Amythyst Kiah Sings Her Truth

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. On her intimate new album, Wary and Strange, Amethyst Kia sings her heart out about losing her mom to suicide and what it's like being the only black person in the room at country gigs. I want the fans and won my face in the Greek, but I'm black pie. I want to sweet that down right. I'm a beat, but I'm black Pine. Amethyst Kia has always been caught between different worlds. Growing up with massive anxiety as a teenager near Chattanooga, Tennessee, she started learning Green Day and Tory Amal songs alone in her bedroom on guitar. Eventually, she built up her chops and courage and began performing bluegrass standards live, catching the attention of recent guests at the pod In Banjo Extraordinaire ran In Giddins, who put Kia in her band in twenty eighteen. Nearly two years later, Amethyst Kia started working with Phoebe Bridges producer Tony Berg on what would become her newest album, Wary and Strange. The project expertly fuses Kia's love for nineties alt rock with her old time country sensibility. Amethyst Kia performs two of her new songs on today's episode and talks to Bruce Headlam about what it was like for a black teenager to come out as gay in a white Christian Southern town. She also explains how learning of the West African roots of bluegrass helped reaffirm her place in Americana music. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmontain. Here's Bruce Headlam with Amethyst Kia. There are many things I love about your album, but we'll get to the songs in a second. But the sound of your album, it's so textured, but so interesting in the sounds you apply to different songs. Often when people do that, they bring in a lot of kind of noise and effects. They don't seem integral to the songs, but yours do. Did you conceive of them with so many different sounds? With the string arrangements, it sounded like you have flutes, or it may have been like an old melotron. Flutes were melotron. So this album went through like sort of three different stages, with what is out now being the final stage and making this album, I was kind of going through like a bit of a musical identity crisis because I was like I was dealing with writer's block. I was in therapy trying to like unpack lots of repressed feelings that were like holding me back creatively. So there was just a lot of like stuff that I was trying to figure out during the making of this record, and my final conclusion for what I wanted the record to be is I wanted to combine my folk music influences from when I was in college and then also combine my lifelong love and obsession for alternative music. Because the way that my songs are when I write them, I don't sit down and think about I'm going to write a country song or I'm going to write a rock and roll song. My focus had always been on how am I going to range us on the guitar. I didn't have the resources or the mental capacity to even think beyond that. So meeting up with Tony and his years of experience of like working with within multiple genres of music, he would have these ideas of these different sounds to use to layer that I never would have thought of. For example, in Hangover Blues, you Know, we had recorded you know, the rhythm track for it, and he disappeared for a minute and came back with this tourist kind of trinket that a friend gave him from Burma. It had a little button and it had Tibetan chants. So that part in the beginning of the song on the record where you hear the guy kind of chanting that's from this little from this like tourist toy. Like no sound, regardless of where it came from, was off limits. Then also there was you know, obviously the using the melotron for different things, like with fancy drones. Just the way that he thinks about music and thinks about sound played such a pivotal role in like how this record turned out, and it really clicked with me because all of my favorite records are records that have like just weird, little nuanced layers of sounds. You know, every time you listen to the record, you hear a new sound that you maybe you didn't recognize before. The sound reminded me of old LPs, you know, from eighties or nineties. Yeah, and I'm wondering, are those some of your favorite albums. A lot of my stuff that I fell in love with is definitely from the nineties, like Radiohead, Records, Tori Amos Records, BORC Records, and it was like magic to be had no idea how any of that happened or how any of those sounds were made. Working with Tony, I was like, Okay, this is how. And then there's this one really cool thing called a Kalida loop. They're not made anymore. It's really hard to find. I keep checking reverb dot com to see if anybody's trying to sell one. But like, you can basically record any sound and then go back and like flip it around, manipulate it, like change the pitch. Seeing all of sound as a way to be musical was just an approach to music that I never really took in a studio setting, and so I learned a lot. And for me, he said a high bar of like what a producer should be. I know what I want now when I go in the studio. I want someone that just really thinks outside of the box the sound. So okay, well that's outside of the box. Let's talk about the box your songs. Yeah, I notice you have a guitar. Would you like to sing one? Yeah? I would love to anything you like? All right, we'll do uh hangover Blues woke up this money feeding baby had the worst hang oh blue, I don my baby had it come. And if I did it all over again, I do the same damn thing in it. And