Maura Kennedy

By Alex Teitz

The Kennedys are Pete and Maura Kennedy, two amazing singer-songwriter guitar players whose music and style is intelligent, playful, and clever. The Kennedys newest album Evolver was recorded entirely on the road, and is filled with tracks that draw the listener in including, “Pick You Up”, and “Can’t Kill Hope With a Gun.” Their style is optimistic, and they’ve played with The Nields, and Nanci Griffith. FEMMUSIC was able to have a few minutes with Maura Kennedy. For more information visit KennedysMusic.com

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

MK: Oh wow! That’s probably the hardest question cause we don’t do it the same way every time. I pretty much co-write everything with Pete although I never used to. I used to write on my own. When I wrote my own stuff they were good, but when I got together with Pete, I feel like he’s definitely my soulmate, he’s also my writing mate. When we write a song sometimes we’ll write it where I’ll do the lyrics and Pete will do the music, other times he’ll hand me a sheet of lyrics that he’s written, and for instance, on our first album, River of Fallen Stars, he wrote the lyrics to that song “River of Fallen Stars” and also on “Fortuneteller Road” and I would do the melodies. Other songs, like on our last album, Angelfire, I wrote the words to “Angels Cry” and we both worked on the music.

Other times we’ll both sit down with a guitar like the song, “Life is Large” and we’ll come up with words and the music together at the same time. We don’t have a formula way of doing it, which is actually good for us because I think if we did it the same way all the time it might sound like we did it the same way all the time. Who knows how the next song will be written like.

FEMMUSIC: Evolver was recorded on the road. Can you tell me why you decided to it that way versus studio sessions?

MK: The great thing about it is nowadays recording gear is so portable and it’s also really professional, it’s digital professional gear but it’s small enough to fit in a single roadcase. So we were able to just pack it up. When we went on our last tour, when we working on Evolver, we were kind of middle of, we’d just finished writing the songs and we had a two month tour ahead and we didn’t want to lose the momentum and the energy out of just having written the songs and have to wait for two months before we recorded them. So we just decided, “Let’s pack the gear. If we get anything done we do, and if we don’t, we don’t. At least we’ll have the option.”

We found that because we had the gear with us not only did we record the songs that we wanted to record but we were also writing on the road because we knew we had the ability to record them right away. The great thing about that is you maintain the freshness of the songs right as you write them, and you lay down right away and not lose any of that energy.

The other is that the places that we recorded, most of the hotels we recorded at were really old roadside, Route 66 type of motels and the walls, they’re not like the new Motel 6’s, they’re like two feet thick, and you can’t hear your neighbors and they can’t hear you either and that’s a beautiful thing. So we actually had soundproof rooms, and we just sort of shuffled the mattresses around on the walls and taped sleeping bags to the walls, whatever we could do to minimize reflection.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Evolver?

MK: Biggest challenge. Biggest challenge (thinking) I think for me, when we first started, the first couple of songs that we did were so good to my ear, that I thought “Oh! We’ve got ‘Pick You Up’” I thought that was a great song, and I thought we ended up recording it as a really great recording of it. I thought “I don’t want to put a great song on a mediocre album.” So that means all these songs have to be good and I think, luckily for us, while we were recording, we just kept that one song as our standard, so as recorded it we worked on it until it was really great. This was the hardest part. We didn’t really know what we had until we got back off the road.

The one thing we didn’t have with us was a mixdown deck so we’d record all these songs one at a time but we didn’t actually mix them down to tape, once we recorded them, we couldn’t listen to them in the van. When we got off the road we actually ended up with twenty-one songs. We had more than we needed but we didn’t even realize that until we got home. Which was good because when you’re home you tend to record until you have enough songs for an album, but this way we set a really high standard for the songs, and we didn’t realize how many we had, so we had a good batch to pick from. I guess to answer the question; it was keeping up with that standard that we set to make it really a great album.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making Evolver?

MK: That’s easy. The best experience, and this is the beautiful thing about being able to record on the road, you can put all that spontaneous action that happens on the road on the record. For instance when we down in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and we staying over at Peter Holsample and Susan Cowsills’ house they were having a Mardi Gras party in their backyard and we just kind of took over their guest room, and we knew that if we just set up, it didn’t matter how drunk everyone was in the backyard, we could pull people in and they would sing on the record and that’s exactly what happened.

So we got Vicki Peterson and Susan to come in, in the middle of a party. That’s the best thing about doing the record like that.

We did the same thing in Los Angeles, again it was another party, people we were staying with, Jaime O’Connell was having a party we just dragged a bunch of people in to put a clap track on, “Keep The Place Clean” and Parthenon Huxley was there too, and we said, “C’mon in and sing a harmony.” It wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t on the road with our gear, number one and two, in a party of willing musicians.

FEMMUSIC: As a married couple, what challenges does being on the road so much bring?

MK: Well you might find this hard to believe, and a lot of people do who ask us this question, it’s probably the most asked question we get but we haven’t met any difficulties being on the road as a married couple. A lot of people say, “Don’t you drive each other crazy?” We feel like, I said this before we found our soulmate, musically, personally, for us to found have each other, and then decide to make music together, and spend our life together that’s what most people do when they get married. They get married because they want to be together, but then their jobs take them away from each other. We keep it together all the time and it’s a great thing. They are never hassles. We don’t get in fights, and people don’t know what to make of it a lot of the time, every now and then we’ll meet another married couple, and they’ll say, “Yeah! I know what you mean.” Nerissa and David Nields they know what we mean. Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart they get it too. They’re doing the same thing we are. A lot of married couples who don’t work together think that we would drive each other crazy. I can’t think of a time on the road, or since we’ve met even when they’re has been any hassle at all. We just feel like we’re really, really lucky to have found each other and do what most people dream about doing their whole lives long.

FEMMUSIC: When you described your meeting and everything I was just amazed. It sounds so ideal.

MK:  When we first met. Would you like me to tell that again? It was ideal because I was living in Texas playing in a band down there in Austin and Pete was on the road with Nanci Griffith and that was a great thing. Pete, I should interject, has always played with female artists of great musical integrity in my opinion starting with Kate Wolfe back in the Eighties, and Mary Chapin-Carpenter just before we met. And when we met he was playing with Nanci Griffith. He was on tour with Nanci when we met. He had about a week off and he came down to Austin, which was one of his favorite places to go, and played a gig at The Continental Club and a mutual friend of ours who worked at the Continental had seen Pete before and she told Pete about me, and she told me about Pete and she said, “I should really check out his show.” Which I did, and we instantly connected. When I heard him play I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that before and then I was really listening to his songs, and then I met him and he was a really super nice guy.

And then the next day a friend of our had a guitar picking party, and I went to that, and I got to play some songs, he liked my stuff, and he played more songs, and I liked his stuff. When the party broke up, I don’t think I told you this part of the story, he was all set to go. He was packed and ready, his truck was idling and he was ready to go up to Telluride for the Folk Festival there with Nanci, and I knew he had a few days, so I said to him, “Don’t go today. Stay one more afternoon and write a song with me.” And he put his bags down, and he was staying at a friend of ours’ house. That’s where the picking party was. And he put his bags down and said, “Okay” and right then and there we wrote our first song. We’d only known each other twenty-four hours. And we wrote, “Day In and Day Out” which is on our first album, Day In and Day Out. It was the first time that I’d co-written with anyone where it was such an easy and great and natural experience I thought, “Oh man! This is my songwriting partner here.”

And then he went up to Telluride and he was gone for about ten days. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t know his phone number but somehow I knew we would connect again. And ten days later he called me up. He was way up in Telluride. That’s when we both decided that we should go out on a date. At this point we were a thousand miles away from each other and so we both took out our maps, both on either end of the phone line and figured out the equidistant point was in Lubbuck, Texas and so we both drove, after his show in Telluride. We both got in our cars. I started out in Austin and he started off from Telluride and we met at Buddy Holly’s grave. So that was our first date.

