The first time I met Kimmy Drake was in Manhattan in 2010. I read the announcement of her upcoming show date in Brooklyn Vegan and was excited to go out and support a band on tour from my native Florida. I’d heard about them from friends before, so knew it would be good. Sure enough the concert crowd was invigorated by the musical energy of the band and danced wildly. I too got really into the music and while hanging out with the band afterwards drank to excess. I went into homing beacon mode and luckily for me a friend, photographer Vanessa Rondon, lived near me and made sure I didn’t fall asleep on the L. We got off at Morgan Ave, parted ways at the Wreck Room and I woke up the next day with a hangover mixed with a smile from having enjoyed every bit of the night before so much. Lucky for me, several years later she agreed to sit down and talk with me about her musical process, touring and where she finds inspiration.
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Ariel
So as an artist myself I’m curious as to other people’s creative methods. When you approach songwriting, do you have any special process for coming up with a song?
Kimmy
Not really. I feel that as soon as you sit down and pick up an instrument you’ve already started to do something creative. The intention is there, it’s just a matter of letting it come out. And, of course, recording it. Which with the iPhone makes it easy to never lose anything because you don’t have a way of capturing it.
Ariel
That way you say that makes me imagine that you have a bunch of iPhone b-sides.
Kimmy
Oh, so many! Today I used it to record two songs I wrote on the piano, which I haven’t done for a really long time!
Ariel
Why haven’t you written from the piano in so long?
Haha, well… I couldn’t get to my piano because it was behind the drum kit for like, the last year and a half. It’s been trapped and I literally couldn’t get to it! Last night, though, I pulled it out and I wrote the beginnings of two new songs that I’m super excited about.
Ariel
Did you find that starting to write with an instrument you haven’t been able to play in a while brought out a different emotional tenor to your lyrics?
Kimmy
Oh, definitely! Like lately I’ve also been writing a lot of stuff on bass guitar, which I almost never usually do. I’ve found that the last three songs I wrote for the band started from bass and they’re just a totally different animal from the songs that start by me playing chords on guitar. The songs I wrote on the piano today were also something totally different. It’s still in the same garage music vein, but a little different. Lots of stomping. Moving around the whole body around when you’re making music kind of stuff.
Ariel
So when you and Skyler are playing around with a new song do you normally find yourself coming into agreement about what sounds best.
Kimmy
Yes. I’m the bandleader so I, you know, lead. I’m not a drummer so it’s hard for me sometimes to explain what I have in my head, but I can make enough sounds with my mouth to convey what I want that he gets it. I’ll do like choo tsk choo tsk tso he knows which ones to hit. Sometimes he’ll come up with something and fight me over it but that’s rare. Normally it works out at the end that we have a consensus.
Ariel
So can you tell me a bit about your musical training?
Kimmy
Well I went to school in Kendall for music. The school was divided between the classical people and the jazz people. I was doing classical, vocal stuff when I probably should have been doing more jazz, though I really wished there had been a rock and roll class because that was, that is, my passion. Being in an orchestra or something like that was not my dream, I always wanted to play rock and roll, so I dropped out after a while. You know. Talking about this is reminding me, going back for a moment to the piano we were talking about earlier, how my last instructor there would rap my hands with a ruler. I really hated that!
Ariel
My childhood piano teacher did that to me too! What’s with that?
Kimmy
I don’t know! But if any of them read this interview hopefully it’ll encourage them to stop doing it to their students! Hahaha!
Ariel
At the school was there a special teacher or friend there that inspired you to follow the rock and roll path?
Kimmy
I feel like there should be, but there really wasn’t. Being into what I was there made me an outcast. I still feel like I don’t fit in anywhere.
Ariel
I can definitely relate to that and also makes me wonder where your attraction to garage and surf-rock come from?
Kimmy
Ever since I was a little kid that’s all I wanted to listen to: the oldies station. I feel like I’m a time-traveller. Like wait, should I be here. Back there. I honestly feel like that. I feel dissatisfied with current stuff. Like it was a more pure, more fun time. More pure, I guess.
