Maybe
we’ll just run over and
backdoor it at 101X,” says Kris McKay, literally moments after she’s laid down
the final vocals to her latest recording. McKay on Austin’s alternative rock
station? Who would have thought? Yet because three years ago, McKay herself
didn’t know whether she’d ever make it into a studio again, who could blame her
wanting now to record and do her own radio promotion? McKay’s station
target isn’t even that misguided, since her version of Prince’s “When Doves
Cry,” intended for September’s Austin Does Prince compilation, could
indeed be legitimate 101X material — showcasing a voice that manages to add
immeasurable soul, intimacy, and charm to an already proven piece of
songwriting. Not bad for only two hours of work, start to finish.
McKay’s voice and her ability to make someone else’s song sound so much like
her own isn’t all that surprising. After all, McKay honed her skills in two
seminal Austin bands, Hundredth Monkey and the Wild Seeds, and followed up her
own major-label album by recording with Charlie Sexton. It’s just the speed of
the Prince session that’s so remarkable. By contrast, Things That Show,
her latest record, took two years to record, and that was after four years of
waiting. And the difference between six years and two hours isn’t lost on
McKay, especially since this session ends a three-day weekend of promotional
flesh-pressing in support ofThings That Show — including three gigs,
as many radio interviews, and a KUT Live Set.
Maybe, says McKay, the record itself and the speed of the Prince session are
simply reflections of her finding what she’d lost over a six-year wait: her
confidence. “These six years have been like school for me,” McKay says. “I
believe it took this long to get this record out because I had to burn through
a lot of karma and bullshit to get to the place I’m at now, professionally and
personally.
“It’s only with this record that I realized I really did have some interesting
choices of my own which I could bring to the table — that I was more than just
this voice that a producer could manipulate, and that I really had a knack for
doing this. These are things that to this day are blowing my mind. I never
really understood I could do it because nobody ever gave me an opportunity. I
pretty much stood where I was told to stand and sung what I was told to sing.
That was pretty much it, and it was ruining my career.”
As such, the real testament of McKay’s new album is how little it sounds like
a record that took six years to make, let alone the piecemeal comeback it truly
is. Although the album’s bookend covers, the opening twang of the English
Beat’s “Save it for Later” and a stunningly personal embrace of Jo Carol
Pierce’s “Loose Diamond,” might be indicative of this piecemeal approach, the
album’s centerpiece, a four-song set that includes a quirky original (“Testing
1, 2”), a hip duet with Matthew Sweet (“How Cool”), and pair of offbeat covers
(Son Volt’s “Tear-Stained Eye” and Joan Armatrading’s “Weakness In Me”) erases
any seams that might have been showing.
Recorded last year with Congress House producer Mark Hallman in an effort to
flesh out an EP into an album, this mini-set is definitive proof that McKay’s
finally on top of her game — mostly because it stands so firmly alone
and fits so cohesively with the rest of a record made in part two years
before. Effectively, McKay managed to find 20/20 hindsight in the middle of a
project. “I suppose I can say now that it was ultimately better to sit with
things for a while,” McKay says of the delays. “It was good for Mark and I to
have a lot of time to sit with these things and figure out what we liked, what
we didn’t like, and how we could do it better. And what I learned over two
years is that I sing better than I did a month ago or two years ago, because
I’m constantly learning to do things better. Add the chance to fine-tune the
record, and I’ve got an album that I finally feel really happy about… or as
happy as any artists can be about their own recording.”
The first time McKay remembers being that happy with her art, she was eight years old and fell down
a flight of steps in her community theatre debut. “I walked out on stage and
knew what I wanted to do the rest of my life,” she says. “The curtain went up,
I rolled down, and the crowd laughed. I sat up and went `Wow, I like this.'”
Growing up, McKay would get her chance in five different community troupes
thanks to her father, an R&B radio station programmer, who moved the family
from Houston, Memphis, Nashville, Beaumont, and finally to Austin by the time
she finished high school. In between, she also got her first taste of the music
business, from both the radio angle and as a roadie for the shows her father
booked and promoted on the side.
“I was completely and totally fascinated by going to shows, carrying mike
stands and whatnot,” says McKay. “I always cried to go, go, go with daddy. In
fact, my first concert was a WLOK, Memphis show called `WLOK, We Love You’ with
Al Green. I sat two rows in front of Al Green’s mom. When Al introduces her to
the crowd, big spotlights pan over, Al’s mom stands up to wave and the light
catches the two white kids in the room. I’m the one waving and my brother’s got
his arms crossed.”
