01/02/2010

K.C. McKanzie Interview: Part One

K.C. McKanzie. It sounds American, despite the nod to Celtic heritage. Click on to her myspace and, again, she sounds American: a carefully dropped ‘g’ on ‘darlin’’, an Old Time twang here, an American folk inflection there.

And despite her fluent English, her spoken diction gives her away to be European – though you’d never guess when she takes to singing.

“I’m so influenced by English-language led music,” K.C,.McKanzie explains, “It would never occur to me to write a German song. I haven’t so far.”

So how does a young German woman find herself playing within a genre so stereotypically found in North America, pouring over her banjo and writing English language songs?

“I just heard it when I was about 17 years old and it had a deep effect on me,” she answers slowly and seriously. “It was what I wanted to do, and I just needed three chords.”

K.C. makes mastering the guitar, banjo and composition of songs in another language sound easy. But perhaps, with her unwavering determination – if her speech is anything to go by – it was easy, a simple case of learning, soaking up all she had around her and incorporating it into her lifestyle. Living the music.

“And I didn’t know any real modern acts doing the kind of music I’d fallen in love with, so I just thought ‘how can I bring this forward to today?’”

So she looked to some of the more recent outputs she was drawn to, like the seminal O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and Gillian Welch, then created her own modern blend of skiffle.

She stops me there.

“No, no, no,” she stresses, “not skiffle.”

I am admonished.

“No, skiffle was 80s music in Germany. I play music today.”

K.C. is clearer than most when she ponders where she fits in to the musical spectrum, and all indications suggest that she’s given this some thought. But perhaps it’s all down to experience.

“I don’t want to be considered part of the German country scene, or the folk scene. It’s too serious and nostalgic. I tend to play in the small kind of cabaret shows that are popular in Berlin, the small theatres that put on variety shows. You don’t tend to get them anywhere else. But always alternative music venues, never mainstream.”

Go to Part Two - http://www.spiralearth.co.uk/attitude/attitudestory.asp?nid=4070

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