings and so they got to start taking piano lessons and singing the church choir before I did and I watched them and was so excited to get started. When I was in kindergarten I got to start taking piano lessons and I enjoyed it but my teacher would scold me a lot for just learning the songs by ear from hearing her play them instead of really learning to read music. I eventually learned to read music but also I think learning music by ear is a really valuable skill because it means that you’ve internalized it. Probably my first real obsession with a band was with The Beatles in around 4th or 5th grade. It was when The Beatles Anthology was showing on television so I was learning their story and hearing all their records and just fell in love with their music. 

AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote or played? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? 

Bridget: I really liked to dink around on the piano and make little songs—a lot more than I like practicing what I was supposed to be practicing. My whole family remembers the first “song” I ever wrote because I would play it incessantly. It was a kind of bluesy swing baseline with a melody over top of it and the lyrics were “walking along in the forest, singing a song, with a chorus too.” Profound! In junior high I started a rock band that I played electric bass in with a guitarist and a drummer and that was when I discovered writing love songs. They are pretty embarrassing to reflect on now but like anything, you’ll get better at something if you keep doing it, and I’m glad I got those songs out early! That was also when songwriting became an activity that helped me reflect on what was going on in my life, it’s always been somewhat therapeutic for me—both listening to music and writing it.

AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers etc?

Bridget: For musicians, I’d say: The Beatles, Elliott Smith, Carole King, Beck, The Jackson Five, James Jamerson, Paul Simon, Bach and then of course great teachers of mine like Diana Gannett, Mark Urness, Allan Chase, Bob Moses and Danilo Perez. For writers, I think I learned a lot from Hemingway and Salinger, who both can say a lot and make you feel a lot with very little.

AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak?

Bridget: Yes, there is a turning point when writing songs, where it goes from being an experiment to a song. It’s very hard to define and certainly hard to recreate. Hemingway would say: “To get started, write one true sentence.” And the way that I understand that is that the best advice is to start with a fragment that you really believe in and that really makes you feel something. Whether that is lyrical, rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, what have you, doesn’t matter. Just that it is a strong, true, sturdy foundation of an idea that you can dissect, analyze, develop and rebuild into something whole and new.

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

Bridget: I consider music to be one of the strongest gateways humans have to feelings—feelings of all kinds, happy, sad, angry, jealous, regretful, hopeful, etc. So, if opening ourselves up emotionally is good for us (and I think it is) then definitely music is healing. 

AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?

Bridget: My fondest musical memories are usually of something spontaneous or new. Whether it is something exciting that someone tries on stage with me that I’ve never heard them do before, or working up a new song for the first time, or playing with a group of people I’ve never played with before. In college I got to go with a group of students to the Panama Jazz Festival in Panama City. On the last day of the festival, all of the musicians that were playing there had a meal together in a local restaurant. One of the musicians, Fransisco Mela started showing the drummer in my group, Richie Barshay, and our teacher Danilo Perez a groove by tapping it on his shoulders. Richie and Danilo started tapping the groove out on the table and people around them started picking up forks and knives and getting into it. Eventually the whole room erupted into this joyous percussion group of silverware and salt and pepper shakers and blowing on bottle tops. That was maybe one of my fondest musical memories. I’ve also had some incredibly deep experiences with music alone. I listen to music on headphones a lot, when I’m running or riding the subway. It can be so powerful and just take over your whole body. The thrill of discovery is a huge thing for me too. I’ve done some writing sessions alone in the woods of Maine, where I’ll be up there for 5 days or so just writing all day and all night and I’ll get into a zone where everything is all the sudden elevated to this other level and I’ll just laugh out loud with joy at the idea that just came to me. 

AHC: When you set out to write a song, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell?

Bridget: To be honest, it hasn’t influenced me that much until recently. I have felt in the past like I wasn’t informed enough about something topical to write about it, or that it wasn’t my place to write about issues that didn’t directly affect me. Now that we are in a moment of crisis in our country, and in the world, I am becoming more passionate about political and social issues, and even if they don’t personally affect me, I feel personally moved enough by what’s going to to write about it in a way that feels true and urgent and real. It’s kind of all I can write about right now! 

AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process?

Bridget: The creative process is very unpredictable. The best thing you can do is keep doing it and you will get better! It is like fishing (or how I imagine fishing is…I do not fish…) You’re never guaranteed to catch a fish, but if you keep that pole in the water for longer, you’ll increase your chances. Also, I advise to listen to your instincts and focus on the things that you really like. Find the things you like in music and then try to understand exactly what you like about them so much and then make more songs that have that thing in it, whatever it may be.

AHC: Could you talk some about your new record Won’t Let You Down? Has making this record, apart from Lake Street Dive, been on your mind for a while now, and how long did it take you to write and conceive this album?

Bridget: So, around 2013 I was making a lot of time for writing and had a bunch of songs hanging around with no real “home” yet. Robin MacMillan was a friend of mine who I had always really admired musically but hadn’t gotten the chance to work with yet. He heard some of the demos that I had made of these new songs and was really excited about the songs and also about my demos themselves and the music that I was able to create with my voice and by myself. He gave me sort of an open invitation to come work with him in his studio in Brooklyn whenever I had down time from Lake Street Dive. This was a dream offer for me because with the small amount of time that we have off from LSD, it is kind of intimidating to take on a full-on other project, like making a solo record. But the idea of coming into the studio for a day or two whenever it was possible and making music with Robin sounded PERFECT and indeed it was. It was just pure joy of creation, no game plan for what we were gonna do with the recordings, no timeline of finishing the project, just time that we spent together in the studio working on my music. As it turned out we worked together really well, I loved his ideas for how to produce the songs and the sounds he was getting and it was really fun to be in the studio with him. So we just kept doing it! And eventually we had 8 songs and I said, “let’s make 2 more songs and then we’ll have a full record!” It is a really rare and special thing in the music industry to get to make a record this way, because generally you have to consider things like who your target market is, what the best time of year to put a record out is, getting a new record out so that you can put bread on the table, etc and those things can get in the way of making the record that you really want to make. So I would say this record was truly the record I wanted to make and I feel really blessed that I got to make it!



For more, including upcoming tour dates with Margaret Glaspy on select dates, Benjamin Lazar Davis (Kearney’s duo partner for the BAWA E.P.  recorded in Accra, Ghana and Cuddle Magic) Sarah K. Pedonotti (Lip Talk, Okkervil River), and Alwyn Robinson (Sugar Sugar, Leftover Salmon) visit www.bridgetkearney.com/

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