Kelsey Lawn

Interview from 2010.

How do you introduce yourself? At shows and stuff? Oh I’m generally quite awkward to be honest. Sometimes I seem alright but most of the time I don’t know how to introduce myself. ‘Hi I’m Kelsey Lawn’… at shows, ‘Hi I’m Kelsey lawn and today I’ll sing a few songs for you’. Basically. I always feel stink afterwards, like ‘oh I should have said something cool’. 

How would you describe your style? I’d say folk/ acoustic. Yea. 

Where do you get your inspiration from? I think when I haven’t listened to music for a week, or two or three weeks I start to run out of ideas. Although the music I write is completely different to the music I listen to, which is quite odd. 

What do you listen to? I like Phoenix, I love Grizzly Bear, and I like Bon Iver a lot. Dallas Green… I probably appreciate solo acoustic artists more than anyone else because they do all the work themselves, and I think that’s cool. I like being alone. 

If you could be any other artist, who would you be? Ah. That’s a real hard one to be honest. Geeze I have no idea aye. Haven’t thought about that. There was a song… Oh Rogue Wave, I can’t believe I didn’t mention them before. They are really incredible and no one’s ever heard of them. It sucks. Whenever I ever tell people to listen to them they’re like ‘eh’, but honestly they’re incredible. Yea, if I could be a band, but one person at the same time, I’d be Rogue Wave. Which is impossible because of all the instruments, but yea. They’re incredible man. 

What’s the story behind you playing music? Oh, good question. Well, this guy at my old school. Because we were doing performances in music one day, and he was actually like ‘lalalalala I wrote this song’ and I was like ‘whoa, cool’ and then basically I started writing. But it started off as really shitty stuff. Like I wrote a song called Fat Indian. I don’t know, it was just lame as stuff like that. It started off as a joke basically. Then the first song I wrote was the very first day I bought my guitar. Isn’t that weird? I think that’s weird. And it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t a bad song. The very first time I performed in front of people I was asked to do two gigs and it was insane. I was like ‘oh my god’. I think my happiness scared them because I never got calls after that because I was like ‘Really! That’s so cool’. So I think I freaked them out a little. 

Who was it that asked? This guy from Zeal in Wellington was like ‘you should come up to Zeal sometime and play’ and this other guy was like ‘there’s this acoustic… song writers… stuff in Wellington, write down your details’, and I was like oh my gosh that is so amazing. Yea. And I’ve improved real quick actually. Like I’ve only been playing for a year. I started writing three months after I started playing guitar. Isn’t that weird? I think that’s weird. Every time I do a show people are like ‘you’re getting better’ and I’m like yay. 

Progress is awesome. Yea it really is. But I don’t even realise, because its not practice for me. I just play guitar. I don’t call it practice, I’ve never called it practice. It’s just fun.

I heard you bought a banjo?.. Yea, so I bought a banjo. It was on lay-by for ages. I’ve written two riffs on it and one has words, like a sentence. But it’s definitely more difficult than guitar. Because the tuning is like (hums tuning) actually that’s wrong, but something like that. The top note is way higher, it’s weird. I don’t know any chords yet. I definitely don’t play it as often as my guitar,  I like guitars a lot better than banjos to be honest but banjos are pretty sweet anyway. I used to have a glockenspiel. They are cool, but I sold it to get the banjo. I barely even used it, I sold it to my sister. 

What is your inspiration? I think the reason I write, I don’t know if its true, but I had a shit childhood. Yea. My mum left us when I was two, and she moved around lots, like every few months she’d move houses and boyfriends. It really sucked, I absolutely hated seeing her, because I hated her I guess for ages. I’ve only just moved into her house this year. It sucks. Whenever I have fights with her I can just go straight to my guitar and improvise and it sounds mean. 

At least some good is coming from shit times. Yea I think so. It definitely makes me a lot happier. Before I couldn’t write… am I talking too much?

No. Well before I could write I just build up so much sadness and im still a really unhappy person to be honest. I can be a happy person, like now im happy but yea. Im generally really sad. I’ve been depressed for so many years man. No one actually knows that. It’s really bad. Im used to looking at the negative in everything. I don’t know why or how that happened, but yea. I just have so many bad memories. It’s weird because all my songs are happy.

I think your songs sound happy but you can tell there’s a sense of tragedy behind them. Really? That’s good. I’ve written some sad songs. I’ve written two sad songs out of all my songs. I wish I could write sad songs. When I’m in a bad mood I can’t write and it sucks because when I’m in a bad mood I want to write, it’s all I want to do. Bad as in angry usually, it depends. I’m not really creative when I'm furious. 

Some people cry when I sing to them, and it’s really cool. But it makes me cry too. I stop playing because I’m like ‘oh don’t cry’ and they’re like ‘no, keep going’ and they start crying again and then I cry. I mean it’s cool, but not. 

So music is an emotional thing for you? Yea, I love music. Don’t know what I’d do without it. So many people say that, it seems so cliché but its true. 

Where can people hear your music?

http://www.myspace.com/kelseyjolawn
youtube.com/user/EssentialNo