Ariel
I get that. Yesterday I was reading an article the other day talking about people’s attraction to superhero films, Mad Men and other such shows. It was talking about how the root of people’s attraction to this stem from dissatisfaction with contemporary, mass-produced culture and the current economic system perpetuating such economic disparity. All of these possibilities and desires are presented and yet there are very real limits as to what people can have.
Kimmy
I get that. As for me, ever since I was a kid I would watch 60s reruns.
Ariel
TV Land!
Kimmy
Yes! Hahaha! Exactly! I wanted to be Samantha from Bewitched. I thought she was the best. I loved her clothes, her personality everything about her. I thought she was just the coolest thing ever. And I’m like: where am I now?
Ariel
Hah. That’s great! Now, to give the next question some context let me first ask: Do you know Tim Yehezkely from The Postmarks.
Kimmy
Yeah, I know of them. Tim has such an amazing voice!
Ariel
Yeah she does! Memoirs at the End of the World is really great. Anyway, so she and I first met in a poetry workshop at FAU, wow, over a decade ago now. She put some of the pieces we’d gone over in class to guitar and started performing them at the open mic night at Nakamal. A couple of month’s later she’s all like “Oh yeah, I’m producing an album and going on tour!” Point of all this backstory is that I’m curious if in addition to writing lyrics to music and music to lyrics if you also write poems?
Kimmy
Well I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger. I do that sometime when the inspiration hits, but that’s really rare. Maybe once a year, when I have something that I know won’t work as a song. I actually just wrote one the other day.
Ariel
Are there any creative disciplines that you maintain in order to develop and practice your art. Or is it that the inspiration comes and you follow it?
Kimmy
I feel like discipline is something that I’m working on. Now, normally, it’s like whenever the inspiration hits, no matter what time it is I have to run to the guitar and grab my iPhone so I can record it. That’s how it is for me whenever the inspiration hits. But I think it’s good to be more disciplined. I’m trying to do that as I have a couple of other projects and I have deadlines. And that’s making me be more disciplined.
Ariel
I totally understand. I’m writing a book right now and I find that the time between periods of writing can be very long. And when that happens I don’t want to say that I hate myself… but I do have to fight my mental voices from reprimanding myself as that starts a negative internal dialogue that doesn’t encourage creativity.
Kimmy
I know what you mean. And no, that absolutely does not promote creative production.
Ariel
So what are some of the other projects that you are working on?
Kimmy
I can’t say. I can’t talk about them right now so just scratch that whole statement.
Ariel
What genre of music would people be surprised if they knew you listened to?
Kimmy
Oh… I don’t know if I listen to anything that would surprise anyone. I listen to mostly garage music and 60’s stuff and girl groups. Maybe something that people would be surprised about is that since junior high I’ve been super obsessed with The Cure? I’m also really into Fugazi, Descendants and other punk stuff. But I don’t know how surprising that is as we’re kind of punky too.
Ariel
No guilty pleasure artists that get rotation on, say, Power 96?
Kimmy
Haha! Absolutely not!
Ariel Ok. So then who’s your favorite artist currently producing music?
Kimmy
I love Sune Rose Wagner from The Ravonettes. I’ve always loved what he does. Love The Kills. Oh, and Mark Ronson I mean, he’s produced Black Lips. I think he’s a phenomenon. I’d love to work with him one day, that’d be my dream.
Ariel
So you’ve been to a lot of places on tour, especially New York. I’m wondering if in your experience you feel South Florida’s a more difficult nut to crack as it lacks an urban core that brings people together? Wait, let me restate that. Do you feel the vast sprawl of South Florida has an impact on audience and how you write and perform? For example, I’ve never seen you play at the Hollywood band shell but I know it’s so different from, say, Respectables and I know few people that will really commit to seeing bands they like if they have to drive more than twenty minutes to see them.
Kimmy
I get what you’re trying to say. And yeah, I mean it does. But, well, every town is different. Some towns you’ll play these amazing shows but everyone just sits like they’re in a movie theatre. They just don’t dance in that town. Some towns everyone is dancing and going nuts. It just depends on the town. Every one is completely different and Hollywood, well, is like weirdo central. You never know what you’re going to get. It’s like a wild card.
Ariel
Oh yeah! Last time I was at the Hollywood band shell I would swear it was like the “Indigent Jimmy Buffett Fans” Convention, which is fitting considering they’re building a Margaritaville there. The time before that it was filled with all these German tourists in speedos!
