SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2022
VOLUME ELEVEN NUMBER ONE
RAPHAEL SAADIQ
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
JON BATISTE
(December 25-31)
MULGREW MILLER
(January 1- 7)
VALERIE COLEMAN
(January 8-14)
CHARNETT MOFFETT
(January 15-21)
AMYTHYST KIAH
(January 22-28)
CHRISTONE INGRAM
(January 29--February 4)
MARCUS ROBERTS
(February 5-11)
IMMANUEL WILKINS
(February 12-18)
WYCLIFFE GORDON
(February 19-25)
FREDDIE KING
(February 26-March 4)
DOREEN KETCHENS
(March 5-11)
TERRY POLLARD
(March 12-18)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/amythyst-kiah-mn0003231567/biography
Amythyst Kiah
(b. December 11, 1986)
Artist Biography by Timothy Monger
Before earning a Grammy nomination for her work with the all-female folk supergroup Our Native Daughters, Amythyst Kiah had already built a substantial career as a solo artist in the Americana and roots music arena. A versatile songwriter and deeply soulful singer from Tennessee, Kiah's music drifts easily between old-time folk, blues, country, and more contemporary strains of R&B and alt-rock. Self-releasing her first solo album in 2012, she then established herself as an international touring act before joining Our Native Daughters, whose acclaimed 2019 debut was led by Kiah's standout song "Black Myself." The song was later re-recorded for her 2021 Rounder Records debut Wary + Strange.
Raised in Chattanooga, Kiah began playing guitar in high school, taking influence from her parents' diverse musical tastes as well as the alt-rock she heard on MTV. After coming out as gay during her teenage years, she struggled to find acceptance and took solace in her creative pursuits. Her shift toward roots music began in college when she enrolled in a bluegrass program at East Tennessee State University where she also picked up the banjo. Released independently in 2012, Kiah's debut album, Dig, set her on a path of perpetual touring that would carry her over the next several years. With her powerhouse voice and rich amalgam of roots-related styles, she learned to command an audience and became a festival favorite both in the U.S. and the U.K. With her backing band, she released the 2016 EP, Amythyst Kiah & Her Chest of Glass. When the opportunity to collaborate with a group of other likeminded women of color in the roots music scene arrived, she jumped on board. Spearheaded by Rhiannon Giddens and featuring Kiah, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla, Our Native Daughters' debut album boldly took on themes of American history and cultural identity from slavery and racism to sexism and civil rights. Released in 2019 by Smithsonian Folkways, Songs of Our Native Daughters was led by Kiah's fiery Black identity missive "Black Myself" which was nominated for a Grammy Award and earned Song of the Year honors and the Folk Alliance International Awards. With her profile on the rise, she teamed up with producer Tony Berg (Andrew Bird, Michael Penn) to record her second album. Issued by the Rounder label in 2021, Wary + Strange paired Kiah's gritty alt rock influences with folk, Americana, and blues and featured a rearranged version of "Black Myself."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amythyst_Kiah
Amythyst Kiah
Amythyst Kiah (born 11 December 1986)[1] is a Grammy Award-nominated American singer-songwriter. Kiah is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee and currently lives in Johnson City. She plays guitar and banjo.
As of 2022, Kiah has released two solo albums and one E.P.[2] She has also appeared (along with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell) on the album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019). Kiah earned a 2020 Grammy Awards Best American Roots Song nomination for her song "Black Myself".