if I did it all bark again, I do the same damn than its. I like sweet pleads right up, Gray lor knows I like to look, but I was scared to think that my baby had it down. We know you had my hands and knees and lon she get them into speechless time You had my hands and knees and norn she get them into speechless. Hay time dum. Then my baby hated game now. And if I did it all over again, I do the same damn bang And if I did it all over again, I do the same damn banging it Hi, sing damn Bangingyhi, sing damn dang Hi. This is gonna seem like a silly question because anybody who's had a hangover those would inspired that song, right, But what inspired that particular song. When I left Chattanoogain moved to Johnson City, I like went back in the closet because I was like, I went from a medium sized Bible belt town to a small Bible belt down, so I was very like concerned about how that would play out. I came out I was gay in high school, Like my sophomore year in high school, were you dating? Then? I went on some dates, but my social anxiety was so was so crippling that like I could never get past my anxiety to really like do anything beyond like going out on the day. I had a lot of low self esteem, so like sharing myself in an intimate way with someone was just beyond the pale for me because I had such poor self image of myself that part of me in a lot of ways was like how can anybody like me? You know, Yeah, not a great mental space to be in. But but then I went back in the clausem early twenties, and then I kind of just stayed there for like seven years, which wasn't the intention. So by the time I was in my late twenties, I was like something about the year twenty seven. They say that when you turned twenty seven, all of your cells and your body have totally regenerated. I don't know. I've not looked up the science, but I've just had conversations with people and like there may be something to it, because I feel like at the age of twenty seven, I just decided to like not care anymore about how people felt, and then I kind of just started dating do my own thing. I started. I had my party phase in my late twenties, which is a weird time to do that. I'd had like a few drinks here and there, like in my early twenties and into my mid twenties, but I didn't start like drinking or actually get drunk until like my late twenties. In my mind, I was like, well, I'll be more interesting if I drink. But Hangover Blues was like the beginning of that phase. So it was when things were still fun, at least in my mind. Things were fun. But the line in the song that talks about I like to look, but I was scared to death that came from a line from The Great Gatsby. There is this idea of like being so attracted to someone but also being terrified of them at the same time. I don't think that's the way a relationship should work. I don't think you should ever feel tar about it if the personally I don't know any other way, all right, Yeah, but there was like this exciting exhilaration about it, like you know, this this person that is like just was so opposite for me in every single way, but like, I don't know, there was something about it that was just terribly exciting to me. So that was referring to like a person that I was dating at that time. You said you had writer's block. Was that a result of the social anxiety? Do you think possibly? I mean, I would say between like two thousand and nine all the way up until like twenty twenty fourteen. You know, I wrote a lot when I was in high school. I wrote a lot of poems, song ideas, and songs, but I kind of stopped and just focused on traditional music because when I started studying the roots in the cultural history of American music, I realized I need to really own in on this. I was lacking grounding in my musical journey because I'd spent so much of it kind of on my own, listening to different things that I needed to learn how to play with other musicians and learn how to be a performer. But the real songwriting didn't really like start happening until I was probably I would say probably twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Then by the time twenty eighteen rolled around. That's when like the writer's block was happening. Because I was really in deep in this like on again, off again ambiguous relationship with someone. It was consuming all of my emotional energy. This person didn't really even end up being amused to write songs about. It was just this person just blocked out my creativity like altogether. It wasn't until after working on Our Native Daughters that's when the writer's block started to lift, and I really started to like get some momentum with writing some new songs and then also like deciding to record some of the songs that I'd written and like have a record of all original material and also sort of reconcile these two musical sides and just make something completely fresh and new and something that really represented who I am as a musician and where I really was in that current moment. We should talk a bit about the other side, because you went to study at Eastern Tennessee and you took a bluegrass course, I think without really knowing much about bluegrass, right right, Yeah, yeah, I took a blue grass guitar class with Jack Toddle. Classical didn't isn't really appealing to me because the way that I learned music didn't really align with how they taught it, and so it just didn't really interest me. But with blue grass guitar, it was an opportunity for me to take a music class and not have to worry about oral skills and theory and all that kind of