Then the cool thing was, like I said he was with Nanci, and Iris Dement was the opening act for Nanci, and she was also singing in Nanci’s band. Iris started to get more popular and it became evident that she would have to leave the tour as a support, and start on her own headlining shows. And Nanci thought she would really miss that third harmony on her set so she was probably find another harmony singer. And Pete told me about it. And he said, “You should really record some songs and send them to Nanci.” I remember I stayed up late one night, actually I didn’t go to bed at all, I got out my little four track tape recorder twenty-on Nanci Griffith songs three part harmony and guitar and FedExed it up, and Pete handed it off to Nanci. Apparently Nanci loved it and she hired me right away. Asked me to go on the tour and sing backup with her in Europe for two months, and that would be in 1993. I’d never backed anyone up. I’d never been on the road at all. For me and for us it was a dream come true because not only was I singing harmony for Nanci Griffith who is one of my idols, I was also going to be with Pete for two months traveling the world. And that was our first real time together. And that’s when Pete and I really developed our songwriting.

Here’s the punchline. The night before we left for this two month tour we were playing La Zona Rosa in Austin, Texas It was a big kind of farewell party with Nanci. Nanci played and a whole bunch of guests came out, and somewhere during the middle of the show, during a break, Nanci came up to us and said, “You’re all set for the tour. You’re all set. You know you’re going to be the opening act?” and we had no idea. No one told us. We’d only written “Day In and Day Out” we didn’t have any other songs, but we didn’t tell Nanci that. We said, “Yes.” We just started writing frantically once we got on the airplane. That was why we started writing. We had the reason to write. We had the need to write, but it came really easily for us after that. That’s a long answer.

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to see changed about the music industry?

MK: Get rid of it. (laughing) I mean the industry part. (Thinking) Gosh. I think I would take the industry power away from accountants. When I was kid music was music. Indie labels were right at bat with majors. When the Folk scene was happening, and the Punk Scene and the all the Indie stuff that was going on you could hear that stuff on the radio, you could find it in stores, and now all the big major labels are boiling down into one or two BIG Mega labels and the little guy really has to… Not only does the little guy have to struggle to survive. The music fans who love this music are forced to dig even deeper to find this music that they love. When I was a kid I could turn on the radio and hear whatever I wanted to hear. Public radio, college radio I could hear good music. I feel sorry for kids now who are really trying to find music that they love because they’re not going to find music on the radio. They’re not going to find it on MTV, and so they’ve really got to dig deep into Netradio, which is a good thing. Stick it on the heads of the accountants. That’s what the music industry boils down to now is figures. Doesn’t have anything to do with music, the major label industry we’ll say.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry have you been discriminated against?

MK: Discriminated against? (thinking) I guess I’m really really lucky because to me. Let me just go back in time to when I was a kid. One of may favorite artists when I was a kid was Joan Jett. I loved Joan Jett. Not only was she a singer, songwriter but she was also a kick butt guitar player and she had rock and roll attitude. She was mine as a kid. Other guys might have had Mick Jagger, or whatever. I had Joan Jett, and after Joan Jett there was the Go-Go’s, and The Bangles and all that. And to me, A lot of people say there aren’t a lot of music role models, and that’s true. Kids don’t need a whole slew of them. They only need one or two. Joan Jett was enough for me. I thought that the music industry was open to me when I was a kid. There was never any question in my mind that I could be a musician. I remember when I was eight years old that I was going to be a musician. I remember before my eighth birthday that I told my parents that I wanted a guitar because that was what I wanted to do. I was very sure of that. I’ve been really lucky in that there’s been all kinds of support for me personally by people like Nanci Griffith and The Nields. There’s also been a lot of current role models and past role models. I don’t ever feel like I’m discriminated against, personally or musically. If there is any discrimination it’s not against me as a woman. I don’t feel, and maybe I’m just lucky. I know that it’s out there, but I think in the acoustic, like the Folk world, which is, even though we put out pop records, we play in the Folk circuit cause we play acoustically. It’s a lot more politically correct out there for people like me. I think if I played on the Blues circuit, or the Rock circuit I might find a different thing. I might feel that kind of discrimination. I really can’t think of an instance where I have been discriminated against.