Life and career
1981–2013: Early life
Kiah was born on 11 December 1986 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her father (who is also her tour manager) sang and played percussion in a band in the seventies. Her mother sang in the church growing up. She attended a creative arts high school and taught herself to play guitar. When she was 17 her mother committed suicide, and singing at her funeral was Kiah's third public performance.[3]
Kiah is a graduate of East Tennessee State University, where she completed the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program and joined the school’s marquee old-time band.[3]
She has been touring since 2010 either solo, with band she called Her Chest of Glass or with her fellow Our Native Daughters.[4]
2013 onwards: Recording artist
Kiah describes her style as Southern Gothic.[5]
Kiah released her first album, Dig in 2013.[6] The album was produced by Kiah and recorded at East Tennessee State University Recording Lab.[7]
This was followed by an E.P, Her Chest of Glass released on October 28, 2016. Kiah wrote three from five of the E.P.'s songs, which were recorded in Johnson City and produced by Kiah, band members and Travis Kammeyer.[6]
Wary + Strange was released on Rounder Records on 18 June 2021, produced by Tony Berg.[2][3] Kiah began work on the album in January 2018, and recorded the album three times, with three different producers before feeling happy with the sound. The album received favourable reviews with Glide magazine stating, "This album will be a centerpiece of conversation, not just this year, but in the years to come too"[8] and Rolling Stone including it in their list of "25 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2021".[9] Her song Wild Turkey was named by Variety as one of the 50 Best Songs of 2021.[10]
In 2021 she was a featured vocalist on Moby's single Natural Blues - Reprise Version.
On 14 January 2022 she released a cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart.[11]
Kiah has toured extensively, including throughout the USA, Mexico and to the UK.[4]
Participation in Song of Our Native Daughters
Kiah has also appeared (along with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell) on the album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019). Kiah earned a 2020 Grammy Awards Best American Roots Song nomination for her song "Black Myself" which featured on this album.
Personal life
Kiah has desrcibed herself as "funny-talking, sci-fi-loving, queer Black".[12] She currently lives in Johnson City.
https://countryqueer.com/stories/interview/amythyst-kiah-the-making-of-a-grammy-nominee/
Amythyst Kiah Is Done Hiding
“Black Myself” Singer-Songwriter Shares Her Journey Toward Her Truth
by Rachel Cholst, Contributing Editor
About Amythyst
Photo Credit: Liam Woods
Produced by Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Amos Lee, Andrew Bird) and made with esteemed musicians like Blake Mills, Wary + Strange arrives as a deeply immersive body of work, endlessly redefining the limits of roots music in its inventive rhythms and textures. With an unforgettable voice that’s both unfettered and exquisitely controlled, Kiah gracefully interlaces political commentary and personal revelation, ultimately offering a raw yet nuanced examination of grief, alienation, and the hard-won triumph of total self-acceptance.
Press
“Amythyst Kiah Found Her Powerful Voice. Now She Has a Sound to Match It.”
About Wary + Strange
“a mesmerizing, frequently hypnotic and always challenging work… one of this year’s most riveting releases.”
About Wary + Strange
“Blistering...a must-listen about living in the land of white privilege.”
About ‘Black Myself
"A masterful blend of lonesome folk and neo-blues"
About Wary + Strange
“Wary + Strange is a rock album that doesn’t play by anyone’s rules but her own."
“Breakthrough for an artist on the rise.”
About ‘Black Myself’
“Raw and strong.”
About ‘Black MYself’
#AmythystKiah #Soapbox #Wary
Amythyst Kiah - Soapbox (Official Audio)
Lyrics
Don't wanna to hear your soapbox speech
Don't wanna know how you would do it
Don't wanna know how it should be
‘Cause I don't care what you think
You can keep your sophistry
Save my brain from atrophy
I have my own hand that feeds
So I dont need what you think
Don't wanna to hear your soapbox speech
Don't wanna know how you would do it
Don't wanna know how it should be
‘Cause I don't care what you think
You can keep your sophistry
Save my brain from atrophy
I have my own hand that feeds
So I dont need what you think
Follow Me: Website: https://www.amythystkiah.com
Instagram: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahInstagram
Tiktok: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahTikTok
Facebook: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahFacebook
Twitter: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahTwitter
Spotify: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahSpotify
YouTube: https://found.ee/AmythystKiahYouTube
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/amythyst-kiah-1990/
Amythyst Kiah (1990- )
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An alternative country blues singer, banjoist, guitarist, composer Amythyst Kiah was born in 1990 in Chattanooga, Tennessee but now resides in Johnson City, Tennessee. At an early age, she was encouraged and supported by her parents to play musical instruments. She started with the guitar and perfected it before moving on to other instruments.
