We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kiirstin Marilyn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kiirstin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
Back in 2020 if I had been asked this question, I would have said my album, There Are No Cats in America, which was released on October 23, 2020. For one thing, it was my very first full length album after a career of putting out multiple EPs from several different projects and groups; it was full of songs that dealt with causes I’m extremely passionate about as an activist; and though it was started before the pandemic, it was completed and released during the pandemic, which not only gave me something to focus on daily other than the trauma we all were collectively going through, but it gave me a creative outlet to pour my trauma into and I think that helped me survive the pandemic mentally.
However, today in 2023, after what feels like a lifetime in just 3 years, I have a new project and a new answer to this question. It’s another EP, but it’s dedicated to the memory of my brother Kristoffer Kuhi, who we lost back in May of 2021. The 6-song EP is even entitled, KRISTOFFER, and I’m also simultaneously working on 4 music videos for 4 of the songs that together will create one short-film-length music video that I plan to enter into film festivals, entitled simply: KRISTOFFER THE FILM.
My brother, Kristoffer, was 10 years older than me, and I absolutely idolized him and my other older brother who is 9 years older than me. As a kid I would follow them everywhere (“I’d follow you anyway, anywhere and come what may” is a lyric in one of the songs called “Train Tracks”), and I would be immediately obsessed with everything they introduced me to, which was usually the latest music. I remember being 13 and going to school with a 311 hat on, and one of the “popular” kids came up to me and said, “you like 311?! me too!” I mean I knew my brothers were cool, but me being cool by proxy? I was forever indebted to them.
In my teenage years my eyes began to open to a darker side of my brother; maybe “darker” isn’t the right word, but a more “broken” side (“your heart was the broken kind” is another lyric from “Train Tracks”). When I was 15 and Kristoffer was 25 he attempted suicide. I was told he had left a note – something I also reference in a song called “Beyond the Bad” – and I couldn’t comprehend at 15 how he didn’t know that he had people who loved him, and me who idolized him, who would be completely crushed if he were no longer here. As an adult I process the memory of that experience much differently, understanding my brother’s struggles with mental health and having recently been given the knowledge that he was given a life expectancy diagnosis when he was just 13 as a child cancer survivor. It was 25…
My brother lived his life fast and hard, and I eventually came to realize he would not live to be an old man. That doesn’t mean, however, that his death was not a shock, and that I am not still processing it to this day. At first I was not sure that I wanted to write an entire EP dedicated to my brother. I think the emotions were too raw, and I couldn’t find the words; I needed time to be able to write about all the memories and everything I felt about his passing and his life. Even still with more than two years having gone by, writing and recording this EP has been an emotional roller coaster, and its sometimes been hard to get through a recording session without tears – from both me and my producer actually (don’t tell him I told you that ha).
This project, KRISTOFFER the EP and the corresponding music video/film, is probably the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on and will ever work on. I don’t know how anything I write or create after this will even compare. KRISTOFFER is going to be full of memories and emotional vulnerability. It’s so personal, and it also tells my brother’s story, which I truly hope I am doing justice. I like to think that if he could hear it, he’d be really proud.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My creative/artistic journey has been a very long and twisty one. I’ve been involved in performance in some capacity basically since I could walk, but the artistic medium has changed quite a lot over the years.
I know a lot of kids take dance classes, but for me it was more than an after school activity I got dragged to. I truly loved the stage, and for a long time I thought I was going to be a professional dancer. That was until my mom got me involved in one of the local high school’s production of THE WIZ. I had to audition, which was the first time I understood I had a good singing voice, and I got to play Toto. As a 10-year-old, getting to crawl around the stage and bark at everyone while also jumping up to my feet and dancing through the aisles on the cardboard yellow brick road during “Ease on Down the Road,” was such a thrilling experience. I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
From that point on I got involved in every musical production my schooling, cross-country and dance schedule would allow. I did all the musicals in my middle school and high school as well as a local community theater production every summer. I graduated from the chorus to principal roles, and when it came time to go to college, I knew exactly what I was going to study even though every academic person in my life advised me to go to school for something “practical.” But I didn’t listen, and ultimately I moved to New York City to study acting at Marymount Manhattan College.
During my time at Marymount I was in multiple plays and musicals. I was even called back for the lead role in CAROUSEL as a freshman. At the end of my sophomore year, on a whim I auditioned for a touring production of CABARET. I played alto saxophone (that production required the cast to also double as the band), and I also happened to be working at the Broadway production of CABARET selling programs and beer to theater goers. I went into that audition with the mindset that if I didn’t book it, it was no big deal, I would just be going back to school. But I did book it, and during what would have been my junior year of college, I set off with this touring company, traveling the country and Canada, performing every night and making lifelong friends. It was the time of my life.
