Interview with Singer-Songwriter Kristina Stykos

AHC: You've been making music and been in and around the world of music for a long time, and you've had quite a journey, could you tell us a bit about this long music road you've been on, its highs and lows, and what kind of life lessons you feel you've picked up along the way?

Kristina: Words are food to me, and guitars saved my life. I’ve always put the two together to make songs, when no one was listening and because no one was listening.

A music career has resulted out of that. I’m persistent and determined, follow my nose and wear a lot of hats. A desire to demystify the business for myself has driven me into all corners of it. It’s always a high point when band chemistry is good and when instruments are exquisite. I like to be a friend to other performers from backstage and in the studio. It’s a thrill to help bring dreams in for a landing.

On the low side, nothing seems to stay the same. The challenges I’ve had with my voice, its lack of stability and refusal to cooperate, have forced me to reinvent myself a few times. Emotion is a strange beast and the voice is its junction box. Problem solving around this has made me a more versatile musician and person. My studio is a place where there’s no judgment and I can sound as bad as I need too until it starts to sound good again.


AHC: What was your early musical environment like as you came of age in the 70's? Was folk always the main pull for you musically, or were there other genres of that era that were speaking to you as well?

Kristina: Growing up near a college campus, I could walk a couple miles and drop in on live music events all the time. There was a vibrant coffeehouse scene at Cornell and there was no alcohol there so I could get in. My guitar teacher performed bluegrass and folk and repaired guitars at a hip local shop. So I hung out there. I was a sponge and trying to be as cool as the college kids I looked up to.

Record albums were currency. They got passed around like contraband. My dad collected records and was talented amateur musician who loved to perform.  The turntable spilled over with his favorites: Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Brazil 66, Aretha, Bob Dylan and many others. I remember the moment I first heard Joni Mitchell up in my friend Alice’s bedroom. Her approach was a matrix I already knew in my bones.

My bare feet covered a lot of ground tagging along after the older kids. We tumbled out of their cars onto country roads and into hay fields. I ended up places I probably shouldn’t have at my age, like moonshine parties & dive bars. But in the heat of those days I would have followed those scrappy fiddlers to the ends of the earth.  Their music was stuck on me like buckthorn honey.

So I learned to cuss and chase the raw musical heroin. My guitar case and I became one. I started looking for my audience. I knew I needed to find them, lost as I was in the throes of my angst.


AHC: Your recording studio Pepperbox is completely off the grid and solar generated, what inspired you to go this route and what went into building it this way?

Kristina: I like living in remote locations and so it follows that my last two homesteads have been completely off grid. I didn’t exactly plan it that way but the great, affordable properties are often the unpowered ones. So I’ve been dealing with generators, inverters, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries for a long time. The recording studio came along well after this pattern of energy self sufficiency was established. I’ve done much of it on a shoestring.

When we put my studio together we did some math to estimate the amount power my audio gear would be drawing off the batteries on a typical day and sized the circuits for a pure sine wave inverter. That magical unicorn lives quietly in the basement. Its basic job is to turn sunlight into regular AC power and then deliver clean electricity to my recording system. I have a mess of amplifiers, hard drives and computers that I rely on. They run flawlessly, thanks to the inverter.

I don’t like losing power but I’m not always good at keeping tabs on my energy infrastructure.  When I have the luxury to delegate that, I do. The weak links in my system usually rear their ugly heads during the dark days of winter. The worst thing is the generator going down. I have a love-hate with that thing. On the other hand, I bow down to my solar panels. Since I doubled the size of my array they are worth their weight in gold. Our whole world will eventually run on solar; it’s the best thing out there.

Off grid issues that can compromise a recording session are more likely due to equipment neglect than equipment failure. As I mentioned, I’ve been known to deny realities that include engine parts. Another terrible annoyance is having to deal with heavy objects that thrive on battery acid.  It’s far easier to get lost in your creative work and forget to be mindful of those things, called batteries.

The good will of batteries only goes so far before they will just die. On a typical December night if I lose track of their charge level, crashing the studio becomes a real option. I guess I prefer to avoid this.  I can normally run the distance to the generator switch and get there in the nick of time. But if I’m really feeling it, as I often do, I’ll forget to check the oil in the generator, plead the fifth and admit the truth that I can’t read the dipstick.


AHC: You're also an engineer and producer, a process which you've described as a form of midwifery, can you talk a bit about this aspect of your life and creativity?

Kristina: I think I can honestly say that what drove me to take charge of my technical process was my voice. As a writer and a singer, I needed a safe place to explore ideas and feelings that were intense & overwhelming. It became clear to me in my twenties that doing my own recording was a creative necessity. A conventional path was not going to work for me. Being recorded by others had shown me the process and inspired me, but I knew that doing it for myself, and by myself, was going to shake the best fruit down from the tree.