stuff. And the way that I learned was like recognized and respected. So it started there, and then as I kept digging more and more, I started seeing, like, you know, the entirety of like American roots music and how it plays such a huge role in all American music, and also having it revealed to me the West African influence in country music and in bluegrass music and all these musics that people have identified with being like southern white Christian, like all of my favorite things basically were happening at once. I could pursue music in a way where my way of doing it was was recognized, and I was like having my entire idea of music and history and culture challenged. And I was also seeing where I fit in as a black girl who grew up in like you know, conservative white Christian you know area, where I fit in in this world and in like the larger story of history, You didn't know about the West African influence. All I knew about bluegrass was the Beverly Hillbillies. That's literally all I knew. So I walked in completely unaware of anything, you know, with an intellectual curiosity to just like see what all of what's all this bluegrass about? And then it led me into old Time? Do you remember what the songs were that first captured you or were their performers from old time that you just gravitated towards. I would say Doc Watson, the Carter Family, learning about like Leslie Riddle and how like he played such a huge role in development of like the Carter Family and there and their success Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. The one band that really kind of solidified for me I need to pursue this is the Carolina Chocolate Drops because they were the first black stream man that I'd ever heard of. They were all like living, breathing in the here and now and the way that they played the music was so exciting and like once I saw them, which is why I'm an advocate that you know, representation matters. Seeing someone that looks like you doing something is something that you know A lot of people kind of take for granted. It was just a really inspiring moment where I was just like, all right, well, I'm going to stick with this old time thing because like there's something to it and it's giving me this sense of purpose that I didn't really feel I had prior. Amazing. And then later when you played with Our Native Daughters, you played with Rihanna and Giddens. Yeah, so with Rihanna and Giddens. I actually met her prior to Our Native Daughters. She saw me perform at Cambridge Folk Festival on like a there was like a YouTube video. This is in twenty sixteen. She always looks for like a people of color to open for her, and her agent reached out to me, so I actually got to meet her and like opened for her, which was amazing. I mean, she's such an incredible performer and is such a brilliant mind. So when she asked me to do Our Native Daughters, first of all, the answer was a resounding yes. Because I had a shut up and sing policy for really really long time. You know, this was an opportunity to be like, Okay, here's a way that I can talk about this history that I've known about and had discussions about, but never ventured into singing about. Because of the audience that I had garnered, I was worried that I was going to get backlash that I wasn't one of those like, you know, safe black people that just you know, smile and dance and don't say anything to rock the boat. That's kind of the role that I put myself in. So this was an opportunity to just like throw caution to the wind and step forward with like four amazingly talented black women and have that courage and strength to like talk about this about the Transtlantic slave trade and how it affected, you know, the America's But at the same time, it was also like I went from opening for Rhiannagtens to now like being a colleague, and so that was also very intimidating because I'm just like, oh my God, Like who am I to be on this project? Like at the end of the day, it was just kind of like I'm you know, I went for it. Anyway, even though I was very nervous and very like, you know, intimidated, I was also like, well, I have to do it. I have to this is so important. What I got from that experience was so much more than I think I even realized I was going to get. It was for the first time I actually had this sense of like telling the story of my ancestors, like I've heard people use the term ancestors when talking about doing things, and that seemed like such a foreign concept to me, because I spent so much of my life seeing myself as like a loan on an island for a really long time because of my social anxiety, and then with my fear of rejection, I built walls and kept distance emotionally from people so I wouldn't get disappointed by them later because I just didn't trust people to ever truly care about me, to actually be in a situation where it's like, you know what, there is so much more to this world than just me and how I'm feeling and what I say and do and how I am does affect other people. Feeling a connection with something that is hundreds of years old and all of us as women of color, still feeling the repercussions of what the Transatlantic slave trade like established for how black people should be treated and viewed, and seeing how that still affects us in our daily lives. Knowing the people before us, all that they had to endure, and then for me to be able to have the opportunities that I have now, it's like, the least I can do is sing a song and whatever backlash were to happen. So what like, if the people before me can handle what was thrown at them, being brought over on a slave ship, being whipped and beaten, being segregated, being chased out of office during reconstruction by white supremacists, if all of those people can survive through that, for me to be here now, like I really don't have an excuse to not do my part in this aspect of history. Did that help your writer's block too? Oh? Yeah, it really did. It gave me the courage to like write and speak about things, not just about how I'm feeling personally, which that's obviously very important, but to be able to like look outside of myself and like make commentary about things that I see that I and really like stating what my beliefs are about certain issues. So a lot of my newer songs that I'm writing now involve a lot more like social commentary than my previous records. So there's still gonna be like the deeply personal stuff that'll always be part of what I write, of course, But now I'm not afraid to, like, you know, speak my mind on certain things anymore, which such a relief. We'll be right back with Amethyskia after a quick break. We're back with more from Amethyst Kia and Bruce Hudlam and just a quick heads up. This segment contains discussion of suicide. Do you want to play another song? Yeah, let's do it. This one is called Firewater. Melancina always seemed a work for me, wistful and uncertain on my dreams. Starts farms into shapes that never lieve. Strange anderarything all see, I'm a ghost in the alle, in the room, everywhere I go in pending Dude, how many spirits does it take to lift the spirit? I don't know. I don't know because I bought every spirit and I'm still laying here, crying on the floor on the flood. So can you just leave me? Bee? Being drenched in fire water won't save me? How forsake the path of bealth Fleet? Can't he to sleep me? Be pens of stairs on the only crowns I've ever green? The dog I find the answers that I need city lights on the own stars. I have seen how many nights until I find and he can breathe? How many spirits does take to lift the spirit? I don't know. I don't know, as I bought every spirit and I'm still laying here crying on the floor, hunger flood. So can you just leave? Maybe being drenched the fire and water won't see me? Forsake the path of felth flee. Can't he just leave? Can you just leave? Can you just leave me? Maybe you learned a lot of Eastern Tennessee. The picking is just fabulous on that, thank you. Yeah. Prior to that, a lot of my fingerstyle picking was very much classically influenced. But once I started learning three fingerstyle, what's also been done is like Merle Travis style. Then it really opened things up for me. And then I've also been a fan of like percussive fingerstyle. I just love guitar and the different ways to play, so I kind of picked things up from here and there and have fun with it. So do you remember your first guitar? Yeah, my first guitar was a late eighties Fender Acoustic and my parents bought it for me at a place and Ring Gold, Georgia called the sound Post really really nice guys. That was like in North Georgia, not far from where I live in Chatanooga. Literally the first ten years of playing guitar, there's a thing inside some next of acoustic guitars called trust rods, and you can tighten it. Apparently the trust rod was like super loose when I got it, and so for years I just adapted to having to push down really hard on the strings. And I remember the first time I think it was one of my band directors at East to State University, because I had played other guitars and I'm like, for some reason, the other guitars are like a little bit easier to play, what's up with this one? And then my professor told me, oh, well, your trust rod is completely loose. And then it tightened because I was about to get a whole new guitar. So you had a really high action on the guitar. Yeah, the action was pretty high, but like I didn't know any better because I just played the same tar for years. And that's when I found out that my trust rod was too loose. I got it fixed, and then it just it played like a dream. So I just played this late eighties Fender for a really long time, and then I eventually bought a Martin Maha any O nine, which is basically like the sustainable Forrest version of a D eighteen. So that was like my first like guitar purchase, even though it took me two years to pay it off of my credit card. I have no regrets, so probably good for your hand. Yeah, it'd be like a guy playing like a trombone without a mouthpiece for ten years and someone says, you know, it's a lot easier if you Yeah, if you put this up. Yeah. Well I was so like my music playing was such an insular, private, like isolated thing that like I just wasn't My music experience didn't really involve other people or other like ideas, so like I was kind of just a guitar hermit. I guess I was on my island playing stuff. So yeah, I just didn't play with anybody else until college. Yeah, I didn't really. I didn't play with anyboy else I had. Like there was this one time there was like a talent show. This girl that I was friends with and also had a huge crush on. She played bass and sang and she wanted to play Zombie by the Cranberries, so I played. I played guitar. I didn't even sing with us, because at the time I didn't even think of myself as a singer. Really, everybody in that school lost their minds and people were like, oh my god, you're a tar playing so good. And it was the first time I'd ever been like complimented outside of like my parents. So I was sort of like, I don't know, like this was really easy. It was my first step in having to learn how to like take a compliment and also realized that like, just because I do something all the time doesn't mean that other people do it, you know. So there was that first moment of realizing, oh, okay, like I do something that is really special to other people's eyes. What was the first song you played when you got that Fender guitar. After a month or two however long that was of learning CG and D learning strumming pattern, the first song that I learned to play was good Written's Time of Your Life by Green Day, and it was so exciting. I just remember, like that song was so controversial at the time, because you know, a lot of people were like they sold out, Like are they still punk anymore? Because they played this acoustic song. Fortunately for me, like I grew up in a household where it was all kinds of music being played, so to me, if I like something, I like something. So I kind of liked the idea that the first song I learned was like this quote unquote controversial moment in green Day's career. It's a damn good song and it had all the chords that I learned. I learned like lots of like pop punk songs like you know, Blink one at two green Day. Once I started taking classical guitar, it opened like the dexterity up on my hands. And then I became obsessed with Tory Amos when I was fifteen. So then one time I recorded this cover of Blood Roses on like this little tape deck thing, and like, I don't know, I wish I still had because I have no idea what happened to any of that stuff. I recorded, like a bunch of like Tory Amos covers and they're probably melting in some trash somewhere. I read somewhere that you loved listening to field recordings. Was that a big part of Eastern Tennessee. Yeah, my band instructor, I'm Ryan Drotti. I joined the program. That was when like at that point there was like a lot of bluegrass band sections, so he put together like the first Old Time Pride band, and the pride bands were the bands that like got to play more than the three required band shows. All of us were new to old Time. So what we would do when we first started bringing songs to band practice, it would be like, you know, versions of traditional songs that were sung by like you know, Bruce Molski or Alison Kraus or like some other contemporary musician that had covered a traditional song. But what Roy wanted us to do was to dig a little bit deeper and listen to source recordings, like the earliest known recording of a song, because there's a lot of nuance and dynamic differences that source recording has that if you just play the contemporary person's version of the song, you're missing out on an opportunity to make that song your own song. So if you listen to the source recording, you then have the ability to like take that song and like make it your own instead of you like Bruce Molski when he plays something, he's put his stamp on the song. So it took us a while to get used to that. But once I did get used to it, you end up hearing the melody and you forget about, you know, the fact that it was on a wax cylinder. It's more than just learn a song and play it. You're actually learning about the history of the song in the many different ways that it was played, and it just creates like a richer experience, you know, with interpreting. I should mention on the album that's got a beautiful string arrangement. Yes, so there are songs that do have string arrangements on them and those were written by a woman named Aaron Dalton. But on Firewater in particular, that was the melotron. Again, it was yeah, And it was interesting because like when we recorded the song initially, like there wasn't any like strings at all in it. Then when I heard it again when they sent like the you know, the first set of mixes, I heard that edited and I'm like, oh my god, that's amazing. I definitely want to keep that, you know, and found a way to make it so that like it's almost like it's in the middle of the record, so it feels a little bit like an interlude before getting into firewater. But yeah, it's gorgeous. Your album is a book ended by a song, Soapbox. Yes. Did you think of the album as a coherent whole or were you thinking of songs individually? I think in the beginning it was definitely the songs were thought about more individually, because the songs were all written between a span of like, you know, between twenty sixteen and like twenty nineteen, So like, there were some songs on there that I've been playing for years but just hadn't recorded yet. It wasn't really until I wrote the last two or three songs for the record that I started to see like a coherent connection. I remember I was actually to dinner with my girlfriend one time and she's like, you know, this is kind of like a breakup album, because quite a few of the songs deal directly with like relationships that I've had had in the past. The other songs in there were dealing with trauma, like Wild Turkey. So the whole album essentially ended up being like less breakup and more just me fighting to figure out who I am and fighting off feeling weary and strange. So Soapbox was like the very last thing that I wrote for the record, and it's more or less a proclamation of me breaking out of fear of verticule and backlash that had kept me silent for so long as far as you know, speaking about how I feel about things. So that song kind of like you know, really sealed the deal on it being more conceptual than I think it I originally intended it to be. So it is a breakup album, then you're breaking up with that fearful side of yourself. Yeah. One