Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In her new album, Tennessee bass roots musician and our native daughters member Amythyst Kiah leans into the lesson she learned in her formative years as a self-proclaimed, "anime nerd Malgoth". The album is titled Still and Bright. It is a follow-up to her 2021 well-received project Wary and Strange, which featured the Grammy-nominated song Black Myself. A review of the new album describes it as full of the "alt-rock and folk-focused songs that are inspired by finding peace within herself and seeking out spirituality". Amythyst Kiah performs live at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts in Katonah, New York this Friday, October 18 at 07:30 p.m. but she has come to the WNY Studio to play live. Amythyst, welcome.

Amythyst Kiah: Hey, thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's kick this off with a performance. What are you going to play?

Amythyst Kiah: All right. Well, I'm going to start off with a single that's going to come out on the 25 October, next Friday when the new album comes out. This one's called Empire of Love.

[music: Amythyst Kiah - Empire of Love]

Alison Stewart: That was amethyst kea singing Empire of Love. Where did you write that song?

Amythyst Kiah: I started writing that song at home in Johnson City, Tennessee. It was after I had just come back into town from tour and I was walking in one of my favorite spots out at a park I really like to go to and I was looking at the-- I'd taken a picture of some of the autumn leaves that had fallen on the ground and I just started thinking about how at one point in time, Appalachia was a place where I wasn't so sure that I had a place in it, and over the years, of all the people that I've met and all of, all the places that I've played around the region and all of the love that I've received over the years from my music and really started to, for the first time, really-- it sunk in that this is home.

I started writing a song and in the beginning when I was writing it, sometimes when you write songs, you'll get stuck in a rut where you start going back to the same chords and the same melody changes and so I was like, well, I think I'm going to keep this on my back pocket because I decided to expand on going into co-writing on this record. When I went to Nashville to do my co-writes, I got paired up with Sean McConnell, who's incredible and we hit it off immediately.

He helped me breathe new life into this song and yes, it was great.

Alison Stewart: Got a good little shout-out to Johnson, Tennessee in the middle of it, on top of that.

Amythyst Kiah: Yes.

Alison Stewart: In the announcement for Still and Bright, it said something interesting. It said it came from a place of finding joy in music. Give me an example of something that was joyful or delightful on this record.

Amythyst Kiah: Well, writing Empire of Love was-- in and of itself, it was a real joy because I was celebrating my identity and my place in Appalachia and how it's-- I think a lot of people know Appalachia in certain parts of the south, as being like the Bible belt and maybe not being as open or accepting to different ideas or different people, but I come to find that I've been able to find a myriad of people all over the place that I felt like-minded with. And so it was a way to celebrate that.

Also, really getting into writing and thinking about things that I'm really interested in and stories that I've fallen in love with just because with Wary and Strange, a lot of it was very much like a confessional and very me trying to sort through my emotions and feelings. And so coming through that, getting to a point now where it's like, oh, now I can write about things that I really enjoy.

I was inspired by-- there's a podcast show called Old Gods of Appalachia, and then there's a TV show called The Haunting of Bly Manor that I'm a big fan of. And so I ended up getting inspiration from those stories to write my own to write songs too. It's just been enjoying the process as opposed to everything being so heavily connected to deep emotional trauma. It's a nice change.

Alison Stewart: I think the last time we talked was during Wary and Strange. It was during pandemic times. When you think about what's changed for you over the past two years that could lead you to Still and Bright. Go from Wary and Strange to Still and Bright. What's changed in your career? What's changed in your life?

Amythyst Kiah: I think what changed in my life is when I started deepening my meditation practice and also reconnecting with different eastern philosophies that really resonated with me, particularly ones in Buddhism and Taoism, and how a lot of those ideas really resonated with me. This idea of trying to live in the present and to not have to drag the past with you and to not worry so much about the future, which in our society, we're so achievement-based that even when we have the best intentions, we end up getting caught up.

I found myself during the whole album campaign for Wary and Strange, I found myself just overstimulating myself and paying too much attention to what everybody else was doing and developing imposter syndrome and all of that and really losing that sense of what's in my heart, what do I want to do, what's within? As opposed to relying so much on external things to make my decisions.

I think we all get inundated with those kinds of things. And so it was really about getting back to center and really making decisions in my life that are coming from really who I am as a person as opposed to who I think someone else might see, you know what I mean? That's been the big one. Then also getting to a point where I really needed to appreciate-- I also lost sight and took for granted the beautiful things that I have in my life because I was so in my head about whatever, climbing up the ladder, whatever you want to call it and I was able to come back to center with that, too. That's the big thing.