Despite her early brushes with soul music, McKay firmly believed her future
lay in the theatre until the University of Texas’ tough Drama School casting
system left her disenfranchised. “I was disgusted with theatre, done with the
arts, and trying to find a job in sales,” she says. In 1982, McKay’s father
hooked her up with a radio sales job in Charlotte, North Carolina, which she
declined at the last minute because she mysteriously felt she couldn’t leave
Austin just yet. Six months later, McKay met local guitarist Patrice Sullivan
and bass player James Dodd, and on a whim the trio formed Hundredth Monkey with
McKay assuming she could apply her musical theatre voice to rock & roll.
“I remember watching Zeitgeist at the Continental Club and thinking `It can’t
be that fucking hard to get up and sing,'” explains McKay. Nevertheless,
Hundredth Monkey spent the next year rehearsing, while McKay dove headlong into
the music business by booking Texas Instruments and managing Guardez Lou. She
also began working the door at the Beach and organizing showcases at the old
Continental Club. A year later, Hundredth Monkey’s Jefferson Airplane-like
sound was catching on, although McKay admits she had no idea what she was doing
as a performer. “Patrice and I didn’t know how to harmonize, so we’d sing until
it sounded okay,” she says. “Nobody knew any music theory, so consequently we
had kind of a unique sound. But I didn’t know how to sing, and I’d lose my
voice after every show. I just didn’t understand what I was doing with my
body.”
In 1985, the Wild Seeds’ soundman Brent Grulke and drummer Joey Shuffield
found McKay at a Continental Club gig and invited her to lend her voice to the
band’s demo. McKay jumped at the opportunity, and in the process met local
producer Mike Stewart, who offered to record Hundredth Monkey as well. Although
both tapes were helping to create a regional buzz, McKay says it was a trip to
Los Angeles with the Wild Seeds that she really coveted. And as luck would have
it, the Wild Seeds frontman Michael Hall was warming up to the idea of having
another singer take some of the pressure off him. “I talked him into letting me
go to California,” McKay says. “The rest of the band hated the idea. They said
`No chicks in the van.’ I said `Look, I’ll pay my own way, sit in the back of
the van, and not say anything. But please, please, please, let me do this.'”
By the time McKay completed the trip, she’d become a member of the Wild Seeds
— although still without full band consensus. In 1987, McKay flew into Austin
from a Wild Seeds road gig to showcase Hundredth Monkey at the first South By
Southwest. The next day, she rejoined the Wild Seeds in New York for a Lone
Star Cafe gig, which found Arista A&R man Mitchell Cohen in attendance.
Cohen began his courting with a post-show business card, though it would take a
nearly four years before Arista released McKay’s first solo record, 1990’s
What Love Endures.
Produced in Nashville by Barry Beckett, advance word on McKay’s major-label
debut indicated an unfocused mess, despite songs culled from David Halley, John
Hiatt, Jon Dee Graham, and even the Wild Seeds. Beckett’s production ranged
from the ultra-slick to the ultra-lazy, and with all the well-intentioned
genre-jumping, McKay’s voice was the record’s only constant.
“I haven’t told many people this, but at the time I was happy with the record
because I didn’t really know my own mind as well as I wanted to,” McKay says.
“I had a whole lot of input about what went down on that record, but I had no
self-direction. I had no idea of how it should sound or what I could do. I just
knew that I could do a bunch of different things from really rocking out to
being kind of country. I thought that was my uniqueness. Little did I know that
it wasn’t going to fly because people need more of a focused thing to label it,
or to go to radio with, etc. At the time though, I was really happy and thought
it showed diversity.”
McKay’s representatives at Arista seemed pleased enough with the record, but
again, pre-release buzz wasn’t good; this time Arista President Clive Davis was
said to be less than enthralled with the album. Meanwhile, McKay waited at
home. “You need to understand that between the time I got signed and actually
got into the studio for What Love Endures, I was working as a checker at
Whole Foods. Here I was supposed to be this major-label recording artist and
I’m fucking checking groceries because these guys couldn’t care less. What I
didn’t understand was that it was about Clive Davis and he had ultimate control
and nobody makes any decision without him.
“So I did some crazy things waiting — like gaining 50 pounds because I’m like
this nervous compulsive eater at times. I got really depressed and really
flipped out. I weighed 60 pounds more than I do now. That was a big, big
problem to say the least. I think a lot of what went down had to do with how I
looked. I’m not sure Arista would come clean and tell you that, but in essence
that’s what really started holding up the machine. In an ideal world that
wouldn’t matter, but I went on this big diet and lost 50 pounds. By the time we
finished touring, I went from 185 to 135 and was mean, lean, blonde and
smokin’. But by then it may have been too little too late.”
In any event, just before the What Love Endures tour began, Arista
completed a deal with VH-1 that landed McKay’s expensive “Bigger the Love” clip
on the channel for a nine-week run. The video channel wound up changing formats
to a more pop-oriented playlist weeks after the deal, but honored its agreement
anyway. In the meantime, McKay seemed to be helping herself by touring with
Poco and the Indigo Girls, making lifelong friends with the latter and
converting their sizable fanbase into respectable debut record sales. By tour’s
end, McKay expected a quick turnaround on album number two. “I thought I was
ready,” says McKay, “and I said `Hello, I’m not waiting two years again.'”