Bringing my original music into the world was not going well anyway. I wasn’t having much fun or success doing music in public. I had artistic direction and chops but no confidence. I remember once being curled up in the fetal position on the floor begging some unseen power to just “let me do my work”. My voice was giving out under pressure and being judged around that scared the crap out of me.

I had a lot of drama and endings. I needed a home but I didn’t really have one.  Relationships were ecstatic then blew up. Call it self-sabotage or shamanic or whatever. But somehow I had the good sense to go buy a four-track tape machine. Along with my guitar, I kept that thing with me.

This is how I came to midwife myself and maybe 20 years later I realized I was not bad at doing it for other people.

Ongoing problems with my voice keep the struggle alive in my process so I never forget how hard it can be to reveal your self, in front of other people. To me the recording studio is a laboratory where we uncover the nuances of emotional reality and distill them to make a strong drink. Productions can fall short due over-thinking. The strongest emotions are pretty simple. It’s best to get to the point and reflect that simplicity with a beautiful form. I try to bring that to my producing, and the engineering is just a set of tools to do that.


AHC: One of my favorite songs of yours is 'Turn off the noise" with that wonderful line "Turn off your wireless, cut us free, Let's take the old road between you and me" to me it speaks to a loss of genuine communication that I think we're losing more and more of in these modern times, while it's easier than ever to communicate I sometimes wonder if that's what we're actually doing, that song to me says 'let's take a different route, speak to and find each other more directly' was that part of your inspiration for that song, and if not, what was?

Kristina: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about and when I get sort of prescriptive in a song, I’m talking to myself first. Okay, so I’m clearly frustrated & feeling shut out from a deeper more meaningful form of communication but also reminding myself to do some introspection. How well am I “getting quiet” with my mind and straight up really listening  – to you, to the natural world and the things that bring me back to what matters most? Because those conversations need to be practiced now more than ever. The digital revolution was inevitable but it’s up to us to remember not to use our devices to obfuscate truth or avoid it.


AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? 

Kristina: Absolutely. I was grade school age and it was summer and girl scout camp was in full swing on the shores of Lake Cayuga. To start our day, we’d have “morning sing”. The song was in the key of D, in fact that was the only chord. The lyrics went like this:

On a moon lit summer night
Here I sit and watch its rays
Off afar he waits for me
​Knowing not that I am here

My themes have not changed a lot.


AHC: Could you talk a bit about your time working as a volunteer for avant-garde filmmakers? I'm also curious to hear more about what you described at that time as the weird happenings in weird places of punk rock lofts & circus trains?

Kristina: I went to college for a few years in Boston. I had a double major in poetry and film and ended up working as a projectionist for art cinemas. That meant a lot of foreign films & unusual stuff. I wanted stage-hand experience & found a film collective called BFVF where I could get some. BFVF was the “maker space” and screening room for experimental filmmakers in the area. It was a cool place. I did a solo gig there once; one of my first.

Strange things did happen to me in Boston because I was curious about the low rent side of the city. One time I was waiting for the train really late at night. The platform was empty except for a Ringling Brother’s Barnum & Bailey Jamaican unicyclist. Who would’ve guessed the circus train was parked out behind North Station? You don’t get invitations like that every day. As for music parties and happenings, people were always taking me places but I was invisible. My own songwriting was not plugged into any scene.


AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations?

Kristina: I’ll hear an amazing song and have to put it on repeat for days. Songs like that seem to fly out from nowhere. It’s the songs and the moments they create where time stands still that stick with me. Certainly I have been slain by the artistry of many a performer. But musicians come and go.

​The people I’m working with at any given day in the studio inspire me the most. I love to have a personal connection to the songwriter I’m listening to. It adds a dimension that can’t be duplicated by any pop chart performer.

In fact I don’t listen to music much these days. I’ve taken a break from what’s out there, to find what’s in here. Maybe I’m a little wary of sound tracking my life. I don’t want to be charmed anymore unless it’s for a good reason. I don’t use music like a drug now. When I was young, music was rocket fuel igniting my fantasies. I’m less tolerant of that now. I don’t let just anything in.



AHC: Do you have any words of advice for young musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world?

Kristina: I know every musician goes through periods of emulation and copying and of course you aim to sound as good as the musicians you admire. But what really makes someone stand out is their focus and their personality. And by personality I mean to include the quality of their heart & how much they are willing to expose it.  


AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about?

Kristina: Yes. In the works is a 2nd album I’m co-writing, performing on and producing with my cousin Steve Mayone of Brooklyn NY; we’re known as The Cousins Project. I’m also producing Ariel Zevon, who I became friends with through our shared local foods activism and whose talents as a songwriter are knocking my socks off! And thirdly, I’m doing acoustic guitar work and light production on an album of original songs written and performed by Davey Davis, a self described “old ridge runner” 6th generation Vermonter. This will certainly keep me busy all winter! 



For more information visit www.kristinastykos.com/