Interview with Kim Richey

Talking To...Kim Richey




Kim Richey had a variety of careers before establishing a successful solo recording career as well as having had hot songs recorded by the likes of Brooks and Dunn, Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Mattea. She is even responsible for naming a bun!



Fatea had the chance to chat with Kim before her gig with Boo Hewerdine at The Cluny on June 4th about these and a variety of other topics.



Interview with Kim Richey @ The Cluny, June 4th 2009



KR: Kim Richey, HM: Helen Mitchell



HM: Hi Kim, it is so great to finally meet you.



KR: Thanks. You too, Helen, right?



HM: Yep.



KR: You came straight from work? What do you do?



HM: Oh, I work with EBD children, the ones at risk of being put out of mainstream schools.



KR: Oh wow, that must be hard. I don't know if we're talking about the same thing here but I have a degree in Environmental Ed. so I worked with grade school kids at a nature centre but one of my jobs right out of college was at a drug rehab group home facility for teenage boys and I was probably about four to five years older than they were and it was an experience!



HM: yeah when I was first teacher training I'd be teaching kids of eleven, thinking 'They know I'm hardly any older than they are.'



KR: (laughs) Yeah, but I loved the outdoor ed that I did - environmental teaching - grade schools would come into the centre where I worked for, like, two and a half days, then we'd have a new group for the next two and a half days of the school week. We taught them all kinds of natural sciences but mostly through games and hikes and everything was outdoor. It was really great and really fun. They gave me all the kids who caused trouble 'cos I liked them the best.



HM: (laughs) Welcome to my world!



KR: (laughs) A lot of them are just too smart and they're bored...they're just bored.



HM: Or they need their energy channelled in the right way.



KR: Right, right. Yeah, I loved doing that.



HM: So, Kim, what made you go from that into music? That's a pretty massive difference, really!



KR: Well, I always did music at college and everything. I was in bands and plays at college. After that, I didn't do music, I working the Environmental Ed. and working in restaurants. I worked in restaurants for a long, long time, to the point where the last place I worked I was running the restaurant and cooking. It was a small blackboard place, where the specials change every day according to what you get in and it was really, really great. I learned a lot about cooking in that place because if you ran out of something in the middle of dinner, you had to come up with the next special off the top of your head. It was in Bellingham, Washington and the best food ever is along that coastline right there in that area.



HM: Really?



KR: Yeah, seafood - any kind of fantastic seafood - and the climate is a bit like here because stuff grows year round, so they have everything. It was a great place to learn about cooking. So I did that and then I moved to Nashville and that's when I started with my songwriting and making records.



HM: How long were you there before you got your first cut?



KR: I don't know. I was probably there two or three years before I got a publishing deal. That's mainly because you're not really sure what you're meant to be doing. It's not like going for an interview. You just play places and hope someone notices you and that you meet the right people. I avoided doing that for a while because it was really quite scary and intimidating. I was pretty shy too, not very good at the whole self promotion thing, but finally I got a publishing deal and I think the first cut I ever got might have been by a Swedish band. The first time I ever sang on a record was a guy named Radney Foster.



HM: Oh yes, I know his music.



KR: He did a solo record so I sang on a bunch of songs then we had one we'd written together that went to number one.



HM: Nobody Wins?



KR: Yeah.



HM: I guess this follows nicely then, I was thinking about people who have cut your songs - Trisha Yearwood(has cut several), Brooks and Dunn, Eve Selis, Kathy Mattea, among many.



KR: What's Kathy Mattea cut?

HM: Didn't she cut I'm Alright? Yes she did, on her Roses CD.



KR:I don't think I knew that. I don't know a lot of stuff that goes on. It's the publishers. Sometimes they tell me sometimes they don't.



HM: Okay, so if you had to pick, which has been your favourite cut?



KR: Oh, that's too hard. I couldn't really say. They're just different interpretations. I was really happy with one Chapin (Mary Chapin Carpenter) recorded and all the stuff Trisha's (Yearwood) done; she's just a really good friend and great person and singer. I always really like what she does.



HM: You should tell them to come back over here!







KR: Funny, I was thinking the other day Chapin should come back. Have you seen her play?

HM: No, sadly. The last time she was over I was still at uni and she played with Shawn Colvin but I couldn't make it - ten years or so ago.



KR: That must have been after I came over here with her.



HM: Strangely, since we were talking about her, the one and only time I've gotten to see you play live, was when you opened for Trisha Yearwood in Manchester - what - eleven years ago? That's the only time you've been anywhere close.



KR: No, I played here in Newcastle at The Sage with John Hiatt about a year and a half ago.



HM: Oh, I wish I had known, I never read anywhere you were playing with him.



KR: That's right, I remember, my name wasn't in any of the advertising for that tour.



HM: Well, that's a shame as I would have been there. I debated whether to see John Hiatt as it was.



KR: (laughing) Oh well, you're here now!

HM: (laughs) Okay, so if you can't pick a favourite cut, are there any that have been exciting when you've heard that someone was going to cut it?




KR: You know, really, anytime somebody's gonna cut one of your songs is a great thing because the law of averages is just against it. Think of all the songwriters and all the songs they have to choose from. Then just pretend that you're the singer and you get ten songs and this is your album. You only get ten songs. Which of those songs mean enough to you to use one of those ten spaces? So it's really a great thing when somebody cuts one of your songs. Especially if they didn't have a hand in it - that's even more hard to come by.



HM: Where they just hear it and love it?



KR: Yeah...yeah...it's not something that they co-wrote, or, you know, they had a part in it, or something like that. Any one of them is a huge compliment.



HM: That's a lovely way to look at it.



KR: Yeah, isn't it amazing though, when you think about it you're better off buying a lottery ticket or something.



HM: I suppose when you think how many people must submit songs to artists...



KR: Yeah, then there's the thing that there's the whole song and maybe you like this song but you just don't quite like that part of the song so there has to be something about the song that they will get really totally behind the whole thing.



HM: That reminds me of Patty Lovless song written by Gretchen Peters. I think it was Like Water Into Wine. She adored the song but felt one verse wasn't quite right for her so she either changed it or left it out, with permission. Has that ever happened to any of yours?



KR: Somebody did once - I can't really remember who or what but I remember I said I didn't see any reason to change the verse. So they didn't cut it. So...



HM: Fair enough. It's your song.



KR: (laughing)



HM: You should have the final say if it is changed.



KR: (laughs) Yeah, absolutely.



HM: I guess it's kind of a back handed remark - you must wonder 'Well, what's wrong with it? I kinda liked it how it was.'



KR: Yeah, it's weird. You could understand if it was something maybe too personal that they wanted to make more accessible to people, something like that, but if they just didn't like it or something that would be different.



HM: I guess it'd be like them saying 'Kim, I love that song, but I really don't like verse 3 so can we change it?' Clearly they don't actually love the song...



KR: (laughs) You got it.



HM: Something I came across Kim, that I found interesting was that your bio says you were raised in a coal mining village.



KR: Yeah, but it was a tiny place. Not raised actually, just born there because my father died when I was two so then we moved to Dayton, Ohio, a bigger city. My Dad did work at the mines but it was a strip mining place but on the surface. I went to a big pit in Wales and they took us down into the mines and it was amazing but my father drove one of those things - I don't know what they are called but they look as big as a house - something that went along the top. So that's what he did.



HM: That's really interesting. I don't know if you know but this area was once a centre for mining. I actually live over in South Shields but my house is yards from a closed coal mine.



KR: Really?



HM: Kathy Mattea was here a while back singing her Coal songs too, about West Virginia.



KR: Yeah. Some places have done okay reinventing themselves and finding other ways and others haven't been able to figure out...



HM: Haven't recovered.



KR: Hmmm...



HM: Butte in Montana comes to mind as you say that.



KR: Really?



HM: Yeah, you know when you walk through a small American town and you can feel what it was everywhere and know it will never be that again. Like it's hanging on to it's past because it can't move forward, almost.



KR: Yeah. That's a great description. You can tell when all the kids are leaving too. It's not where they want to be and it's not drawing other young people to it...



HM: Kinda like everyone who's there is going to die there...



KR: Exactly. Just hangin' on.



HM: It's a shame. So, would you ever go back to Ohio?



KR: What you mean to live? No. My parents live there and it was a nice place to grow up but... You know, I'll be over in London; that's where I'll be spending most of my time.



HM: Yeah, you've been there on and off for a while now. How did that come about?



KR: Well, it came about, funnily enough, from being in Nashville because people came to Nashville from London to write and I met a few people there - Charles Martin being one of them - then started coming over here and writing with people and met friends of friends and got to where most of what I was doing was centred over here more than in the States.

HM: So are you in London more or less full time or is it split between London and Nashville?




KR: Well, I'm hoping to be in London, yeah. I used to go back and forth, you know, I had a house - a big house out in the country on five acres - then I sold it and I rented a house in Nashville for about a year. Then I made everything smaller and it's now just all in a storage unit.



HM: You can't really live in that!



KR: (laughs) No, I haven't really moved everything over here but there's no sense in me keeping a house. I've been gone since February - one place or another - a month in Australia and a month in Denmark, Copenhagen, writing and teaching and shows.



HM: How did you find Australia? They have a burgeoning music scene but the only name I can call to mind right now is Gina Jeffreys.



KR: Oh it's great out there. I don't know her. Is that country?



HM: Country folk I guess. There's another one in the back of my mind but I can't think of her name. (I have since remembered - Sherrie Austin!)



KR: I was writing with some new people who were really good, too. They've just out out EPs and getting ready to put out records. I had a great time there, plus I was there in February so it was really nice weather!



HM: Not too hot?



KR: No, it was great.



HM: Whereabouts were you?KR: Mostly around Sydney and Melbourne. So I played festivals with Boo (Hewerdine - that's how this tour came about) then I did a writers' tour. That all happened because I was in Nashville as well because people from Australia came to write for a record they were making and I wrote with a couple of them so we did a writers' tour; there were four of us that did that.



HM: That must be fun.



KR: Yeah, yeah it was great fun. Two of them I already knew from writing for the record then a fourth guy joined us - Kevin Bennett. From there I went to Copenhagen and one of the guys, a student that I'd had before at the university there won a grant and I got to be a resident artist.



HM: Wow. That sounds great.



KR: I know, it was so great. That meant the government paid for me a flat for a month and paid me a salary to live on and I taught and did shows with some of my students and we had a whole big band. It was just a co-operative band and then we'd split everything - take out all the expenses and split what was left at the end. I had a bicycle there and I just rode around all over. It was really good.



HM: That's obviously something you'd do again.



KR: Yeah but I don't know if you get to be that twice! (laughs) Cinderella twice?



HM: Do you do a lot of workshop type things?



KR: A little bit, not a lot. I have friends that do it and teach at university and stuff but generally no. I mean, I could help someone with their writing and their songs, help them with expressing what they are trying to say in their songs or help them with the form of it so it has more shape so it's easier for people to listen to. The people who teach know the difference between song forms. I mean, I can do it but I don't think I could teach it, you know? I know about songwriting from my own perspective. That's mostly what I'm doing when I'm in Copenhagen; talking about songwriting, not saying 'You have to do this and this and your chord has to be this and you have to rhyme this line with this line', because, you know, it's not true, really. It's such a subjective thing.



HM: I guess it's personal to you and you find your own way and everyone has their own way of writing and creating but you can't really teach someone to be creative, can you?



KR: I think you can help people shape and do what they are trying to do but I'm not sure about teaching them. I mean, people teach writing; I don't know how they do that but there



HM: I guess you can't teach someone to write; they either can or they can't.



KR: You can't teach someone a specific way to think and I think that's where the really special part of anything creative comes from. You almost think differently than other people, you know?



HM: Yeah. I can sit and write a gig or CD review and write up an interview but I was never good at the creative; I couldn't even write a poem. I guess it's different parts of your brain maybe?



KR: Yeah. It's still writing and it's still creative in a way. I think whatever you do in life, that's how you approach the world, it's how you see the world. It's different for everybody.



HM: I wonder, do you enjoy writing on your own, or with other people?



KR: I like writing on my own when it's easy - I'm really lazy - or so easily distracted. Some songs come out really quickly or a chunk of them. Like a song I really like - I finished the new record...so I have a song that I wrote on this new record and the first part came out no problem. Then after that I couldn't work out what else I needed to say. I started the song probably a couple of years ago and it sat around. If it's a song I really like or have a personal investment in the song, I won't finish it just to have it finished. I'll let it sit around until I figure it out. You know that's a very different thing from sitting down in a songwriting session and trying to write a song with somebody.



HM: What's the longest it's taken you to finish a song?



KR: A couple of years I guess. If I'm writing with people that's not the case. I guess there's a bit more pressure to get it finished. Only a couple of mine have sat for a long time. I don't think it's lazy so much as that it just doesn't come easily. Those couple of songs are really special to me, really personal songs and I didn't want to just finish them to be finished.



HM: Can I ask which they were?



KR: Well Pretty Picture sat around for a long time and then a new one you'll not have heard yet. The start came then it just took while to figure out what else I needed to say. Words are the hardest part so I think I get more satisfaction out of the words. The melody and the words kinda come together. I'll mess around with some music then try to see what lyric that makes me think of. But words are really the hardest part but they're pretty important to me. So if I get a good lyric that says something in a completely different way than I've ever heard anybody say it before then I'm really really happy with that.



HM: I guess the whole point of the lyrics is to make a connection, so I guess if you feel a connection to it, chances are other people will too, who are listening to it.



KR: Right.



HM: Does that make any sense?



KR: Definitely because songs I've had the most luck with were songs that I've said 'I would cut this song.' Often unless I've written a song for someone, they're the ones I've recorded first then someone else has heard them and made a cut.

HM: Do you think of yourself as a songwriter or singer, first?




KR: Ahh, I get asked that all the time.



HM: Sorry, predictable question maybe, but I wondered...



KR: No, it's just I don't think you have to pick. I love singing and I think I'm a really good singer but I don't think I'm better at one than the other, really. I'm pretty easy on stage, it's not hard for me to be on the stage but I like doing both like I like helping other people with their stuff. My attention's just all over the place, I like that I can do one for a while then do something else.



HM: Speaking of other people, I saw Nate Campany the other day - he opened for Great Lake Swimmers and he sang a song you and he co-wrote. How did that one come about?



KR: He was supporting me, we did maybe four or five shows together and we had a day off so we said 'Well, let's write a song.' We played a show in Bath last weekend and he just left to go back to the States.



HM: Okay, now there was something I came across which I have to ask about. I don't even know if it's true. Something to do with a Mother Theresa Bun...



KR: Ahhhhh. (laughs)



HM: You've got to tell me that story. Spill!



KR: That was a million years ago. There was this little coffee place in Nashville which was great. When I first moved there from Seattle, there was no coffee. Seattle was where Starbucks started and they had great coffee and great beer. Then I get to Nashville and there was nowhere until this little coffee house opened. The only place in all of Nashville and I used to go there all the time. It was in an old house; a fantastic place. I met a lot of people there, knew the people who worked there. met other writers there, got phonecalls there; I'd be there every day. I went in one day and there were two of them working. One of them held out this cinnamon roll and they said 'What does that look like to you?' I said 'Mother Theresa' and they went 'See?' like this, so they called it the 'Mother Theresa Bun' for a long time and then they got a letter from someone saying they couldn't do that so then it became the 'Nun Bun.' They had tshirts and they did a documentary on it but I was out of town so I didn't get to be interviewed. It's still there. It's in this little box, like a little shrine. As far as I know they still have it.



HM: Whereabouts is it? I'll have to look it up if I'm ever back there. I can say I interviewed the lady who named the bun!



KR: (laughs) In Nashville, in an area called Belmont. Those places were some of my favourite things about Nashville. There was a lot of publicity about the bun too, it was very funny. I still have my T-shirt which just has a picture of a bun on the front.



HM: We could get into trouble talking about T-shirts and buns!



KR: (laughing) Oh - yes!



HM: That was pretty much everything I wanted to cover, Kim, anything else you'd like to share?



KR: I told you my news - the new album is finished so I'm really happy about that.



HM: When can we expect to see it? Or hear it..



.

KR: Well as soon as I get it forwarded - I don't know if I'm going to put it out myself or go through a record company.



HM: Does it have a name yet?



KR: Yeah, it's called Wreck Your Wheels.



HM: That's a great CD title.



KR: Thanks. I made it with a producer called Nielson Hubbard in Nashville. He produces music but he was also the music director in the band we toured Chinese Boxes with in the States. Two of the other guys who played in that band played on the record too. It was great gun, just the four of us and we pretty much recorded the whole thing live in the studio. I had such a nice time recording it with those guys. The girl that did the artwork for Chinese Boxes has worked on this.



HM: That was great artwork.



KR: Yeah, wasn't it! She did another cover and stuff for this one, it's all done, I just have to figure out what to do with it. I hope to have it all sorted and released by the first of the year.



HM: That's not that long, then.



KR: No, not really. That's the plan.



HM: Is it still exciting for you when you're putting a new one out?



KR: yeah, yeah, that's the thing, I love that I get to record too. I think if I just toured or just wrote, or just recorded or played with a band, I'd get bored but I enjoy being able to do a bit of everything.



HM: (laughs) Ok, thankyou so much Kim, for the chat and the laughs! It was great to finally meet you.



KR: Was that good?



HM: That was great. Go and get your soundcheck sorted ;=) Catch you later.



KR: Yeah let me know what you think of the set!









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