PHOTO: Amythyst Kiah records her song "Firewater" in Johnson City, Tennessee, in November 2019 for Dolly Parton's America podcast. Credit: James Napoli You may know Amythyst Kiah from Ken Burns' Country Music documentary — she plays a bit of "Wagon Wheel " in the Bank of America spot that aired before each episode.
And you might also recognize her from the banjo-slinging supergroup Our Native Daughters , a collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla for Smithsonian Folkways.
I first met Kiah in November 2019, a few days after she was nominated for a Grammy for the song "Black Myself ." I was in Johnson City, Tennessee, to record her playing a few tunes for the podcast Dolly Parton's America.
She
sat on a rickety wooden chair in the back room of an abandoned,
dilapidated apartment — the quietest place we could find to record — and
completely blew me away with the raw emotional power of her voice and
guitar playing.
We recently had a
virtual visit to catch up on the past year. From the front porch of her
new home, Kiah, 33, told me about her first introduction to old-time
music, her struggles with mental health and identity while growing up,
the role of music in processing generational trauma, and her new album,
due in 2021.
How has the pandemic impacted you as a musician?
I
had some anxiety when I came face to face with the realization that,
for the past five years, I'd really tied my identity to being a touring
musician. I compromised my sleep, my eating and my wellness to do as
many gigs as possible. When live gigs stopped, I was like, Who am I? What am I going to do now?
But
I've been able to reconnect with myself and focus more on my wellness
and relationships. I've spent more time with my partner and gotten in
touch again with cooking, gaming, reading, and other things that I just
wasn't doing as much because of the whirlwind of touring.
How's your new record coming along?
When
I first went into the studio, I was making more of a stripped-down folk
album. However, I'm always pushing the boundaries of what an old-time
song can sound like. After two years and two recording sessions, I ended
up with basically two different records slapped together.
So
I teamed up with producer Tony Berg at Sound City Studios, because I
wanted to connect my alternative and pop music influences cohesively
with my roots influences.
He helped
me come to that vision so beautifully that I can't even believe it's my
record. The sounds are very visual. It's like looking at a painting that
has a lot going on, and every time you look at it, you see something
new.
What inspired the songs on the album?
The
songs are about things I experienced during a time of my life when I
hadn't dealt with unresolved trauma — one of those things being my mom's
suicide when I was 17. I didn't talk about that for 12 years. I
couldn't talk about it, because I felt like I was going to be judged.
So
there's a lot of pain and hurt and dealing with being rejected in those
songs. And it's kind of a release of these things that happened, and
how I've learned from them.
What role did music play in your life when you were growing up?
For
me, music was a kind of therapy. When I turned 13, my parents bought me
a guitar. I realized that this was the way I could express how I was
feeling.
When I got to high school,
I started feeling like I didn't belong. Some of that was tied to my
family — we were one of the few black families in this white suburban
area of Chattanooga. It's very much a Bible Belt town, but we were a
secular family and didn't go to church.
I
had a hard time dealing with the fact that all of a sudden the people I
thought were friends just ignored me or didn't really talk to me
anymore. I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt really
uncomfortable talking about it, so I turned to music.
I
also came out in high school. Eventually my parents transferred me to a
creative arts high school, and that was a game changer. I leaned into
the weirdness I was feeling, and I started to really explore music and
art, listening to Tori Amos and Radiohead and all those alternative
artists who turned their pain and uncertainty into something beautiful. I
fell in love with that.
How did you get into roots and old-time music?
I
was looking at the course catalog in college and saw a bluegrass guitar
class. What the heck? I didn't know anything about bluegrass or
old-time music — all I knew was the Beverly Hillbillies.
I
called the director to ask if I needed to learn how to read sheet
music. He just laughed and said, "If you know how to play by ear, you'll
do just fine."
In a folk class I learned the history of roots music and the fact that all the American music we know today, particularly Americana music, is a hybrid of European and West African influences.
Then
I came across the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and I got really into
murder ballads and the Carter Family and Vera Hall. I fell in love with
the sound of the banjo and the things you can do with it, like being
able to play melody and rhythm at the same time. I learned old-time
rhythm guitar and played in an old-time string band.
