ARTICLES
How Liza Kate Got Her Groove Back
Posted by: ian – Apr 16, 2009
It actually goes silent for a few moments when she begins to play. People turn to pay attention to Liza Kate, her gentle voice and guitar winning out over the clinking of bottles and barroom conversation. The whole place is captivated, and it is lovely to see, especially considering that this is one of her first shows in many months. Luckily, Liza Kate is back in action, with a new full-length coming out on the North Carolina based record label Holidays for Quince, and plans for touring. Over coffee we discussed the upcoming album, her creative philosophy and why she needed a bit of a break this past year.
Talia Miller: What is your background? Where did you grow up, what was it like?
Liza Kate: I grew up everywhere. I was born in New York, and I moved to Florida, and then I lived in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, back to Florida and then to Richmond. My dad worked for the railroad so we moved around all the time. I don’t have much of an art background; photography I always liked, and in the last several years I got really into it. I don’t have a musical family. They’ve always listened to it I guess, and my sister was really into metal, but nobody ever played music. My mom really liked Frank Sinatra so I grew up listening to that, but it was by luck I guess that I got into music.
TM: How did it start?
LK: I really liked Nirvana, and I learned how to play “Come As You Are” on somebody else’s guitar when I was really young, so I wanted to get a guitar. Before that I had drums, and I played drums in some bands. Guitar happened a little later. My parents got divorced when I was young, and I was the youngest of the family so they were very into letting me do all the things a kids can do to express themselves. They were really supportive and bought me whatever cheap instrument I wanted to play that they could find, which was nice.
TM: Do you have a good story behind your first guitar?
LK: Yeah, actually, I was with my mom at the flea market. I was getting a haircut and she was getting her hair permed and her nails done, and there was an old country singer guy in the booth across the way from her hair salon place at this indoor flea market… it’s really common in Florida for that to happen. And he had a guitar for like $50 and taught me the rhythm to “Brown Eyed Girl” and told me what those three chords were, and I was really excited. My mom somehow made a deal with him, because she was there every week getting her hair and nails done, and so she made payments to this guy for the guitar. I don’t remember his name, but that was in New Port Richey, FL. I think I was twelve.
TM: So drums were before that?
LK: I think I got my first set of drums around the same time. I started playing in a band in my garage when I was 14, and then by the time I was 16 I was in a band and we were playing shows all over Florida. I mean, I think we only played like 8 shows, but they were in different cities because we had lots of friends who were doing things and it was easy to play.
TM: In terms of when you talk about playing now, do you think playing shows so young impacted how you feel about it and how excited you are?
LK: Oh yeah, it definitely changed it. It changed the way I played, because at some point I became the only person doing it – like on the stage or in the living room or wherever it was. I think that playing with bands helped me to understand music better because I wasn’t just doing it on my own, I was also working with people, which made writing songs by myself easier in some way.
TM: I guess I think about that because I played in a band when I was 16, too, and now part of me gets really nervous to play when I didn’t before.
LK: Oh, I’m always nervous now no matter what; that’ll never go away.
TM: Have you always been nervous?
LK: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
TM: Does it get worse when you’re on your own?
LK: When I first started being on my own, of course, it was crazy. In fact, the first time I ever played by myself, my friend Travis and I were playing this acoustic show at a bar that was really loud and obnoxious. I had already written some songs on my own. The first one I played in front of people, I didn’t have guitar to, just the singing part, and it was really loud in this bar that night and everyone was being annoying. So I made him stop playing guitar, and I stood up and started singing the song, just because I wanted everybody to shut up, and it was like, I’m going to do this now or I’m never ever going to do it. And I did it, and it totally changed everything. I never played a show with him again, I don’t think. It was always just me from then on, and I never did write guitar for that song; I just sang it for a long time and then I kind of retired it. I’ve been nervous ever since.
TM: Was that the moment that pushed you to play by yourself?
LK: That’s when I decided I was gong to do it. I had already decided I was going to play a show by myself at some point. After that, I went out of town for two months, and when I came back I started playing shows by myself. It was rough at first. I mean I got to play all the time, but it was really hard to figure out how to get everything from my mind to my limited guitar playing and then project it in front of people and sing by myself. For a while I would have my friends sit next to me because it was really difficult.
But that show was great, too. My roommates were crying, and it was so quiet in this really loud bar, you could hear a pin drop when I did it. I’d never felt so proud of myself, and I was really excited that everybody shut up. It was really flattering that my friends were crying, all those things; maybe it was such a giant boost to my ego that I felt like, okay, I can play in front of people and it’s not going to be so horrible. What was I like 20 or 21? It was a really weird, totally life changing experience. Then I went out of the country for the first time ever and had a whole summer of amazing experiences; and then 9/11 happened and everything got weird. It was a really weird year. 2001 was a weird year, but that’s when I played my first show by myself.
TM: That’s a really neat story though. The new album, let’s talk about that. Tell me about it, where did you record it?
LK: I recorded it with Lance at Minimum Wage Recording in Oregon Hill.
TM: How long have were you writing for it?
LK: Oh god, some songs on there… one song I wrote the day before I started with Curtis Patton. There are a couple songs that are years old and some that were written pretty recently. There’s also one cover and one my friend Grant Hunnicutt wrote for me to play. There is a lot of instrumentation on it and people playing with me who got to write their own parts to go along. I’m not a very talented musician. I don’t know what things are called, so I didn’t tell anybody what to play; I just let them do what they wanted.
TM: You’ve never had any formal musical training then?
LK: With music, no. I was like the son my dad never had; I played basketball. My sister got piano lessons, but as far as music is concerned, that was the most there was in my house. She got piano lessons because we had my grandpa’s piano and at 9 we sold the piano, and I never got to play it again; but I would play around on that.
TM: What is your song writing process like?
LK: It’s different all the time. For a long time I was coming up with words and melody in my head and trying to put guitar around it. Because my guitar playing is so limited, I would rather start with words or a melody and try to put something basic behind it. Sometimes though I play something basic on guitar and something comes out of it; there’s not a real strict process every time.
TM: What kind of spaces are your favorite to play?
LK: I don’t love playing at bars at all. The music I play doesn’t really work in bar, because people go there to hang out – and I can’t fault them for hanging out – it is a bar, so it’s always the hardest place to play. I like playing at the Camel and Gallery5, and Rumors is nice. When Nonesuch was open that was my favorite place to play.
TM: I know you do photography too. Tell me a little bit about it, do you set up shoots or bring your camera everywhere with you?
LK: All of last summer I shared a studio with somebody, so I really got into setting up scenes and taking pictures of those. I do a lot of digital, but I do film, too. I have access to one of the oldest darkrooms in Richmond. It’s just me and one other photographer in there, and it’s solely because of knowing the right people; and because for a year and a half I worked for this photographer for free, just as an assistant. I’m still learning a lot about photography. I did it in high school like most people, and it kind of fell away from me. And then I bought a digital camera a couple of years ago and got back into it and slowly back into more film and different types of old film cameras.
TM: I thought it was neat to look through your Flickr, because so many people will post every photo they take, but in yours every photo was specially selected.
LK: In the beginning, I was posting every single picture that I thought was neat, but after a while I was sort of grappling with why I was putting anything online anyway. The whole point of anything I do is always a mystery to me. When it comes to posting pictures, I want it to be the best one, the one that best reflects the situation, the one I want strangers to look at.
TM: It makes a lot of sense; I’m always overwhelmed by the amount of information people put online.
LK: Yeah, there’s a lot. And at first I did the same thing, and I think I got really… it’s like why I play shows. If people didn’t come I wouldn’t do it anymore. I’m not a diehard gotta play live music kind of person. If I could strictly record and get by on that I would just do that. I like playing shows, but with songwriting I try to keep my songs short and sweet, because there’s so much that doesn’t need to be said. I feel like I’m overstaying my welcome all the time. When I’m singing or taking pictures or anything like that, I try to keep it to be pretty minimal if I can. And that’s new; that’s adult Liza, since my twenties.
TM: In the four or five years between when you last recorded and now, were you still making music?
LK: I was still writing, still playing shows a lot. There was about a year when I didn’t play a lot of shows because I had agreed to so many I got kind of burned out. Just, in my life I was getting kind of burned out. I was finishing school, and I was waiting tables and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. There are a lot of reasons I didn’t record for so long; it was money, it was where I was in life.
TM: It’s interesting to talk to you, because it seems so much that you are creating for you and not for other people. It’s an interesting philosophy, and I think that a lot of people who perform don’t necessarily have that.
LK: I guess. I don’t really know the reasons why a lot of people play music. I go to shows still and appreciate seeing people play; it’s a different atmosphere than just listening to a recording, and I get that. I’m grateful that people are interested in that, because with my friends now investing in this album, it’s really important to me that they at least get back what they put in, and that no one is going broke here, and everyone is getting to do what they want, and all those things cost money. So I’m glad that people will still go to shows, and maybe people will buy this record and help my friends to put out other bands. To keep it in this small community of friends is really exciting to me. You can’t exist without an economy, and if you have to have a tiny economy with your friends and all the things they are doing, it’s really important to support that and promote it. I guess I’m not playing shows for me, I’m doing it for my friends who are investing in me and who have been for so long, and for people who have been supportive of me. I’ve made so many friends. I don’t know where I would be, what kind of a person I would be if I wasn’t involved in all of this. Just about everybody I know is because of it. Almost all of my friends happened because I for some reason decided to do this. I feel very fortunate.
TM: I always ask about this; I always try to open up a dialogue about being a woman and playing music. How it affects you, if you think about it at all…
LK: Being a woman has an effect on me, of course, there's no getting around it. No matter what I do, it’s always there. Unless I’m writing something under some non-gender-specific name, everyone always knows I'm a woman and will expect whatever it is that they expect from a woman. I can't do very much about that. I mean, more shows than not I’m the only woman playing, but it doesn’t bother me; I really don't even think about it anymore. I think I'm finally confidant enough with myself as a person that gender rarely even crosses my mind, but I know other people think about it. For a long time, when I first started to play shows… I have some tattoos and people would just assume I was going to sound a particular way, because of other women with acoustic guitars and tattoos. Probably men get thrown into categories because of something having to do with their appearance. Everyone does that, I think. But because there are, in comparison, a lot fewer women in this scene, there are fewer comparisons for people to draw from. At first I got Ani DiFranco for some crazy reason, and then Cat Power and recently I got Lucinda Williams. None of those comparisons are insulting or anything, they just don't make a lot of sense. That can be really frustrating, of course, but I know that musicians get compared to other musicians, mechanics get compared to other mechanics, cooks to cooks, painters to painters. I guess I just wish people would draw from the entire musician pool instead of just the female one. I’m rarely ever compared to guy musicians, but I'd say that's primarily what I'm listening to. For some reason most of the musicians I’ve loved and been influenced by have been men. There are women in music I really adore, of course, but it's less common. I mean there are less women playing music than men, so it's easy to arrive at that. There are a lot of us out there, though. Playing music as a woman has made me a little more demanding of other women who play. I want to tell them, you know, we’re on a team here and you have to make it really, really good, and you have to be honest and be yourself and make it so that we are all better appreciated. Sometimes, I think it's hard for people to trust woman musicians and to believe in them. I'd be really into that being changing, though.
TM: Going back to the new album, what is your favorite song? I know that’s so unfair to ask!
LK: There’s this one song I wrote for my mom; it’s really simple. I never really name my songs – it’s just a piece of the lyrics – but the first line is “she is a machine”, and that’s probably what it’s going to be called. Josh Small sings on it with me, and there’s some really awesome playing on it; and I think recorded, I’m most proud of that one. As far as songs go, there’s one kind of newer song that I guess I’ll probably call “No Good” or something. I really like that song. I wrote that over the summer right before we recorded, and that was kind of a landmark song; things in my life were changing again. Because last year was kind of the worst of my whole life, for tons of reasons. Toward the end of the year I knew that everything had to be different. That song to me signifies a time when I was like, everything has to change; I have to do it now. And it has – slowly – but it has. The last three months have been really amazing for me.
TM: Do you think the album marks that progression?
LK: Yeah, this marks the first time that I’m making more of an effort to do this. I'm not sure where it will ever go, but I feel a little less cynical about why anyone would do it at all. I’m just going to kind of let it go and see what happens with it. I’m already ready to record again. I have four new songs I want to record really badly, and I’m constantly working on things now. For a long time I wasn’t working on anything, but now I’m writing so many songs, it feels really good. I got my spirit back, my groove back, however you want to say it.
By Talia Miller, Photos by Liza Kate
- 1
3 Comment(s)
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
I'm surprised about the comparisons only to other female singer-songwriters. I've always thought of Will Oldham, only I like Liza's songs more.
— Posted by: Tim on April 17, 2009 - 5:27pmsomething about the first photo says stock photo of woman being laid off and taking her plant...
— Posted by: Anonymous on April 20, 2009 - 7:18pmLiza Kate is the shit!
— Posted by: parker on April 23, 2009 - 2:43amPost new comment