We interview Kalie Shorr, ahead of her performance this week on Destination Country’s ‘Live In Your Living Room‘ sessions, about her new record Open Book and more.
How are you holding up in quarantine? I know you’ve been doing a load of writes so that must be keeping you busy?
Yeah I’ve been doing a lot better, a couple of months ago I was living by myself in an apartment building with no yard. Maybe two weeks before all this stuff happened, I moved into a really beautiful house on Music Row with a big yard and roommates.
Timing!
I can’t even let myself think what it would have been like if I hadn’t done that, and it’s a lot cheaper too, which not being able to tour helps.
You released your new track with Ian McConnell recently, which was another raw and real Kalie Shorr song. It’s one of those which you can listen to and interpret in a lot of different ways and it feels apt for right now.
Yeah, I really loved the part that he had me sing too. It’s a really cool song because it’s not a bitter breakup song at all. It’s just like ‘oh no, we have to hurt each other, that’s not fun.’ (laughs) I think everybody’s been there, in that mutual resignation that you don’t belong together.
I’m so grateful that before all this happened, I managed to see you live at Song Suffragettes during CMA week. You completely enraptured the audience with ‘The World Keeps Spinning.’
That was the one Emma & Jolie played? I love them so much, I was so excited to be able to write with them. I remember Emma was crying and I was like ‘I’m so sorry.’
It is the most raw song. You got so into the detail with the lyrics, how hard was it to be able to write that song because it’s your story, but it’s also her story.
Yeah, definitely, so I wrote it with my producer Skip Black. He had lost his niece three months prior to an overdose as well, and she was my age so we were able to write that song through both of our perspectives and then with Robyn Collins who had also lost somebody. That’s the kind of song I think you can only write if you’ve really experienced it, that feeling of waking up in the morning and it’s just a normal day and you see people biking down the street laughing and you’re just like ‘how dare you?’ You can’t hold it against them because they have no idea what’s going on in your world, but it’s just how one person’s world can completely feel like it’s ending and then for another person, it’s the best day of their life.
Even if you haven’t gone through that specific thing, it’s such an instantly relatable song.
Everyone’s had a day like that too. I want people to be able to relate those songs to anything that they have to. Even when you go through a breakup, or you’ve lost a job or something, it still feels like that. People are laughing and you’re like ‘what, how?’ I got the idea for the song because the first time I’d even touched a piano or guitar after my sister passed – it took a minute – I sat down and wrote the chorus. I had gone to a makeup store, I had a giftcard and there was like 2 days left on it, so I finally dragged myself out of bed. I can not imagine what kind of garbage I looked like going into that store. Somebody had held the door for me walking into the store, and I didn’t notice – I was just in such a daze – and the person looked at me and said, ‘you’re supposed to say thank you.’ I understand that I didn’t reciprocate, but also really? It was so uncomfortable and I was just like ‘wow, I could just eviscerate them if they knew what had happened right now’ but why would I do that? It was such a valuable lesson for me, because I thought if someone cuts me off in traffic or is rude or doesn’t say hi back or doesn’t smile, you have no idea what they’re going through. That level of empathy I’ve learned from that one interaction. That was where I took that from, your world can be ending and people are still expecting you to be functioning.
It’s a powerful idea for humanity. Talking about Skip and you’ve also written so much with Candi on this record, particularly. It was such a raw record, was it easier did you find to write with people who knew exactly what you were going through, without you having to explain yourself first?
Yeah, I found that to be super helpful, in the context of the whole project. Everybody who was involved, members of my live band played on it. I had my guitar player, Eric Bowen and then my mandolin, steel player too. I think that the emotion really comes through because they understood what everything meant to me, so even just having that context. With Candi, everything was there, so when we wrote ‘Gatsby,’ I called her and she cancelled another co-write to come over that night. We were just drinking $2 wine out of the bottle. I was just ready to write about this and call myself out on my own bullshit and that was a big step, because it was me being like ‘ok, how am I making this worse?’ I needed to write that, even just on a personal level, but she was able to say things… It started off when she asked, ‘ok well what’s happening now?’ I said, ‘it’s not like I like dating assholes, I just have a weird relationship with my dad and I don’t know anything else.’ She goes ‘that’s the first line, you just say that.’ I go, ‘ok, so I can just say what I want to?’ The second verse – we were just drinking wine out of the bottle, and she was like ‘why are we drinking wine out of the bottle? Is it because you don’t like to do your dishes?’ I was like ‘yeah.’ Sharing the show of what happened the night of the break up – something I talk about in the song – and telling the story is not fun, it’s not comfortable, I would love if I never have to repeat it ever again. I didn’t have to because they already knew. We were like friends with the elephant in the room.
Not having to explain yourself was probably the nicest part about it.