Learning
about the history and culture of old-time music really gave me some
grounding as a musician and allowed me to explore a different side of
myself.
What did the music help you learn about yourself?
At
the time, I had gone back in the closet, and I tried to look more
feminine. I was struggling with how I was presenting. I was dealing with
not wanting to talk about my mom's suicide. I was trying to keep all
these different things from other people, so I wouldn't be rejected.
A
lot of the songs I was attracted to in old-time music dealt with death
and loss. I felt this really strong parallel between old-time and
alternative music, with dealing with struggle and putting that into
music, and then creating this distinct voice.
This
period was such a valuable time in my life, where I really had to come
out of my shell, very slowly and painfully, and learn how to be a
performer and how to find my place and my stage presence.
How did you get involved with Our Native Daughters?
I
opened for Rhiannon Giddens on two tour runs, which was incredible. She
makes it a point to find people of color within Americana and folk
music and give them an opportunity to perform.
In
November 2017 she reached out to me and Allison Russell and Leyla
McCalla to be part of a project exploring the tragedies of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. We looked at the archives and artifacts of
the National Museum of African American History and Culture. An
important part of the record was reclaiming the banjo as an instrument
that came from West Africa.
What impact did the project have?
Working
with Our Native Daughters was the first time I'd ever co-written with
people, and it helped break my writer's block. Part of that had to do
with the fact that I was in a space where, for the first time, I was
able to talk with other Black women about experiences we've had in this
particular corner of the music industry.
We
also talked about generational trauma, and how the slave trade affected
our country and continues to affect people. It was a very traumatic
event, and a lot of us still need to heal from that.
With
this record, I feel like we were able to tap into that and not only
talk about the tragedy of the slave trade, but also the triumph of our
ancestors in overcoming a lot of these things. We wouldn't be alive if
it wasn't for the people before us who were able to keep going.
How did the song "Black Myself" come about?
There's
a version of "John Henry" I really love by Sid Hemphill, who was a
north Mississippi hill country musician. And in the song, he sings "I
don't like no red-black woman. Black myself, black myself."
It
made me think of the intraracial discrimination that would happen among
black people, where one of the coping mechanisms of dealing with being a
second-class citizen was to find ways to either have kids that were
whiter or to be lighter yourself, using bleaching creams.
And
there were these Brown Societies, where if your skin was darker than a
paper bag, you couldn't be in. The idea was to be as light as possible,
to be as European as possible, to try to be treated equally. And that
was such a terrible way to have to try to cope.
So
the phrase "Black myself, black myself" kept rolling through my head.
Then I sat down and, though I didn't realize it at the time, I
essentially tried to pack in 400 years of history, from the
trans-Atlantic slave trade to today, in a three-minute song.
What was the response to that song?
We
thought we were just going to record this project for Smithsonian
Folkways' African American Legacy Series, and it was going to be this
cool historical thing. But it blew up.
With the Grammy nomination and winning Folk Alliance song of the year, it went places I never imagined it would go.
There are some interesting parallels between the Our Native Daughters record and the New York Times' 1619 Project , which launched a few months after the album was released.
I
think that the scholarly, written form of these histories has always
been very important. But, with music, there's the possibility of
disarming someone for a moment when telling them a story.
For
instance, one day someone I know told me that his father, who is more
on the conservative side of things, heard "Black Myself." And he was
like, "You know what? I never really considered the perspectives she's
talking about in this song."
And
that right there — that's what I'm talking about. It took a song for his
father to stop and think, "Maybe I'm not right about some of the things
I've been thinking." That's what music can do. It can disarm people and
help them really slow down and contemplate.
That's
why art is so important — it helps us understand the world around us.
It gives someone a space to think about something in a way that they may
not have thought about before.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
James Napoli ,
a former editor at Rewire, is a freelance writer, photographer and
radio producer. Find him on Twitter @jamesnapoIi or Instagram
@james.napoli.
“I started writing songs during a time when I was dealing with a lot of social anxiety,” Amythyst Kiah began.
Raised in Johnson City, Tennessee, the time Kiah’s alluding to is a
time that’s difficult for a lot of folks: the early teenage years. “I
suddenly went from being this happy-go-lucky tomboy to being like, ‘Oh,
I’m 13 now and in order to be a girl, I need to do this and this,’” she
said. “I couldn’t relate to that.”
So, Kiah did what most 13-year-olds do when they don’t fit in: she
began searching for her identity and, ultimately, found it in music. She
finally felt like she wasn’t alone, that her experience was actually a
part of a wider phenomenon with a deeper meaning. “I was able to connect
with the stories,” she said. “It was my little world where how I
presented myself or what color my skin was didn’t matter.”
Years later, Kiah is still grappling with what it all means. Rising
to prominence in 2019 as a member of the roots group Songs of Our Native
Daughters alongside Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison
Russell, she’s known for her unique point-of-view as a writer and her
goosebump-inducing skills as a performer. And with the release of her
debut, Wary + Strange , this June, she cemented herself a
pivotal role in the conversation she’s been wrestling with since she
first came to music as a teen.
What makes Kiah such a formidable musical force is her ability to
synthesize. Drawing inspiration from everything from Radiohead to old
field recordings, her particular sound speaks to a nuanced American
identity that often gets left to the cultural wayside. And coming to
that identity as a Black woman, Kiah personifies many of the country’s
complex dualities.
“Growing up, I was the only Black kid in an all-white neighborhood,”
she said. “There was this layer of me not belonging because I’m Black,
but also not fitting in with the Black kids because I acted ‘too white.’
I was like, ‘Well, I don’t act how girls are supposed to act, and I’m
not acting like a white person, but I’m not acting like a Black person
either, so… where am I supposed to fit?’”
Searching for the answer brought Kiah to East Tennessee State
University, where she studied roots music and started getting into those
aforementioned field recordings. “A lot of these recordings are from
penitentiaries or old farms—they weren’t traditional performances,” she
said. “Then, after digging into the history and learning about the
influence that West African culture had on bluegrass and old-time and
country… I realized that, for my whole life, I was fed a lie that banjos
and all of that stuff were only for white people. The music industry
segregated music the same way they segregated everything else, and it
took away the opportunity for people to be unashamed about what they
love.”
This was where Kiah really started to develop her signature sound. “I
had been a big alternative music fan,” she said. “Usually, people who
are in that scene grow up not fitting in. They end up spending a lot of
time by themselves and, through that, they come up with a sound or an
idea that’s authentically their own. So, in a lot of ways, that same
sort of authenticity that I heard in those field recordings was very
similar to what I was hearing in alternative music.”
Yet, it still took Kiah some time to feel comfortable confronting
these dualities, especially in regard to race. In fact, for years,
political music was something she “made a point of not participating
in.” It wasn’t until she joined Native Daughters that things began to
change. “I had the opportunity to really express my opinions on things
with people who really get it,” she explained. “That was a really
powerful moment for me.”
In response, Kiah wrote arguably her most powerful tune to date: “Black Myself,” a highlight on Wary + Strange that
looks at the personalized trauma of racism. “When I wrote that song, it
felt like all of the things I ever wanted to say just fell out,” she
said. “I feel like I’ve finally found a way to use my music to bring
awareness to issues in a way that is helpful and still feels authentic
to myself. That’s a hard balance, but I’m starting to get my footing
with it.”
And with the release of Wary + Strange , Kiah feels like she
finally has the opportunity to give back, to offer sanctuary to all the
13-year-old misfits out there. “To know that there are people hearing
these songs is very humbling,” she said. “I get DMs every day telling me
how much people love my music, how it’s able to heal them. I think
that’s always been my No. 1 use of music: healing from past traumas.
When you’re feeling lonely or if you’re depressed or whatever, being
able to have music is invaluable.”
https://ncfolkfestival.com/amythyst-kiah/
NORTH CAROLINA FOLK FESTIVAL
AFROPUNK INTERVIEW: AMYTHYST KIAH TALKS MUSIC, GEAR AND GEEKING OUT DURING LOCKDOWN
December 20, 2021 AfroPunk
If you don’t
know Amythyst Kiah, I’m judging your musical palate. Not that you have
to be a fan, but there are some things you should just be aware of and
Amythyst is one of them. She is a singer – songwriter who fuses country,
folk, blues, and rock into this sonic shepherd’s pie that can be
comforting or experimental depending on your taste. From her debut Dig to her most recent release Wary + Strange ,
Amythyst explores a dizzying array of ideas from the metaphysical like
identity and sentience, to political commentary to more introspective
like emotions and inner fears. Providing the canvas for this trip is her
amazing guitar playing which is her own mix of classical, bluegrass and
alt-rock, but it is er voice that draws you in. It has almost become
cliche to say someone has a unique voice, but Amythyst’s voice is rare.