In 2007 Kiah’s mother committed suicide. This traumatic experience for a 17-year-old came on the heels of her becoming a member of a small LGBTQ+ community in socially and politically conservative East Tennessee.
In 2006, Kiah enrolled in East Tennessee State University (ETSU), where she majored in the Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies program which was part of Appalachian Studies. During her tenure at the University, she transcribed archival materials regarding Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music. Kiah received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 2012 but decided to continue her formal education. During her first year as a graduate student at ETSU, she performed at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington, D.C. and the Winnipeg (Canada) Folk Festival. Kiah earned the Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies in 2014 from East Tennessee State University.
In 2019, Kiah performed at the newly opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NAAHC) Washington, D.C. and the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. That same year, she released Wary+ Strange, her debut album on the Rounder Records label. One year later in 2020 despite COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, she managed to collaborate with three other banjo players on the album Songs of Our Native Daughters which was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award. The album was released on Smithsonian Folkways.
The confrontational single, “Black Myself,” featured on the album was also nominated for a Grammy for Best American Roots Song, and it won the Song of the Year at the Folk Alliance International Conference. This song exhibits Kiah’s raw feelings about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, part of the global slave commerce that transported millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. Amythyst Kiah and her group, Chest of Glass performed at the annual Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City, Tennessee in 2016. In 2021, Kiah performed virtually on ABC Television Network’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
A Southern Appalachian Black woman, Amythyst Kiah is one of the brightest new additions to the country music scene. She has performed as a guitarist, banjoist, and singer throughout the United States as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.
Cite this article in APA format:
Alexander, O. (2021, May 25). Amythyst Kiah (1990- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/amythyst-kiah-1990/
Source of the author's information:
Gabi Mendick, “The Timelessness and Modernity of Amythyst Kiah,”
https://musicmaker.org/the-timelessness-and-modernity-of-amythst-kiah/; Kristin M. Hall, “Our Native Daughters, bring Black women’s voices to the forefront,”
https://www.660citynews.com/2021/02/19/our-native-daughters-bring-black-womens-voices-to-forefront/;
Jonathan Bernstein, “Amythyst Kiah Previews New Album With Haunting’ Wild Turkey,” https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/amythyst-kiah-new-album-wary-and-strange-1156916/.
https://www.rewire.org/roots-musician-amythyst-kiah/
Music as Therapy: Roots Musician Amythyst Kiah on Identity, Mental Health and Generational Trauma
The Tennessee-based singer-songwriter discusses life during COVID, her upcoming album and the Grammy-nominated hit “Black Myself.”
by James Napoli
October 26, 2020
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.
Amythyst Kiah: American Roots
“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
Amythyst Kiah
A professed Southern Gothic, alt-country blues singer/songwriter based in Johnson City, TN, Amythyst Kiah’s commanding stage presence is only matched by her raw and powerful vocals—a deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past.
Accoutered interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band (Her Chest of Glass), Amythyst’s toolbox is augmented by her scholarship of African- American roots music. Her eclectic influences span decades, drawing heavily on old time music (Mississippi Sheiks, Son House, Jimmie Rodgers, Olla Belle Reed, Carter Family), inspired by strong R&B and country music vocalists from the ’50s-’70s (Big Mama Thornton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn) and influenced by contemporary artists with powerful vocal integrity (Adele, Florence and the Machine, Megan Jean and the KFB, Janelle Monae).
Recent tours in Scotland and the U.K. have seen Amythyst performing for audiences at the Americana Music Association UK Showcase, the Southern Fried Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and SummerTyne Americana Festival. She is a crowd favorite at Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in the U.S., has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival.