There was nobody I wrote with on the album that wasn’t a close friend and wasn’t someone I felt super comfortable with.
Well it is probably the most vulnerable and authentic record I’ve ever listened to. Obviously, the more traditional country music element is still in place in quite a lot of places, was it a big decision to be that raw and real?
Yeah, it felt so much less like a decision and more like a path just unfolded in front of me, that’s my favourite part of the creative process – that moment where everything becomes clear and snaps into focus and all I have to do is walk forward. That’s happened with every project, but none more so than Open Book, I think it was a series of events. I remember it was November 2018 – we recorded the album last February – I was touring and living in an RV, not even a tour bus, driving, me bouncing up and down (laughs). I was so isolated, it felt like quarantine. I was just not doing great and I was writing these songs but it was forcing me to be introspective and forcing me to be alone and to be comfortable with that. I started turning in some of these songs to my manager Todd, and he said ‘I think you just need to make this album and not try to put on a drinking song, or a love song that you don’t actually relate to, just to fill those slots that everybody thinks need to be on an album.’
That’s such a liberating thought because that’s probably what led to a far more unique record.
Having a team that’s supportive of that, I remember that being a very pivotal two hour conversation where he and I were just saying, ‘ok, let’s do it.’ It meant that we had to throw out a batch of songs that I thought were going to be on the album. I didn’t cut anything that I had written before the breakup, if you go back and listen to those songs, I sound so much younger. Even the difference of a matter of weeks, I went back and listened to a song yesterday from a few years ago, so right before that happened, and after you experience your first real grown-up heartbreak, everything changes so fast. I think that the real story of Open Book is me understand the full spectrum of human emotion.
Lyrically, it just felt like a whole other level. It’s funny that sometimes the deeper and the more detailed you are with lyrics, the more relatable it is.
So true! The thing that everybody who wrote with me on the album had in common was they never said something like ‘oh we can’t say that because people can’t relate.’ We put people’s names in it, Alice is a real person – it just so happened to fit the metaphor perfectly. It just kind of fell into place, everything did and it was definitely an intentional decision. I think the real catalyst for Open Book being what it was, was F U Forever, I drove right over to my manager’s, I needed to see Todd’s face when I played this song. He just looks over and he goes ‘well I guess we’re doing this.’
That’s when you know you have the right people in your corner.
Yep, this has made me so much more thankful for my team and I thought I couldn’t get more grateful to them and then this happened. They’re just incredible people, who’ve believed in me for so long. I met Todd for the first time when I was 16 and I was an extra in a Taylor Swift video – we didn’t even put this together till years later. He’s known me for so long and that’s another thing where he has the context for everything that’s happened, because he’s known me for so long, so his understanding of this album is very thorough.
One of my other favourite tracks on the record is ‘Vices,’ just because it takes a brave songwriter to lay themselves out there like that, flaws and all. Was that a difficult write?
Oh it was, it was very difficult. It was an interesting write too, because in like two hours we wrote ‘Vices’ and ‘Thank God You’re A Man,’ which honestly couldn’t get more different. ‘Thank God You’re A Man’ is like the most positive song on the record, but it’s also really dark. I think it’s an interesting part of the album as well, because in the midst of all of this, I was really dating and experiencing the world for the first time. Even though I was depressed, I was still feeling liberated and exploring my sexuality more, so I wanted that to be included – one positive-ish thing.
What do you think will be your next chapter after this record? Has this album been a page turn?
Yeah absolutely, I think there’s a lot of steam left in Open Book and we are going to release some more things under the umbrella of Open Book and there’s some really cool stuff coming up that hopefully will be happening. Even though I’ve evolved past that period of really being in the thick of the darkness, I feel like I’m in a great spot right now and releasing Open Book was a huge part of that, going to therapy was a huge part of that and surrounding myself with people who are supportive and understanding and trying to push me in the right direction. I don’t feel like I’ve outgrown these songs at all, I really believe ten years from now I’m still going to be stoked to play these songs. My writing now is interesting, because I’m still writing stuff processing the things that happened. Now I have more hindsight on what happened and moving further away, things are becoming clearer so I’m still writing about that stuff, but there’s also a new side to my writing that’s emerging. There’s a song that my fans have really taken to called ‘LAX’ that I’m really excited about which is definitely more light-hearted, but I think it has the snarky, quick-witted humour that you see on ‘Gatsby’ and ‘F U Forever.’
Final Few
If a biopic was made about your life what would be the opening track?
Probably ‘Too Much to Say.’
Which record would you bring to a desert island?
Probably Third Eyed Blind’s self-titled
Song you love to dance to?
Ocean Avenue by Yellow Card
Complete the sentence…
Music is… liberating
Country music is… evolving
Kalie Shorr is… complicated