Full of power and emotion, it commands your attention, tugging at your
heart and mind in equal measure.
As she works with Gibson we had the chance to chat with her under the pre-text of discussing the new Generation series .
But that conversation quickly devolved into us chatting like old
friends about guitar gear, games, cosplay and a bunch else that was too
long to put in one piece. But it was a welcome conversation to get to
know the person behind the artist and made me even more confident that
Amythyst is a real gem.
VIDEO
Afropunk: On your album,
there’s this meshing of this vintage sound like the bluesy and the
bluegrass, but then there’s this alt-rock. It’s this melding of the two.
I noticed, in your titles and some of the lyrics, you have Fancy Drones
and then in Wild Turkey, you’re talking about automatons. Is that on
purpose, or was that just something that just happened to happen?
Amythyst Kiah : I think there
is definitely a running theme on the record and in the song. I love
Sci-Fi fantasy movies. In particular, I’m interested where there are
movies and video games stories that really challenge what it means to be
sentient. I’m thinking about what it means to be a sentient being, and
also being in the modern world as a human being.
In order to keep up with what we have
to do in the modern world, during, I guess, post-industrial revolution,
the things that we have to do in our day-to-day life to keep up and be
relevant in mainstream society. We have therapists, we have pharmacies,
we have stores that have different types of clothes and different food
you can buy, different things that– There’s a strong consumer culture
and marketing that drives that consumer culture to fight for your
attention, to fight to tell you what you need to be happy.
To me, those are all themes that I’ve
thought about and pondered my entire life. They, inevitably, end up in
my songs about my personal struggles because that’s just always present,
the constant need to remember my humanity, remember what my limits are,
to not push myself to the point of poor health just to keep up. Those
are all things that I think about a lot.
Afropunk: Now, I picked up out of there that you’re into Sci-Fi and video games?
Amythyst Kiah : Yes, I
actually recently got back into video games during quarantine because
when my life stopped as a touring musician and it shifted to working
from home, I had more time. I had a little bit of existential crisis
because I had so tightly tied my identity with being a touring musician.
It was the longest stretch of time that I had been home in years. There
were lots of hobbies and interests that I really put on the back burner
because I was doing the grind to try to make being a touring musician a
full-time viable career where I can live comfortably.
It’s really just like starting your
own business. It’s like a roller coaster of emotion. You have to be
really focused to get to where you want to go because you’re forging
your own path. Now, I had all this time at home, my partner, she’s a big
nerd. She loves video games, sci-fi, all that kind of stuff. I really
set that time to, like, these are all things that I loved doing when I
was in high school, in my early 20s, but then when I needed money, I
sold my console.
There’s lots of things I just had to
sacrifice to get where I wanted to go. Now I’m in a position where it’s
like, “Oh, I do have other hobbies, interests and other aspects of who I
am that I’ve been ignoring and I want to have the chance to explore.
Really, for the past year and a half, I’ve gotten back into games and
the open-world RPG games are really where it’s at for me right now.
Afropunk: What do you play?
Amythyst Kiah : One thing that
I played, it’s actually my girlfriend’s favorite videogame of all time,
is the Mass Effect Trilogy. They re-released it in the Legendary
Remastered Edition. Once I started playing it, I was like, “Oh, my God. I
totally understand.”
I told her, “I totally get it now.”
It’s just incredible because that whole theme of sentient, organic
beings versus robotic beings. Then, there are multiple races of aliens
in the universe. It’s an amazing space epic. That’s one thing I played. I
played the Miles Morales Spider-Man game. I played the Spider-Man before that one with Parker in it. Then, I played Mass Effect :
Andromeda. It’s within the Mass Effect Universe, but it’s a totally
different story, in a totally different galaxy with all the characters.
Right now, I’m playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla , so I will be playing that.
