Last
week at the Michigan
Womyn’s Music Festival I had the opportunity to catch
up with one of my favorite young artists, Kinnie Starr. The first
time I saw Kinnie was in Olympia, WA in the late 1990s. She was
absolutely mesmerizing with her blending of French and English lyrics
(she is from Canada) and hip hop vocal styling. She also spent a
lot of time walking out into the audience and connecting to the
crowd, which I’m happy to report she is still doing. This
makes her concerts so much more fun and engaging, and it is a pleasure
to be able to see and hear this lovely chanteuse from the distance
of a few feet as opposed to from across an arena. But don’t
get fresh with the bisexual artist; she is happily partnered.
AE:
Your new album will be coming out in the states October 5th. Can
you tell me a little bit about the album?
KS: It’s my third record, it’s called Sun
Again, and I was lucky enough to have it featured quite a
lot on The L Word. There is a bunch of songs from all
three records, so thank you L Word. It’s a bit
more mellow than my first record and a bit less dubby then my
second.
AE:
What about a tour?
KS: We’ll tour to support the record. We’ll
be doing the West Coast and hopefully East as well.
AE:
When do you think you’ll hit the West Coast?
KS: The West Coast will be in November, and I
don’t have dates in yet.
AE:
It seems like a lot of your music is inspired by your family.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
KS: I was realizing that today on stage how all I must
think about is my family. Yeah, I write a lot about my relationships
that are meaningful in my life. Before I started doing music I
was a pretty sad person. I think I’ve processed a lot of
my feelings about the world through music. So that’s why
it always ends up being about things close to my heart.
AE:
You spoke a little bit at the performance about your Native American,
Native Canadian, Native North American, background. Can you tell
me a little more about that? Are you doing work with Six Nations?
KS:
I sometimes get to do work outside of the music world and when
I do I like to work with young native kids. I obviously would
also like to perform to native people. It helps to alleviate a
lot of the stress of feeling like a bit of an outsider or the
topics I’m covering are not important. Because I feel that
a lot of people are not that interested in native history or native
people.
Obviously it’s a personal subject. My dad is mixed-blood
Mohawk. As a result I have quite a lot of heated fury, specifically
around the way natives are represented in the media. It makes
me really sad and it’s very discouraging for everybody because
it’s misinformation. All the images of the braves with the
braids and the feathers and headdresses. Not a lot of native people
were wearing regalia. That’s traditional regalia, it’s
similar to if every time you saw a white person they would be
pictured in a kilt with bagpipes. You see a lot more diversity
of other nations in the media, so that’s something I think
about a lot.
It’s
one of the reasons why I like to bring up that I am part native.
A lot of people are like ‘What! I thought you were Greek
or Italian or I thought you were part whatever.’ People
lack information about how many natives there really are around
us right now, even at this festival, even to the point of mixed
blood people who don’t know they are native or mixed blood
people that don’t talk about being native. So those are
some of the things that get me going.
AE:
You are working on a new album; let’s talk about that. What
is the inspiration, does it have a theme?
KS:
Oh, there are so many songs about my family on this new record,
it’s kind of pathetic. It seems like lyrically I always
talk about the same themes: roots, stability, conflict, love,
honor, respect. This record is a lot more aggressive than Sun
Again. There’s a bit more of an aggressive hip hop/
rock thing going on. Yeah more rock. But it is not a rock record
by any means. Sun Again was a really mellow record for
me, but this record is not nearly as mellow.
AE:
How would you describe your own sound? What would you like people
to call it?
KS: People call it everything, but the last record I
called "head-nodding pop with a fresh sexy hop." Cause
it’s like a pop but steeped in hip hop and R&B. The
next record is going to be a bit more rock. You know old school
like LL Cool J and Run DMC and stuff, you know how old school
hip hop draws a lot on rock… well it’s kind of like
that.
AE:
Cool! If you had a dream team that you could work with, who would
it be?
KS: I’d like to work with Dre, Dr. Dre. I really
like Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot. There’s a woman named
Trina Shoemaker that I’ve worked with before that I’m
dying to work with again. She recorded Lucinda Williams as well
as Queens of the Stone Age and Sheryl Crow. She is a friend of
mine but she lives in New Orleans. And she is an amazing producer--an
AMAZING producer. I’d like to work with her again.
Check
out Kinnie's
website at www.kinniestarr.com
for tour dates near you starting in November, or check out the
movie she appeared in, Down and Out with the Dolls.
Amazon.com:
Sun Again
