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 Beloved Detroit
songstress and Times Beach recording artist Audra Kubat will be leaving
her native Detroit to spend some time in Brooklyn, New York and explore
new opportunities. We asked her a few questions on the move, her
upcoming album and life in general.ON THE MOVE TO NYC ryan: You’ve become a somewhat unlikely staple of the rock-laden Detroit music scene, what brings about the move to New York City? audra: I feel like I’ve done as much as I can do right now in Detroit. You can get to a point where you stagnate… you kind of have to go away and come back. I have to keep moving, moving on. I think New York has a huge market and there’s lots of places to play. I think Detroit and New York are the two hardest places to get recognized... for kind of opposite reasons, but New York is a really good place to get exposure. ryan: What will you miss about Detroit? audra: The people, for sure. And the music. I like the small town attitude that Detroit has. If you’re out there doing something in the music or art world, you get to know everyone else who’s doing it. I’m going to miss having that close-knit community. I don’t have a lot of close friends. Being a musician, I have a lot of acquaintances, but I don’t really have a best friend. The people are what I will miss the most though. ON HER MUSICAL STYLE & INFLUENCES ryan: I get the feeling that you were born with an acoustic guitar in your hand. Are there any hospital records to prove this? Tell us a little bit about your childhood… where you grew up and how you were introduced to music. audra: I was born in Detroit and brought up for six or seven years in Roseville Park. Fortunately I went to Montessori School, and I stared playing the glockenspiel just by ear. My parents had a piano and I started making up songs. So I played music by ear really young. When I moved to Southfield, everything was really different because I was told to be quiet a lot at Southfield Public Schools. Things were different there. I ended up quitting piano lessons because it was frustrating. I didn’t really pick up the guitar until I was nineteen years old because I had a boyfriend who played guitar. I wanted to be an artist really, I was a painter. ryan: What’s the most memorable performance you have ever seen? audra: The recent Patti Smith show I saw blew me away. One of the first concerts I saw was Peter Gabriel. I saw Joni Mitchell in ’97. I actually paid all this money – I was in the third row. She was such a powerful performer - she was a huge influence for me. Her music influenced me a long time before and seeing her show just blew me away. ryan: I remember reading a review in Popmatters that placed you “somewhere between a female Nick Drake and a Joni Mitchell for the Starbucks generation.” I think Joni Mitchell is mentioned in every article about you, so that’s an obvious influence. Who else would you cite? audra: Nick Drake. I really like the old Dolly Parton… amazing songwriter, amazing voice. Nina Simone as well. My parents listed to a lot of really good music when I was growing up - Johnny Cash , Willie Nelson. Elliot Smith is a newer influence for me. In the last year I’ve been influenced by country music more than I have before. I’ve kind of got back lately to listening to that kind of music again… Woody [Guthrie], a lot of Dylan. I’ve been listening to Tom Petty lately. I used to write songs that are sort of abstract. The stuff I’ve been listening to lately has made me a better ‘song maker’ - making the song a song. My older stuff is so abstract, I wasn’t really thinking about structure. I really want to have the music propel the lyrics. ryan: You’re managed by someone who’s not just another business type, but a highly respected thirty-year veteran of the Detroit scene. When did you first meet Stirling and how did your partnership come about? audra: I met Stirilng about five and half years ago. I was bartending at Jacoby's. I would bring my guitar, and he’d give advice and stuff like that. One night, a band wasn’t ready to go on [upstairs at 313.JAC], so he asked me to come up and play. When he saw me play in front of a rock n’ roll crowd and saw them reacting, he thought ‘this is really interesting.’ He said ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you… I’m not in folk or anything. I’m just going to take you on and introduce you to everyone I know in music and art.' He opened all these doors to me and I walked right through them. After a year and half of getting to know all these different people, I was able to get my cd into the right hands. Instead of being an outsider, they knew me. We’ve always tried to put shows together at places that are interesting rather than run of the mill shows. At first I felt like it seemed too thought out, but when I started seeing what it did, I felt this is what it meant to really do something. You can be a great musician, a great artist, but you’ve got to get people to come see it. ON THE NEW ALBUM ryan: I understand you have just finished recording your new album for the Times Beach label. What can we expect this time? audra: There’s a lot of production in it… I play violin, flute, percussion and piano. I didn’t have a real plan… I’m working with Eric [Hoegemeyer of Gold Cash Gold] again on this record… he kind of just said ‘let’s get the guitars down and start adding whatever you think.’ I thought it would be too much stuff for going out on the road and doing solo. It started sounding so beautiful though. The sound is just more accessible to people. Some of my stuff, being more stripped down, distances some people from the music because they’re used to hearing a more filled up sound… I really like what came of it. I think that the songwriting has changed a lot. This is a real reflective album. It really reveals a lot about my personal life. You can’t really control where your art goes. It just comes out when it needs to come out. This album is revealing about a lot of things about the changes in my life. I have some songs that are about going and following your dreams. ryan: The material on A Million Year Old Sand comes across as if it’s very personal to you. Is your songwriting based on personal experience? audra: It’s a balance between a few different things. Some are things that I saw only a moment of and created a whole song about. Some are just made up stuff – well, not really made up stuff, but something that I saw someone go through. It’s kind of a combination of my own experiences and seeing some other people’s. ryan: Do you have a process of writing songs… do the words come first and then music or vice versa? audra: When I first started, the music always came first because I wasn’t proficient enough to write a melody and figure out what the guitar would do. It’s changed over the years. With the new record, the lyrics were written first without the melody. Then I just came up with the music that would support the worlds. Most is a combination. It’s really like half and half. I’ve been writing a lot more just words. I have a lot of stuff that’s just poetry – words without music. ryan: What’s more important – the words or the music? audra: Words. Although, unless the music supports the words, then words would not be as much as they could be. For my music, I think of it that way - that’s where it’s coming from for me. They’re very close. In a way they’re synonymous. ON THAT OTHER STUFF ryan: Who are you listening to right now? audra: Jeff Buckley Leonard Cohen James Brown Elliot Smith Bob Dylan The Everyothers ryan: Finally, How would Audra Kubat recommend spending a nice autumn Saturday in Detroit, Michigan? audra: Taking a walk starting at Woodward and Warren and going down to Hart Plaza. Then definitely ending up at a little bakery in Southwest Detroit. And ending with a Margarita. A "Bittersweet Goodbye" for Audra Kubat will be held on Sunday, October 10 at Union Street. Doors will be at 7pm and peformance at 8pm. It will be followed by a rock n' roll dance party with D.J. Freddie Fortune. A ten dollar donation is suggested, but you're encouraged to come with what you can afford. Union Street is located at 4145 Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Visit www.audrakubat.com for more information. - Ryan Sult |
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