Afropunk: Speaking of doing stuff, you’re redoing, Like Myself . You did a video for it, and now, I am seeing that you’re doing a new video for it.
Amythyst Kiah: Yes. I’m going
to be honest. When we posted that video, when we uploaded that first to
YouTube, I had almost completely forgotten that we’d even did that
video. We recorded that back in the spring, so it’s only been three or
four months.
Between the label, myself, and
management, we talked about an idea to allow us audience participation
with this song, because Like Myself has resonated with White and Black
people, for different reasons, they thought it would be a really great
way to engage with the fans to get their interpretation of different
parts of the song, whatever part of the song that they wanted to express
in some sort of creative form, just to have an opportunity to feel like
what Like Myself means to other people.
I think we were going to roll it out a little bit earlier than now, but things just got crazy busy in the best possible way. Now, we’re going to carry out the plan. I’m excited to see the submissions and see what we get. It’s going to be fun.
Afropunk: How did you end up working with Gibson?
Amythyst Kiah: I can’t
remember the exact date. I know that Adrian Parker, he does marketing
within my management team. We’ve had conversations about different
brands I’d be interested in working with, whether it be clothing,
musical instruments, whatever. Gibson was one of those brands that was
on the list.
He started up a conversation with
Cody Allen, who’s one of the Gibson reps. And then I spoke with Cody on
the phone. She said that they are doing an overhaul on how they do
things at Gibson, and it’s important that more women and more people of
color are represented by Gibson.
She’s like, “We want to inspire
people of all walks of life to play an instrument, and we want our
roster and what we do to reflect that because that’s important.” The
archetype of the guitarist is the White guy with long hair that shreds.
There’s so many types of guitar players that have just not really been
represented. Particularly, the most under-represented are women, for
sure.
Afropunk: Absolutely.
Amythyst Kiah : Since then,
I’ve been part of a few campaigns. One of them hasn’t officially been
out yet, but I did film some things for the 1961 Les Paul Custom that
Sister Rosetta Tharpe played in that infamous train station video, which she was in England, and it was raining.
That was that very iconic moment in
her career. That’s going to get reissued. I filmed it with a guitarist
named Celisse, which if y’all don’t know who she is, or if y’all haven’t
spoken to her, or seen any of her stuff yet, I highly recommend because
she is a total badass. She’s a Black queer lead guitar player. Well, I
won’t give away all her story because we’ll be talking about her all
day, because she’s amazing. Anyway, so we did that together.
I also am doing this Generation
guitar line that’s being released. I think there’s already been some
stuff released to the public for that, as far as the marketing campaign.
It’s been great working with a team
of people that are super passionate about what they’re doing and want to
really help shape and change the idea of what a guitar player looks
like, and just celebrating people for being themselves. The guitars are
sick, so that’s also– I got to keep the 1961 Les Paul SG that I played
with. I’ve been obsessed with it.
I recently picked up a Hot Rod Deluxe. Now, I am plugging that Gibson into the Hot Rod Deluxe, and I’m having a good time.
Afropunk: Libby, sent me the
G-45 from the Generation line. It reminded me, when I was picking out a
guitar, why I didn’t pick up acoustic. It’s a beautiful guitar, but it
is big. I was like, “Yes, I am not used to playing this.” My guitar
teacher was laughing at me uncontrollably.
Amythyst Kiah : [laughs] What’s funny to me is the first guitar that my parents bought me, it was a 1988 Fender Dreadnought.
The G-45 is huge, and it actually
feels smaller to me than a Dreadnought. It’s a little bit slimmer than
the other one I had. I had a Martin Dreadnought too. That’s a little bit
bigger than this. This is actually smaller than the G-45, at least when
I’m playing it
Afropunk: You said your parents got you your first guitar. But what made you choose guitar?
Amythyst Kiah: My parents
loved listening to music, and they had really eclectic taste. We
listened to just all different kinds of genres. My dad was also an
audiophile, so he had three-way speakers, and a turntable, CD player,
tape player, integrated amplifier. He had it all. He had a custom unit
to hold everything in just the right way. He was just super, super into
that. He’s a big nerd about anything that he gets interested in. He just
ends up becoming an encyclopedia. It’s pretty fascinating.