Provocative and coolly fierce, Amythyst Kiah’s ability to cross the boundaries of blues and old-time through reinterpretation is groundbreaking and simply unforgettable.
https://provincetownindependent.org/arts-minds/2021/09/22/amythyst-kiah-bares-her-soul/
MUSICIANS
Amythyst Kiah Bares Her Soul
For the singer-songwriter, ‘The sky’s the limit’
“Wary and Strange” isn’t just the title of Amythyst Kiah’s new Rounder Records album — it’s a description of how she felt growing up in Tennessee facing issues of race, sexual identity, and loss.
“Since my teenage years, I had dealt with fears of abandonment and rejection,” Kiah says. “This is all stemming from my mother’s suicide and when I really started building up these coping mechanisms of emotional distance. That way, I don’t get close to anybody, and that way, I don’t get disappointed. I don’t get hurt.”
Kiah, now 34, is performing at Truro’s Payomet Performing Arts Center on Sunday. She arrived on the music scene eight years ago as a folk artist, singing and playing traditional and contemporary songs in an Appalachian style. She continued in the folk tradition as a member of Our Native Daughters, a quartet of women of color that included Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell.
Kiah’s work both as a solo performer and as a member of the quartet helped recognize the role of African Americans in creating a genre that had come to be seen as made for and by whites. Kiah speaks of it as “reclaiming a form of expression that had been commercially separated from people of color.”
While Kiah’s earliest work was a reclamation of her cultural heritage, Wary + Strange is a reclamation of her life — a key to free her from a self-imposed prison. “The record is a representation of fully taking on all those years of feeling wary and strange — all the experiences of pain that I had to deal with — and confronting them,” she says. “It is an attempt to move forward — not forget what happened, but use it to propel me forward.”
The album is a departure from Kiah’s acoustic work, but within its alt-rock framework, one can still hear Kiah’s folk roots, especially in her vocals. The songs, all written by Kiah, are deeply personal. Putting those thoughts to paper was not an easy step. “Writing songs has always been about me — writing about my pain, processing it, and releasing it, lifting it away from my shoulders,” Kiah says. “I didn’t do that for a very long time because I was afraid of what I would write.”
Kiah’s lyrics, and the feeling she brings to her music, are soul-baring. “Fracture me ’cause it hurts to think. Fracture me and leave nothing here,” Kiah sings in “Fancy Drones,” a song that cries out for escape from oneself. “Wild Turkey,” a song about her mother’s suicide, is an open wound set to music. Then there’s “Black Myself,” an anthem in the spirit of James Brown’s “Say It Loud.” First recorded with Our Native Daughters (and nominated for a Grammy), the song in its Wary + Strange version amps up its power and edginess as Kiah gives it the full-throttle treatment; her band accentuates her drive, matching her note for note.
Kiah credits her experience working with the other members of Our Native Daughters with bringing Wary + Strange to fruition and giving her the courage to write “Black Myself.”
“It was the first time I’d written something that was outside what I was personally feeling and commenting on things happening in the world around me,” she says. “Once you do that, the sky’s the limit.”
Kiah’s transition from acoustic folkie to indie rocker has given her a newfound freedom. But change can sometimes come at the cost of fans. “There’s a lot of aspects to myself that I had to keep to myself,” she says. “I wasn’t out about me being a queer person. That was something I kept to myself for a very long time.” Whatever she’s lost, “I have gained so much more. It feels good because people are coming to see me. I’m not trying to appease everybody, ’cause you can’t appease everybody.”
Diamond in the Rough
The event: Amythyst Kiah in concert
The time: Sunday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m.
The place: Payomet Performing Arts Center, 29 Old Dewline Road, Truro
The cost: $30 at payomet.org
Gear
Music
AFROPUNK INTERVIEW:
AMYTHYST KIAH TALKS MUSIC, GEAR AND GEEKING OUT DURING LOCKDOWN
by Ian Freeman
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.
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:
