The singer/songwriter Kelli Shay Hicks, who grew up in the small
town of Goshen, Indiana, is known for her sad, dreamlike ballads,
touched by surprising moments of whimsy. One music critic finely
described her sound as “half Cat Power, half Kimya Dawson.”
Hicks is also an accomplished photographer and filmmaker, and works
as a film preservationist at the prestigious George Eastman House
in Rochester, New York.
This month, Hicks headlines an evening of music and readings called
“Insomnia: Stories of the Night” at Henrietta Fahrenheit.
Ann Arbor Paper: Do you remember your first guitar?
Kelli Hicks: When I was younger, I played classical violin for nine
years, but I’d stopped altogether by the time I moved to Chicago.
In ’97, I went to New York City to visit my friend Jeremy
[Barnes, Neutral Milk Hotel’s drummer]. He showed me how to
play a couple simple songs on guitar—”Sweet Jane,”
by Velvet Underground, and some surf music—and that got me
really excited. I think that’s how lots of people get excited
about music, someone shows them how to play a couple of songs.
I came back home to Chicago, bought a guitar out of the newspaper
for fifty bucks, and started to play. It was hopelessly out of tune.
So I went upstairs in my dorm to a guy’s room who I knew could
tune it. He was trying to hook up with a girl but I just kept banging
on his door, interrupting him. I wouldn’t normally get in
the way of anything like that but this was important!
A2P: What’s
your songwriting process?
KH: It varies greatly, but usually involves insomnia. Sometimes
the words come first, sometimes I’m just fooling around on
the guitar and something comes together. It’s like I get a
song stuck in my head, and then I realize I’ve never actually
heard the song before, that I just made it up.
A2P: How hard
is it to balance a music career with a day job?
KH: The logistics and practical side of it can be enormously difficult
and consuming. It’s hard to do by yourself. With a band, you
get perspective from each other, share the workload; you don’t
get so overwhelmed. But I’ve had a lot of help from strangers—people
who are just helping me out because they are excited about my music—and
that’s extremely gratifying.
A2P: Is there
a way you know when the audience is really feeling you?
KH: I think there’s a stillness, a hush, that tells you something,
especially if the venue’s the kind of place that’s not
usually quiet. But you can never tell. Sometimes you feel like you
played terrible but people in the audience really felt it was smooth.
Maybe you’re communicating something you felt when you wrote
the song, even if you’re not feeling it when you play it.
Somehow it gets across and reaches the audience, and they get really
still. That silence is a good thing. A2P
Insomnia: Stories of the Night features performances from Kelli
Hicks, Autumn in Halifax, and Kyle Norris. Saturday, April 16, 8
p.m. Henrietta Fahreneheit is in Nickels Arcade, downtown Ann Arbor.
Free. For more info, call 734-929-9348, or visit www.henreittafahrenheit.com.
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