I grew up just listening to all
different kinds of music. My parents really leaned to music that was
melodic, usually people that had melodic voices. My dad liked listening
to country, blues, rock, jazz, world beat, just all kinds of stuff.
The music that I guess resonated with
me, it really started with I was watching MTV. I listened to a lot of
pop artists, but then I started getting into listening to rock music. A
lot of that alternative rock that I saw on MTV. Going into my teenage
years, something about that way of expression, the vulnerability, and
the rawness really resonated with me.
It started with Green Day, Blink 182,
Matchbox Twenty, Nirvana, all that kind of stuff. Then, I really leaned
into artists like Tori Amos, and Björk, and Fiona Apple, and Alanis
Morrissette.
For me, the guitar, I just fell in
love with the sound of it, just my hand or pick plucking the string. I
just loved the sound of fret noise, of seeing the vibration of the
string, I just really loved just the sound. It’s so empowering to play
the instrument. A lot of the music I listened to had guitars in it. I
liked to sing, so I was, “Oh, yes, this could be fun.”
My parents, were very encouraging
about me playing an instrument. They really were happy. I’ll put it this
way. They had three goals in life for you to be a well-rounded
individual. They encouraged me to play a team sport, which I did a
little. I played basketball. Make good grades in school, which I did,
and an instrument of my choice. It wasn’t as if I had to play an
instrument, but it was like they encouraged it if I wanted to do it.
I decided on the guitar and then just riffed from there and learned songs from the artists that I loved listening to.
Afropunk: Do you have a dream guitar?
Amythyst Kiah: Well,
[chuckles] to be perfectly honest, I can’t say that I have the ultimate
dream guitar in my mind as of yet because I’ve spent so many years
playing the same guitar. My workhorse main guitar for years was my
Martin Mahogany D O9, That’s actually the first deal that I got with an
instrument company was Martin. It’s just been so many years playing the
same guitar so for me, I’m still on the exploration. I’m still figuring
out what I like, what I don’t like, I’m now dipping a toe into gear nerd
land, where I’m worrying more about and learning more about pedals, and
cables, and all of that kind of stuff.
I’m not even 100% sure if I’ll ever
have a dream guitar because once I went to the studio with Sound City to
work on this song and worked with Tony Berg. It was the first time that
I fully understood why people have more than one guitar and more than
one amp. I think for the longest time, I couldn’t fathom it because I
was broke.
“I’m broke. I can’t buy any of this
stuff, so I don’t want to look at it because I can’t buy any of it, so
I’ll just play with this.” It really dawned on me with him being like,
“Oh, this guitar would go really well with this song,” or, “This amp
would work well with this,” and I’m like, “Man, this is really cool.”
Also, to be fair, I came from an
academic experience where I was playing acoustic instruments. It wasn’t
common to have more than one guitar, normally. Now, I see, “Wow, there’s
so many different sounds, and so many different things.” Now, I’m in
this stage where I’ve got to know.
My dream now is to have a studio where I can have my multitude of guitars, and amps.
Afropunk: Okay, what is your current rig looking like?
Amythyst Kiah : Right now I’m
using four to eight pedals right now. The other pedals I have, I might
still keep them, I don’t know, but right now my main rig is, well, one
of the pedals is a chromatic tuning pedal. I got three effect pedals for
my electric guitar set up right now. I have a Suhr Jack Rabbit Tremolo
that has four different sound wave options. You can customize the tempo
or you can manually change the rate and the depth of it, and the volume
for the tremolo. Then I have a fuzz pedal that a friend of mine, he’s a
psychiatrist that’s his day job, but he also builds computers and builds
guitar pedals in a couple of his hobbies.
He sent me a guitar pedal for my
birthday last year and basically, I wanted the fuzz pedal in the style
of a Big Muff just like three knobs. He themed the pedal after his cat.
There’s this big, orange, fluffy cat on- it’s a picture of the cat on
his back showing his belly. The pedal is called the Fuzzy Buddy, and the
three knobs say meow which is the volume, and then scratch, and lives
for the other two settings. That one sounds great. The last one I have
is an Electro-Harmonix POG, so it’s the octave pedal.
Afropunk: Nice. What guitar are you playing now? It’s the Martin?
