Singer/songwriter Kyra Gordon draws from a diverse set of life experiences, including her early pursuit of acting as a career. Music is now her vehicle, but the voice of the actor still echoes in her work. “I see songs as little movies that I create,” exclaims Gordon. “I get to act, sing, play piano, and write. But it’s all in this tasty three-minute experience called a song.” Her current work combines impressive musical virtuosity with a singular voice and vision. Kyra’s “House Concert” solo performances are an immersive, impromptu mix of singing, spoken narratives, and keyboard work. It’s an unforgettable style which is gaining popularity. Kyra Gordon has traveled a long road to find her true artistic voice. As her growing community of fans will tell you, it was worth the wait. Check out the exclusive Interview below:
1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how it all got started?
KYRA GORDON: I grew up in Oakland, CA, but I was born on the floor in Santa Cruz, CA, So, I suppose that’s where it all got started. I come from a pretty creative family. My grandpa was a violinist, my Dad is a writer, and I grew up singing and acting. School wasn’t great for me, like many, but choir was my happy place. I dropped out of High School and left home at 15 to go to LA and be an actor. I got started on my pursuit of a creative career early. LA was a mix of thrilling and soul crushing, and I had some mild successes mixed with the usual heartbreak of being a struggling actor. I was always singing with guitar players at parties, and got my first real gig at 18 at a place called the Crooked Lounge with a fake ID. At 20, I had the distinct need to keep soul searching and ended up moving to an artist commune in rural North Carolina where I spent the next four years. From there, I kept moving and ended up spending a year in Paris with the clarity that music was my path, and I ended up singing three nights a week there. Back in the Bay Area, I have been making my way as a musician here since 2007.
2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?
KYRA GORDON: I started piano lessons as a kid, but quit like a righteous jerk at around ten! I came back to study music formally in my 20’s. I have a Bachelors of Music in Jazz Vocal Studies from the California Jazz Conservatory, and have studied piano and voice with many other teachers privately from several different modalities.
3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences?
KYRA GORDON: I fell totally in love with oldies from listening to KFRC as a kid. I became obsessed with “Time of the Season” by the Zombies, which spilled into a world of 60’s music for me. I would say whatever my parents played in the house was my formative music, which was a lot of the Beatles, David Bowie, Bonnie Raitt, and The Traveling Wilburys. I was surrounded by so much music in the East Bay as a kid, and listened to a lot of early 90’s hip-hop like Snoop Doggy Dogg, the Pharcyde, Too Short. And I loved the vocal groups like Shai, Boys II Men, TLC, Salt N Pepa and En Vogue. It was all about the radio still! As a teenager, I went deeply into soul – Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, and then discovered Nina Simone and Janis Ian.
4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
KYRA GORDON: I am a very lyric driven songwriter, but I love to sing the hell out of a song. I think what stands out about my music is the combination of the story driven lyric, along with a powerful vocal. I like to tell people that if Randy Newman and Bonnie Raitt had a musical love child, that child would be me.
5. For most artists, originality is first preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and music maker, and the transition towards your own style, which is known as POP?
KYRA GORDON: The first song I sang in front of an audience (excluding assemblies in school) was ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.’ I had no idea that it was the wrong key for a 14 year old girl! I just did my best and jumped the octave where I needed to. And I tried my best to capture some ounce of the emotion that Otis Redding made me feel. And I continued that way through my teens. I tried to sing Janis Joplin songs, Smokey Robinson songs, Al Green songs… and I bet I sounded ridiculous. Eventually I spent a year singing the blues in Paris, and learned about keys and transposition and how to lead a band. I think that is every artist’s story. You try and replicate things to learn and it takes a lot to find your own voice for most of us. I sang through the entire great American Songbook in college. I feel like it wasn’t until I started singing my own songs that I really began to find my own artistic voice.
6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative, and entertainment?
KYRA GORDON: I think music has always functioned in all these ways, and songwriters live within their time. I believe in the power of a song to affect people’s hearts and minds, and cut through a lot of political discourse that we are all normally numb to. I find that the most affecting songs for me are the personal ones that are located in someone’s deeply lived experience, so if I am writing something I am always coming from that perspective. There are some amazing activist songwriters working right now, like Chrys Matthews comes to mind. I am inspired by what they do.
7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?
KYRA GORDON:
Definitely! I think all life is like that, that you get back what you put into it. It never looks like you thought it would, but it is always going to give back.
8. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
KYRA GORDON:
Learning to hear my own voice after being in various controlling and abusive situations. That has been a long road for me. To learn to trust that I am the one who decides what kind of artist I am becoming, and to point my own ship and set sail.
9. Could you describe your creative processes? How do you usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?
KYRA GORDON: I work in a variety of different ways so this is hard to answer, but I will give you the most common for me at this point. If I have an idea, which could be a song premise, a melody or a lyric, I will often work at the piano. Sometimes I get something while walking, like a burst, and then I am writing acapella and using my phone to record ideas. Less common for me is writing lyrics without a brewing melody. And sometimes I start with a chord progression and sing gibberish until something becomes clear about the seed of the song. I try to come into my work from different access points throughout the day, and it always works for me to have variation.
10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far
KYRA GORDON: I am incredibly proud of this upcoming album ‘Traveler.’ It feels like a real culmination of years of my becoming me.
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