Kimmy
Hahaha! I can see that. Anything can happen in Hollyweird. It’s wide open.
Ariel
Do you enjoy traveling with the band?
Kimmy
It’s super fun! You get to know people really well cause, well, you’re stuck with them for a long time in the car, at the hotel, on the stage.
Ariel
You don’t find hotel living to be tiresome.
Kimmy
I mean it’s not the best, but that’s just what it is so you adapt.
Ariel
Unless you’re able to stay someplace like the Sourpatch Band Space in Brooklyn. Did you hear about that?
Kimmy
Yes, I did! I’d love to stay there. The space looks awesome. Plus Sour Patch Kids are a delicious vegan candy and that rules!
Ariel
So you’re really pretty and fit. How do you work out on tour?
Kimmy
Honestly. I don’t work out too much. Like hardly ever. If I feel myself gaining weight than I’ll just eat a little bit less. And I’m vegan. I think that helps a lot. But I’m not focused on it that much. I don’t know. And in fact, I usually lose weight on tour cause you just don’t eat as much. It’s a weird thing. You eat only two times a day. Breakfast and dinner. And I’m never like: Hey, I wanna go get burgers! Let’s eat McDonalds! Haha. Though last tour we were sponsored by Taco Bell. They sent us $500 in gift cards so we ate a lot of Taco Bell. That really helped with the cost of everything because there is no money in touring for a small band like us. And I appreciate my bandmates so, so much for that.
Ariel
Speaking of money, that reminds me. I went onto The Pirate Bay to see if you were being shared on there and sure enough there were people seeding your music. How do you feel about that?
Kimmy
I think that’s fine, honestly.
Ariel
I can understand why. With this whole Taylor Swift thing I looked at some of the break downs of what artists are actually paid on Spotify and Pandora that people had posted and with so much going to the intermediaries I don’t blame her from taking it off!
Kimmy
I definitely feel like if an album comes out and it’s on Spotify, why would you buy it? You can just go to Spotify and listen to it for free. When I know that something is coming out I usually want to go get and the vinyl, but I’m different, I want to go get the record. I’ve always been like that. I can honestly say I’ve never personally pirated music. That doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t given me a copy of something they pirated! Cause they have. I use Spotify as like a listening station at a record store. If I listen to a few songs from a band and I really dig it, I’ll go get the record! If I don’t, well I won’t be listening to them anymore anyway.
Ariel
So the stuff that you said before that you’re starting to record now – can you tell me a little bit more about it?
Kimmy
Well, we’re not yet sure where we’re going to record. We don’t have a plan. We’re working on more videos for the record that came out in August. Other than that we have no plans. It’s so wide open. I find that kind freedom exciting actually.
Ariel
Well I have an idea, albeit a derivative one.
Kimmy
What’s that?
Ariel
I say this knowing your love for Hollyweird. Have you seen the movie Begin Again?
Kimmy
No.
Ariel
It’s with Adam Levine, Keira Knigtley and Mark Ruffalo…
Kimmy
Oh yeah, I did hear something about that!
Ariel
It’s really good. Anyway, the last part of the movie the protagonists set up portable recording studios all over New York to capture Keira Knightley’s “breakup album” thing. I don’t normally like musicals, except for something like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but this was really good. Anyway. Last question! I know you just came back from touring, but do you have any plans for another?
Kimmy
We’re definitely touring in March. The next thing we’re going to is Atlanta on the 22nd . Besides that we’re just having a break because we’ve pretty much been touring non-stop for the past two and a half years. We’re just chilling. I also want to give myself time to process so I can start writing the next record.
Ariel
It’s definitely good to get settled to get back into a creative place.
Kimmy
Absolutely. Also it’s good to be home for the holidays. The whole month of December, It’s awesome. I love Christmas, I’m obsessed.
Ariel
Big fan of Santa’s Enchanted Forrest?
Kimmy
I haven’t been in a few years but this year I’m definitely going, yeah!
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Beach Day’s next show is on New Years Eve at Respectable Street Cafe. You can find more info by going here!
Also, be sure check out their video for their song “How Do You Sleep At Night” below!