Amythyst Kiah : Well, yes.
I’ve been going back and forth. I’ll tell you my guitars now. I have my
Martin, my D09, which is the first guitar that I ever bought for myself.
It took me two years to pay it off because I put in on my credit card,
and I was in college. I bought it in 2013. I still have my Fender, my
first guitar from childhood. I still have the classical guitar that I
had. My parents bought me an electric guitar maybe three or four years
after I started playing acoustic, but I didn’t really take to electric
as much at the time.
It’s a Neal Schon signature guitar
made by Larrivee. It’s like the most random thing on the planet. The
style of it is like a Stratocaster-style body. It’s like reverse
Stratocaster-style body, and it has five pick-up positions. It’s got a
humbucker in the bridge, and then the middle and neck are both single
coils. I remember the color is this sort of dark metallic blue, which
I’m not crazy about. I don’t know what I’m going to do with that guitar.
I don’t have the heart to get rid of it.
Then, I have a Schecter Corsair which
is a semi-hollow-body guitar. Someone purchased that for me as a gift
several years ago, and that was my main electric guitar for a really
long time. It’s black. The other electric I have, Fender sent me a
guitar from the Parallel Universe series that came out I think like a
dang year or so ago. It’s a mashup of the Jazzmaster and the
Stratocaster. It’s like seafoam green with a gold pickguard and it
sounds really good. I haven’t taken that back out on the road yet,
because I need to get it set up so I can stay in tune a little bit
better. Yes, that one’s really fun to play.
I got my first baritone, which is an Eastwood {Sidejack}. Anyway,
they have just a regular standard guitar version, and this is the
baritone version, so I got a baritone guitar. I play that for Opaque .
Fender also sent me an Acoustasonic, which is their latest one of a
kind of acoustic, electric guitar hybrid. I got one of those.
Gibson, They sent me a J45 which I’ve
been playing at shows, and that’s so fun. They let me keep the SG, the
1951 SG Reissue. It was my first SG ever, and I’m in love with them now,
so I’m going to probably- there’s some other ones I definitely want to
get one of the P90 version then. This one’s got like three humbucking
pickups. I normally use the neck and the bridge more often than the
middle. I haven’t found a reason to use the middle one yet, but it’s
eight pounds. It’s the heaviest guitar I’ve ever owned. When I’m playing
it I don’t feel the weight of it because I’m having such a good time.
The neck’s kind of beefy, and the
strings are thick so it actually plays similarly to- it feels like an
acoustic guitar, it feels like a thinner neck, smaller stringed acoustic
guitar in my hands. That’s actually kind of a sweet spot for me with
guitar necks for electric guitars, I’m starting to find. I purchased my
first Hellecaster also at Fanny’s House of Music, and it’s a Fender
Aerodyne family. It’s like a series guitar that were built in Japan. I
think between like 2004 and 2007. It’s got a P90 in the neck, and I’m
kind of obsessed with that. Then it’s like black with a cream-colored
binding, so it’s very simple.
I almost didn’t get it, I’m like, “I
already have a black guitar, and it’d be nice to get one of these other
shinier, more colorful Tele’s, but that P90 pickup, that won me over.
Now when I pick that guitar up, it feels like I’m not holding anything
in my hands, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I’m keeping that one forever, because
that’s my first Helle, and it’s my dream. Actually, I guess I will say
my dream guitar for a while was getting a Hellecaster.
Obviously now I have one, and I love
it. Now that I’m exploring all these different sounds and like, “Damn,
man, this is like–” Now, that I’ve been playing the SG, I’m like, “Whoa,
this is like a totally different thing for me,” because I’ve never
owned an SG before, so I’m obsessed over that.
For me, I’ll get really obsessed with
something and hyperfocused on it, as I mentioned earlier, and that’s
all I’ll play for a really long time. Truly the test of time, for my
love, for whatever the instrument is, the true sign is when that
hyperfocused wears off. That’s a true test of whether or not it’s going
to be around forever is once the honeymoon phase is over how long is it
going to stick around? Yes, I don’t think I left anything out. I think
that was it.
Check out her interview for Gibson’s Artist Interview Series as well:
THE MUSIC OF AMYTHYST KIAH: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH AMYTHYST KIAH: