Speaking from beneath the clear blue skies of Nashville, Kim Richey is one endearing lady; rarely have I heard so many uses of the word ‘gosh’ dropped into conversation. For a performer whose popular and critical reputation is hallmarked by the honesty of her songwriting, it comes as no surprise that she is quite humble and forthcoming, pleasantly bemused that people are interested in talking with her in the first place. She has lived and recorded on both sides of the Atlantic, and her relationships with fans both in the US and abroad never ceases to astound her.
“Gosh, audiences are different in some ways, but also kind of the same,” Richey begins. Perhaps as a result of roaming across America for so many years, her accent is slight; born in Ohio, she now sounds like she may have hailed from anywhere at all. “I play a lot in the UK, and the audiences there almost seem to know more about me then I do myself. But of course with the internet, it’s made people so much more alike. We all have the same information forces. It’s making us more of the same. But you know, hearing an audience sing the words – gosh, that never ceases to amaze me, no matter where I go. Knowing the words or requesting a song, you can’t help but be amazed by that. You know, I wrote a song alone, then recorded it, and somewhere down the way somebody found their way to it. It boggles the mind, really. I’m amazed every time.”
It seems particularly surreal for Richey given the unexpected shape of her career. Many artists will tell you they felt the calling to their field from an early age; singing before a captive family audience, say, or dominating the stage at the school Christmas carols. While Richey did gain some musical props by performing with Foster & Lloyd in her college days (leading to her first song, a track that lasted all of one minute – “I didn’t want to take up too much space,” she explains), it was not until later in life that success and label interest came knocking.
“Well… I know there are people who say, ‘I saw this performer and I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.’ I never had that. I never, ever imagined it was possible to make a living as a singer, let alone a songwriter; it never even entered my head. I guess maybe because there wasn’t American Idol back then. Now I guess people think they can just do some YouTube videos, and somebody will discover them and they’ll become famous. But back then it had never really occurred to me. Making a record seemed a kind of magic. I got my degree, travelled around a lot, cooking in a lot of restaurants. Eventually I ended up in Washington State, where I was with my boyfriend who was getting his master’s degree at the time. The deal was, I worked, and when he finished study it was my turn to say where we got to go. I really didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted to do, since I hadn’t tried my hand at any music since college. But I’d run into Foster & Lloyd who were touring, and they convinced me to come to Nashville pretty much on a lark!” She laughs at the memory.
“I’d never figured I’d stay there or anything would come of it. I didn’t get signed to Mercury until I was 37. So it was a pretty late start. Things are different now. Gosh, I had to get a major label to sign me in order to even make a record. Now you can do that pretty inexpensively and you can promote it yourself. Play house concerts, small gigs. If you really want to do it and you’re good, you can do it.”
Richey is now eight albums down, and given the vast sweep of songs she has yet to record it is safe money to bet on several more in the near future. The most recent, 2013’s Thorn In My Heart, has been almost universally lauded, and is her highest-charting album to date. It is a beautiful record, strong and thematically sound. This is particularly interesting, since the songs themselves stretch across the breadth of her career.
“I write a lot, so I have tonnes of songs. This last record, there are some songs there that are quite older that I’d almost forgotten about, while there are others that just didn’t gel with earlier records. When you write all the time, you get attached to the newest thing. It’s new so you get excited, and sometimes that means you forget about the old. I still have some songs that I’d like to record that I haven’t had the chance to yet. They’ll all find a place somewhere, one of these days.
“It takes me a while to get a record off the ground. I’d be releasing them all the time if I could just get more organised. I sure have enough songs. But it just seems that songs should kind of fit together in the one group, you know? I’m still making albums, which is kind of old-fashioned now, I suppose. But I’ll always prefer songs that all work together in some way.”
Catch her at National Folk Festival 2015 alongsideDavid Francey, Heartstring Quartet, Baka Beyond, All Our Exes Live In Texas and many more atExhibition Park, Canberra fromThursday April 2 to Monday April 6, tickets online.Also appearing alongside Sarah Humphreys at Camelot Lounge on Thursday March 5 (ticktes here) and Lizotte’s, Kincumber on Friday March 6, tickets online.Thorn In My Heart out now through Yep Roc.