thing I love in this albums there's a lot of different voices. Like the song You Just had a beautiful old Carter style fingerpicking, but the lyrics are very contemporary, where you've got other songs like Opaque, where it seems you're pulling from like old flood songs like these very old songs are being Oh yeah, definitely with Opaque. Well, really, most of that song is actually a dream that I had for some reason. I was in my childhood home in Chenooga and I opened the front door and what I describe in the first verse of wearing an opaque coat, you know, the scene in American Psycho Patrick Bateman is wearing like his kill raincoat. That's the kind of coat she was wearing. And it was pouring down rain outside, and she looked terrified. I reached out my hand to like invite her in. She started coughing and choking, and she was shaking her head and like backing away from me. So washing away was really just referring to like her literally like being in the rain, and like just her entire her whole persona, her veneer, her whole thing that she presented to me as a person was disappearing, and I was starting to see, like who she really was. I'm sorry you say who she really was? Was it someone in your life? This was the person that I had this sort of like ambiguous on again, off again relationship with, And I don't even know if I gave me really call a relationship looking back now, and my mind I wanted it to be. The other part of it, too, was like this person couldn't be what I wanted them to be, but I was trying to make it something that it just wasn't. I was still like learning how to date and also have self respect for myself, Like I hadn't quite figured out those two things. Yeah, yeah, nobody has. But I feel like I'm better about it now. First of all, a terrifying dream. Was it therapeutic for you to put that experience into song? Can you kind of now it's a song, I can kind of get away the emotional weight of it. Yeah, I mean, and that that's kind of what music has always been. If something happens and I'm just in a terrible mental health spiral and I come across the song, I will listen to that song obsessively to the point where I'll have to like actually learn the song and play it. I did that with Nearly Forgot my Broken Heart by Chris Cornell. I had like a breakup situation, and I became so obsessed with that entire record. But like, I got so obsessed with that song the only way I could get it out of my system was like learning how to play it and singing it over and over and over again. Can you talk a bit about Wild Turkey if you want so? With Wild Turkey, it took me a couple of years to write that song because it took me a long time to really truly confront how I felt when my mom died. Wild Turkey was my way of fully formula recognizing what happened and what I tried to do to cope. So once I finally was able to like release that song, it was just like, Okay, now I really feel like I can talk about it because I've allowed myself to process it. And again in it's thanks to going to therapy. I have a wonderful therapist and getting to the point where I could finally write the song about my mother. That's when I can finally like talk about her suicide and talk about how it affected me and how I suppressed my grief when she committed suicide. To me, it meant that like she didn't love me, she was tired of me and didn't want to stick around, so she like left, And that's when I really it is settled in my mind, like there's no point in getting close to people, because if my own mom won't stick around for me, then why should I expect anyone else. So that was something that became like this mantra for me of like not letting people to get too close, not wanting to talk about my mom, not wanting to really talk about what me and my dad went through after my mom committed suicide, and like you know, just keeping huge swaths of my past to myself and to be able to finally express things and talk about things, and also realized that like, I'm not alone, and you know, while Turkey was at big, big step of like releasing that traumatic part of my life that I based my entire existence and decision making around and not realizing that that was what was causing it. How old were you when your mom done? I was seventeen. You played at a funeral, didn't you? I did. I did write a song for her funeral, and that was a song asking why did you leave? Please come back to me. I think I might have only cried once during that whole period, because another thing I realized the other day. I've always been an incredibly sensitive person, and I would cry when I was upset. Kids would make fun of me for it. So for years and years and years, I've just made it a point to not cry about anything because I didn't want to get made fun of. But I didn't realize that that's what I'd internalized. So do you still play that song? No, that song, I don't really play that one. I don't think I'll ever record it or perform it, because like that was a song for her for that moment, and it's not a place I really want to go back and revisit. We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam's conversation with Amethyst Kia. We're back with more from Amethyst Kia. I did want to ask you about singing, because you know, when people hear you, you've got this powerhouse voice. At some point, did somebody look at you and say, you know, you can really sing? Well? My dad was always really encouraging, but you know, when I'm that young, I'm just like, yeah, okay, whatever. It wasn't really until like college, like I got encouraged audition for school band. It wasn't until college when I started like singing and playing stuff. It took until like my early almost to mid twenties before really fully recognizing that, like, okay, people aren't just playing a really bad joke on me. They actually do like what I'm doing. Did you get training because you've got this huge voice? I mean, the huge voice was there from birth. Both of my parents have like very strong projecting voices, so I inherited that. It's not something that I had to really work at. What I did have to work at though, is to know not when to go full blast, because I would sing like full blast all the time for everything, no dynamic whatsoever. So what I ended up doing is in college, I took a couple of vocal instruction classes with the current director of the Bluegrest Old Time Country Music Studies named Dan Boher. What he said to me was, I don't want to change anything about your actual singing voice. What I want to do is help you learn how to have more dynamic, like if I'm singing an angry song versus singing a sad song, to know how to like sing in character. So that was my big is just like knowing how to reel it in. Which of your parents was the music lover? Then both of them loved music. My dad was the audio file so he had like San suwee three way speakers, He had a turntable CD player, he had an integrated ample fire and had like the radio and everything like connected to that. He used to lead, sing and play hand percussion in a band back in I want to say the mid to late seventies. Then he ended up picking the management career over the music because the band wanted to go out to LA and he actually he really liked his job. He worked at Sears, but music was always a huge, huge hobby for him, like listening and always getting equipment and stuff. Now did he have great music at home? Because when I grew up, the guys with the best stereos had the worst taste in music. They have like four thousand dollars systems and like Boston Don't Look Back there their only album. Yeah, well that was the like with my dad would run into like he wanted to try to play in a band again once his band moved to LA. But like he like rock and roll, country blues, like that sort of mix of stuff because the band he played and they did they covered like Almond Brothers and like you know, color Santana and like Isisley Brothers, orth Winning Fire, like they covered all that kind of stuff. He kept running into white guys that all they wanted to do was play like Deep Purple. And then when he'd run into other black musicians, all they wanted to play was James Brown. His interests and the way he thought about stuff, like people just didn't really get it, you know. So he had Dolly Parton records. He had like you know, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana Prince. Then he would also go down these rabbit holes where he would find like really obscure stuff like jazz flute players, jazz harmonica players. He would just find like out there obscure stuff, but it was really good. So he really had such a rich musical experience and it just kind of tapped him into all of that. Were they certain genres of songs that you found you were particularly drawn to. I was drawn to murder ballads, and I was drawn to some of like the older country blues stuff. Those were kind of the two things that I ended up getting drawn to the most. What was your favorite murder ballad? My favorite murder ballad was Pretty Polly. It's a pretty like standard blue dress and old time murder ballad. But what I did particularly with that song is I kind of traced back all the way to like British Isles version of that song. And Pretty Polly was a woman that got proposed to by a man. She didn't want to marry him, so he kidnaps her, takes around in the woods, murderser and berrieser, and then goes on a boat and sometimes he escapes. Sometimes he's caught and thrown in jail. Those are usually the two endings. The ending that I found was the boat sinks and he's drowning, and before he dies, her ghost is in the water holding a baby and he's screaming and screaming, and that's how that ends. And I'm like, hell, yeah, this is metal. You know that explains your dream? And I would you know enough to remember? God, I was gonna say I could try, but I might mess it up because I just haven't played it in so many years. Holly, Pretty Polly, come go along with me, holl pretty poly come go along with me. Fo we getting married? Some pleasure to see. My minded is marry nebood part my mind to marry and never a part. First time I saw you ruin my heart. She jumped up behind him and away they did ride. She jumped up behind him and away they did ride, leaving her loved ones and family behind. Oh shit, I've already I've already messed up. There's a verse that I didn't get in there. That's okay, it's fantastic. We get the point. Don't mess with Paul. Yeah, that's a big mistake. Thank you. So much for coming in. It's just been fabulous. Oh yeah, this has been a pleasure. All the best with this album. It's a it's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you to Amethyst Kia for sharing songs from her new album Wearing and Strange Bruce. You can check out all our favorite Amethyst Kia songs at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Rick Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mi Alabelle. Broken Record is a production to Pushkin Industries, and if you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a ninth look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and view us on your podcast staff. Our theme musics by Kenny beats. I'm justin Mishmi