Arista responded by casually sending songs for her to listen to, and reminding
her that if she wanted to make another record she’d indeed wait.
“As the songs Arista sent me got worse, the more I began to write my own,” says McKay. In fact, she
believes that, however inadvertently, the post-debut delay actually helped
birth Kris McKay the singer-songwriter — with a new emphasis on the songwriter
side of the equation. So while What Love Endures sported only one McKay
original, “Could Talking Be Like Dancing,” Things That Show features
four originals, including the record’s first single, “Testing 1,2.”
“I didn’t have any songs of my own for a long time. Then I had one song
[“Could Talking…”] for years and years,” explains McKay. “It’s just that I’d
written one, kind of liked it, and didn’t know if I could top it. Plus, I was
extremely intimidated by being around Mike [Hall], David Halley, and the other
great writers I know in town. Those are some pretty amazing songwriters and I
figured I lucked out.”
McKay reluctantly admits that her Wild Seeds days didn’t help her writing
process much, either. “So much of what I’m about to tell you is more about me
not understanding how to assert myself as a human being and take care of myself
than it is a negative reflection on Mike or Joey or any of those guys. But they
didn’t help matters much.
“I remember being on the road with the Wild Seeds and picking up a guitar,
fiddling around. That’s how I wrote “Could Talking…” I remember playing it
for Michael and him kind of going `You’re not going to be a songwriter, you’re
not going to be a guitar player. You might as well give it up and keep banging
on a tambourine and jumping up and down looking cute, because that’s what
you’re good at.’ I believed him, because I was 23 and had this sick,
father/brother/hero thing going.”
McKay says her and Hall have since reconciled — to the point where she joined
his Lollygagger project a few years back and eventually recorded his “Baby You
Scare Me” for Things That Show. “For years, it was a love/hate thing,”
says McKay. “He loved what I did for his band, because there were moments where
we’d be in the `zone’ and we’d kick anybody’s ass in the country at that point.
We were a great bar band. But then there’d be all the times people would come
up to him and say `Why don’t you let the chick sing more’ and that would just
burn his ass because he was the songwriter and leader with his male ego was all
wrapped up in it. I didn’t know about these things, how to combat them or
understand them in the first place. But the only way to let the `chick sing’
was to do my own thing.”
When McKay did do her own thing, it took the form of “Could Talking…” and
she made it the focal point of What Love Endures. “Oddly enough, it’s
the one that to this day people still request,” she says. “It was also the song
that Beckett’s musicians freaked over. In pre-production they treated it like a
Paul Simon Graceland kind of thing, adding cool baselines and trigger
drums. These guys just went apeshit over it because they’re so used to the
Nashville 1-4-5 thing and they got a chance to really experiment.”
Today, McKay says she’s writing more than ever, but also concentrating just as
closely on the search for quality songs to cover. “Maybe the Prince thing went
so smooth, because I’ve played that song live for over a year now,” she says.
And while songs from locals like Halley, Pierce, Hall, and Bruce Robison pop up
on her records, McKay also honors folks like Freedy Johnston and Tom Petty in
her live sets. “I still feel like I’m in the infancy of my songwriting. I feel
pretty sure that when I grow up and become an adult I’ll have a full record of
songs. But truthfully, I started off an interpreter and I’m very happy and
comfortable doing that. I really do love singing other people’s material and
looking for really great songs. And that’s where I feel like my acting skills
really come in, because for two minutes I can become this person inside this
song — a character in this little vignette.”
Ultimately, though, it was other people’s material that forced the collapse of
McKay’s deal with Arista; she simply didn’t like the songs her label was
pushing her to record. After a year of wading though tapes of Whitney Houston,
Carly Simon, and Taylor Dane rejects, McKay finally said enough and asked to be
released from her contract. “These fucking songs were coming from Nashville
songwriters who sat in a cubicle and wrote three songs before lunch and came
back to write a couple more and called it a day,” posits McKay. “They had no
life, soul or energy in them and I hated them. I kept calling my manager saying
`These songs suck and I’m done.’ He kept saying I’ll just have to suck it up.
That’s my biggest bone of contention with loud-mouthed artists who tell you
that they don’t compromise and bow to the man. That’s a load of shit. It’s all
about compromises, and I made ’em.
“But it comes down to how far you’re willing to let go of what you consider to
be the most genuine part of you, and how far you’re willing to make it
commercially viable so the label feels confident. What I realized was that I
was going to have to make some pretty stark compromises. But if I did this
material and I went through the process, I wasn’t going to be me and it’s me
who had to go to bed with myself every night. That’s when I got to the point
where I said I’d rather be without this than with it.”
By 1992, not only had
McKay been released from her deal, she was virtually homeless as well and
considering giving up music altogether. “I was back to minus square one,” she
says of her downtime. “But although I was ready to bag it, halfway through the
six years, I looked back and realized I’d been taking small baby steps. As I
started going to open mikes, I learned how to play guitar, by necessity. So
over a period of time, I’d taught myself how to play, write a little, and push
myself further and further.”
McKay credits Sandra Martinez, owner of the now-defunct Chances nightclub,
with the final push — a no-bullshit plea that the singer stop pitying herself
and begin concentrating on her solo career. “The first gigs were just
horrible,” says McKay. “It was all I could do to just stand upright. It was
like the very beginning of my career where I wouldn’t go on stage without
wearing sunglasses because if I saw people my lips would quiver, my knees would
knock, my hands would shake. I was a wreck and it took a long time before I
could actually sing in front of people again.”
By the start of 1993, McKay had put together her own band, which impressed
Charlie Sexton enough to invite her into the studio to record demos. By year’s
end, she was making Sexton’s Under the Wishing Tree as part of his band.
And in effect, the resulting story was the same as her Wild Seeds saga in that
Sexton asked her to join the band without consulting the rest of the group. And
just like the last time, McKay’s solo career starting taking off again just as
her relationship with the band was ending. “Charlie and I have some special
kindred relationship and I have crazy respect for him as a songwriter and
performer,” McKay says, “but I’d been in this situation before. Ultimately, it
helped kickstart what I was doing.”
After opening for Timbuk3 at the Backyard, the venue’s owner, Tim O’Connor,
promised to fund a new round of McKay demos — the first since her Wild Seeds
days. By SXSW ’95, McKay had bought the tapes from O’Conner and fixed the seven
songs with the help of producer Hallman. Representatives from Shanachie
Records, a small New Jersey-based folk label, caught her SXSW gig that year and
requested a copy of the tape. And although Shanachie’s bread and butter since
1972 had been its folk output, the label says they were eyeing McKay as the
perfect complement to a newly diversified roster of female talent that
stretches from Rita Marley to New York rocker Brenda Kahn. Two months after
McKay’s first meeting with the label, Shanachie offered its deal and gave the
green light for McKay to add the four-song mini-set that would transform her EP
in a full album.
“When we sent Shanachie the beginning of the record, all they were interested
in were great songs, which is also what I cared about,” says McKay. “They gave
me a lot of freedom on a lot of levels. The indie route also started to appeal
to me on a lot of levels. And these people got it about me and they knew I had
the ability to make a record I wanted to make and one that other people would
like. And unlike a major label, each step of this process is streamlined,
efficient, quick, and easy.”
Although it shows on the record, the true indicator of McKay’s new confidence
has been post-record; during her weekend of promotional performances. McKay’s
fanbase is atypically loyal to start with, but during her gigs at Waterloo
Records, Hole In The Wall, and Waterloo Ice House Sixth, McKay had them
absolutely entranced — to the point where they not only stood and applauded
songs, but also laughed on cue at her stage raps.
“There’s still nights where I’ll go out and say goofy things and people just
sit and look at me,” she says, admitting she uses her long-winded pre-song
stories to break down the performer/audience wall and keep crowds coming back.
And while her live shows have worked at keeping local crowds happy for the six
years between records, McKay’s schtick doesn’t seem like a schtick — she seems
genuinely grateful each time the fans return.
“I am very confident at this point,” says McKay, “but the real challenge will
be going back into the world where there’s not a roomful of people that like
you. One of the scary things about Austin is having a crappy experience and
people still walking away going `That’s Kris, we love her.’ So if I’m nervous
about anything, it’s about going out by myself for the first time ever.”
Later this summer, McKay will hook up with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Indigo
Girls for separate touring stints — perhaps with her band or more likely,
solo. First, though, McKay will be traveling alone by car throughout the East
Coast for a series of club dates while Shanachie works on getting the record to
AAA radio programmers. And with the album out of her hands and the solo
roadtrips ahead, McKay is sure she’ll have ample time alone to reevaluate her
six-year wait.
“Getting through these six years gave me the confidence I never had,” says
McKay. “I kept expecting somebody to come in with some little notepad and say
`I’m sorry Ms. McKay, we’ve made a terrible mistake; it’s not you that’s
supposed to be signed, it’s Kristen McKoo. You’re out, she’s in.’ I expected
someone to pull the plug at any point and I really did think it would blow up
in my face. So this is my first real step. I don’t regret anything I did
because it was part of this huge growing process. But this is my debut record,
and it will probably take me two more records before I get to the place I
ultimately should be. But for the first time in my life I feel like that I’m
well on my way.” n
This article appears in July 12 • 1996 and July 12 • 1996 (Cover).