Alison Stewart: I wake up every morning and I think, this is a new day.

Amythyst Kiah: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: This is today and this is a new day.

Amythyst Kiah: Yes, and that changes everything when you can finally get in that headspace.

Alison Stewart: Who introduced you to Buddhism?

Amythyst Kiah: Well, I cannot remember my professor's name because this was years ago, but when I was, I think, 18 or 19 years old, I took a Western humanities course and I took Eastern religions course. That's how I learned that oh, wow. For thousands of years, thousands of millions of people have very different ideas of how the world works and where we come from. We all have our-- That's what's so fascinating about human beings is that we have the ability to create narratives about so many different things and it can be a blessing and a curse depending on what the narrative might be and who's saying it.

Stories are what has really driven a lot of human civilization is our ability to tell stories and to unite around a story and to be able to cooperate with each other in larger systems. I think learning about those and particularly with Buddhism and Taoism, the idea, again, about living in the present, it explains things without having to have so much of mythology surrounding it, which mythology is cool and interesting, but I felt like both of those philosophies really tackle the heart of what being human means and how to learn to accept the fact that we will never have control over everything the way that we think we're supposed to.

Again, it goes back to just accepting things as they are, but also, recognizing what you can change and it really starts from within. It's hard to keep that internalized but I think, for me, what's helped has been spending more time doing things in the real world and less time on the internet and that's also been really helpful. Reading books. I can read a book again. My attention span was almost gone.

Just getting my attention back and getting myself back so I can be there in the way I want to for my friends and my family and for my fans and for my community. It's all really important stuff.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Amythyst Kiah. Her new album is titled Still and Bright. Can we hear another song?

Amythyst Kiah: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What are we going to hear?

Amythyst Kiah: This is the song that was inspired by The Haunting of Bly Manor. It's a ghost story and also a love story, so I felt inspired to write about it. This one's called Silk and Petals.

[music: Amythyst Kiah - Silk and Petals]

Alison Stewart: That was Silk and Petals from Amythyst Kiah. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All of It. You are listening to All of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tennessee-based musician Amythyst Kia's new album is titled Still and Bright. She's on tour performing live at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, New York this Friday, October 18 but she's sitting right across from me in our studio. Thanks for coming by.

You worked with SouthGang and Marvelous 3 guitarist, singer-songwriter Butch Walker. On Instagram, he said you two met at a fundraiser to keep kids' music programs in schools. When did you realize this was someone who you'd want to work with?

Amythyst Kiah: Honestly, the moment that I saw him, just everything, like he had this really cool blazer that he had, all these different patches and stuff on and just his whole style and everything and the way he carried himself. I was like, this guy is really cool. Then I heard him sing and play, and I was like, oh, man. At the time, I was wanting to write some more upbeat, rock-inspired songs and I was like, man, this guy. This seems really cool.

He heard me perform and so we both loved what each other was doing and wanted to keep in touch because I knew I was wanting to do some co-writes. We had a couple of co-writing sessions and we wrote Never Alone, and we also wrote I Will Not go Down. And then from there, initially, I was talking with Tony Berg because we were talking about maybe going back and working with him, but we couldn't really line up our schedules.

Then I was like, if Butch is available, maybe he'll do it because we got on really well and really connected. Then he was happy to do it and he was available, so it really started from there but he's one of my favorite people. I'm happy to call him a friend. He's just a really amazing person. On top of being incredibly talented, he's also just a great human being.

Alison Stewart: You recorded at his studio, right?

Amythyst Kiah: Yes, at the butcher shop.

Alison Stewart: That's funny.

Amythyst Kiah: I love it.

Alison Stewart: How did his insight as a musician help you with this record?

Amythyst Kiah: I think his insight in particular, I think he's similar to me in that he's got a very eclectic music palette and listens to all different kinds of music. I think for him, the way that he works as a producer, the way he leads the team of musicians and engineers, I just really love the way that he communicates and treats other people because sometimes producers can be really precious about how they want things to sound and kind of have an idea in their head.

With him, it was a thing of-- the way that he learned how to produce was he asked questions of the person that he was working with and he learned almost by apprenticeship in a way. He was super open with any questions that I have. There was a couple of things that I'd done in my demos that I'd recorded that I sent to him and some of the stuff he actually kept. That was the other thing too, he wasn't so precious about it that it's like, I have to play this. I have to be on every song. I have to write all these things.

It's very more of a collaborative thing where he is really open to any ideas. The openness and the warmth and the willingness to want to help and teach because I'm getting interested in recording too, so it was great to be able to bounce ideas off of him and yes. The way he makes you feel is like you can ask anything, talk about anything. It's great.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned co-writing with him and you said you were interested in co-writing before. Why were you interested in co-writing at this period in your life?

Amythyst Kiah: Other than Our Native Daughters, I had never co-written before. With our native daughters, it was a little different for co-writing with that because we were talking about a big, overarching topic, so I wasn't as precious about co-writing there but I think, for me-- one of the things that's ongoing in my life and that I've always had to reckon with was having social anxiety and also being vulnerable in front of other people and putting a wall up.

The idea of sharing a song with anybody before it was finished, even if it was another songwriter, I just couldn't even imagine doing it because even after co-writing on Our Native Daughters, it would still be another, I would say three or four years before I do it again. I realized that after-- for so long music and songwriting and my artistic inspiration came from emotional turmoil and I've worked for so many years to work through all of those things and so I realized that I'm going to have to basically relearn how to write songs because I realized I was like, oh, that inspiration is gone.

Then I had to-- That's when it really dawned on me how tightly tethered my songwriting was to my own emotional state.

Alison Stewart: People don't know your mother died by suicide.

Amythyst Kiah: Yes. A lot of those songs were me dealing with grief and dealing with all of those and all of the other emotions that came with that and the coping mechanisms that I used to deal with it but in this instance, it was like, okay, well, now I need to figure out how I'm going to-- where am I going get my inspiration from now? Which I know seems silly on one hand, but at the other hand, I think regardless of how old you are, there's always a chance to learn something new.

I quite literally went on YouTube and typed in songwriting and just started watching different videos. That's how I learned how to play guitar, was by watching videos. I just got different ideas. I found out about how to write one song by Jeff Tweedy, so I read that.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's a good book.

Amythyst Kiah: Yes, it's amazing. He really helped demystify writing songs a little bit more. And so it helped me reconfigure. It doesn't always have to come down from the heavens. Sometimes you just have to write a bunch of bad songs before you get to one you like. I also realized that co-writing was going to be a way where I could also bounce ideas off of people, and I could also get to know how people that have done it for a living for so long and be able to pick their brain and see how they work.

This was like going back to school in a lot of ways and I learned so much from each and every person that I wrote a song with. I learned something new from them as well as wrote a song with them. It's great

Alison Stewart: My guest is Amythyst Kiah. The new album opens with the song Play God and Destroy the World. And you've mentioned in a statement this is inspired by The Matrix.

Alison Stewart: Is that true?

Amythyst Kiah: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay. That's true. First of all, tell me why.

Amythyst Kiah: I think with The Matrix, the whole concept is Beyond just the Syfy element of living in a simulation, it quite literally paralleled what I was experiencing as a kid. I had all of these interests and all these ideas and I came from a family. My dad, in particular, was always a very open-minded person and he always-- My parents let me play with the toys I wanted to play, they let me run around and ride bikes or if I wanted to play barbies.

They didn't try to put me in any specific gender role or anything like that. They just let me be who I wanted to be and as I got older, I started to realize that, oh, I guess being a tomboy isn't quite as cute when you're 12, 13 years old and so I was dealt with body dysmorphia and also being the only Black kid in most of my classes and also people living in a Conservative Christian area. You just had a lot of different things.

Alison Stewart: That's a lot.

Amythyst Kiah: I felt really out of place, and I was like, something doesn't feel right about any of this. When I saw-- at this point, I had started writing songs or started writing poems and playing guitar and stuff and when I saw that movie, I was like, oh, my God. I am living in a simulation. The idea that there's something more beyond this, which is why when I went to college and got into Western Humanities and Eastern Religions, learning about there's so many different ways to live.

Also, when I went to creative arts high school, the last two years of my high school career, that opened the door even further because I'm like, oh, wow. There's other weird misfit kids that we've also dealt all with the same things. That's where I met-- there was this whole group of Black kids that all watched anime. I never would've seen that at my other high school. It was just a very diverse group of kids. That and then leading into those courses in college.

Also, my dad continuing to be the amazing, awesome role model that he's been because he's one of those guys that he's always done his absolute best and even on the times where he fell from grace or had problems in his life, he always made sure to bounce back to try again and be there for me all of these years.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's hear it. This is Play God and Destroy the World from Amythyst Kiah.

[music: Amythyst Kiah - Play God and Destroy the World]

Alison Stewart: That was Amythyst Kiah. There you go. The album is called Still and Bright. It's release is October 25th. She's performing tomorrow at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, New York. That is happening tomorrow, Friday, October 18th. Thank you so much for being with us.

Amythyst Kiah: Yes, thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.