>>PREVIEW
KINNIE STARR
Friday, October 6
Liberty Lounge (MRC)
Shoved between prefixes and suffixes, Calgary-born and Vancouver-resident Kinnie Starr forgoes her morning jog and yoga. Relaxation doesn’t come easy, especially when she finds herself temporarily affixed to another metropolis – Toronto. In a few days, she will become Calgary-born-Vancouver-resident-Winnipeg-performer, then move on to Regina and Saskatoon for her tour in support of the recently released Anything.
Her restlessness isn’t born from performance jitters. She’s created music since 1992, catching the attention of critics with her unique voice and insight into racial identity. More prefixes to contend with – she explores her half-Mohawk-half-white heritage in the swirling textures of punk and hip hop. What began as raw and angry subsides to a more thoughtful approach to pop music. It took Starr’s departure from a major record label, briefly performing in the Cirque Du soleil show Zumanity and rebuilding her career in the underground to get there. She talks to Fast Forward about how she nearly quit music and working for the man.
Fast Forward: Were the lack of collaborations on the new album a way to return the focus back on you?
Kinnie Starr: On Sun Again, I didn’t want to do fucking music anymore. My friends were like, ‘Please, please, please. Here I’ll write you a track.’ I wrote Anything once I got out of Cirque Du soleil. There’s less collaborations on this album, because I had fun writing songs. I was withheld creatively at Cirque for nine months, sitting on my ass waiting for things to happen. The shows weren’t interesting creatively for me, which is why I left.
FFWD: You have an affinity for compacting issues of identity and race into pop music, especially on the new track "Blackbrown Eyes."
KS: That song specifically deals with my Great Auntie’s resistance to talking about her race with family and passing that onto her kids. I used to think that was an isolated example, but the more people I talk to, I realized that’s the story of so many people.
FFWD: Nelly Furtado has name checked you as an influence. Do you examine her current career change for reference?
KS: I receive those comparisons daily. Everyone says she looks like me, acts like me, dresses like me. She’s her own person and an artist with millions of dollars behind her. Friends of mine suggested I do a straight club record, but it’s not a choice for me. Dre is a person I’d work with in a second, but why would Dre work with some Canadian girl who sold under 50,000 records? Unless by chance he heard my shit and realized it was fresh.
FFWD: You want to do more than just perform, what else are you eyeing?
KS: I’d love to score television. I used to be really anti-television, but I’m getting more exposed. I had my music on the L-Word, so they sent me some episodes. I was like. ‘Holy Fuck, the writing is really good.’ Honestly, one of my dreams would be to write my own show and cast people from my community. I have struggling actor friends not getting cast ’cause they’re not super-zskinny white people.
FFWD: Why did you recently sign with Last Gang/ole Publishing?
KS: A song of mine is being looked at for a Heineken commercial in Holland. That’s the kind of work I want to do, earning some corporate cash so I don’t have to take every little gig in Buttfuck, Nowhere just to make a couple of hundred bucks. I want to be more than just this underground cool chick. If I could just write songs and not perform them, that’d be ideal. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.