After tour, I went back to finish up my schooling (my mother would have killed me if I hadn’t, though all I wanted to do was get back to work). I was able to graduate on time despite having taken a year off; I guess loading up on credits and taking summer and winter classes during my freshman and sophomore years paid off. After graduation I auditioned again for a production of CABARET, this time with the very shiny offer of getting my professional Actors’ Equity card at the end of the run. In hindsight, I should have put this offer off. I was too young and too inexperienced to be thrown into the deep end of the extremely competitive world of Equity actors and productions. I also had my sites set on a new type of creative endeavor: music.
During that run of CABARET just after graduation, I had found a producer to help me produce a 4-song EP of terrible songs I had written with the guitar I had only picked up a few months prior. He was one of those producers that takes complete advantage of young inexperienced singer-songwriters, but I took one of those tracks and performed with it live. At that show someone in the audience told me after my performance that I needed a band. From that moment forward I was obsessed with the idea of becoming the next Gwen Stefani. Several months later, after a few attempts at writing songs and getting something started with people I knew. I took to craigslist to find someone or a few someone’s who were interested in starting something for real. What I found was a fully formed band based in Hoboken looking for a singer. I thought it was kismet.
As I was auditioning for the band (it took them a full month to finally decide to ask me to be a member) I was also in my last stage production ever (or so I thought). It was an Equity showcase about Princess Diana and her death (it basically pinned the problems in her marriage entirely on her, yikes!), and I knew there had to be something better in the cards for me. Finally that production ended and the band asked me to join them, and I sort of never looked back. When my college theater director asked me to come audition for a show she was directing, I declined. I was all in with the band and my new music career.
Unfortunately, as one NYC show promoter liked to famously say, “the hardest thing to do is keep a rock band together.,” and he was right. After a couple more failed attempts at getting other bands to gain real traction, I decided it was time to do the thing I never wanted to do and “go solo.” in Spring of 2012, Kiirstin Marilyn was born. It took me a while – and a couple EPs and producers – to find my voice and my sound as a solo artist, but after meeting my producer, Adam Tilzer, in 2017 and releasing my first single with him in 2018, I finally felt like I had crossed that bridge to truly knowing who I was/am as an artist and what I want to say, as well as finding that creative partner I was missing/searching for as a solo artist.
Today I consider myself an authentic songwriter with a not-necessarily-unique perspective, but also not one that is the most mainstream. I don’t usually write love songs, and if I do its usually a pretty dark position on the topic (like my song, “Grim,” off of my first solo EP, insinuates that if my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time of recording) dies before me, I will end my life). But my writing tends to lean more towards themes of social justice. A fan once called my songs, “message music.” Even my current EP that deals mostly with the loss of my brother and my processing of that loss, encompasses themes of struggles with mental health and addiction. As an activist I’m never afraid to speak the truth, and I’m never afraid to use my music platform to spread that truth. I do believe that puts me in a smaller category of musician, especially when you consider that I’m mostly writing pop songs. Though I like to call what I do, Altpop.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My entire artistic career definitely illustrates my resilience as I’ve had many creative projects that I generally spent years cultivating that eventually did not work out for one reason or another. As a young actor I learned how to take rejection in stride and grew myself a fairly thick skin because of it. That’s not to say that rejection doesn’t hurt, but you figure out a way to get past it and keep moving forward. And of course there are certainly times when I’ve thought, “maybe this thing called the entertainment industry isn’t for me. Maybe I need to just get a regular 9-5 and stop all this.” But deep down I would still be an artist, and I would still create no matter what I did to make a paycheck. Certainly none of this is for the faint of heart, but it’s really true that your experiences of failure help you to figure out how to do it better next time.
Even if “doing it better” just means being able to see the red flags much more quickly that you’re currently working with an abusive narcissist, and you need to get out now!
That’s one of the biggest take aways from my first band not working out. I spent two and a half years being gaslit and mentally abused, until one day I realized sobbing before having to go to band practice is not normal. I said out loud to myself, “no one is holding a gun to your head to be in this band. You can just walk away.” That revelation was like an epiphany, and shortly after I simply walked away. I of course took a moment to attempt to get the rest of my bandmates to choose me and we could run off into the sunset together sans our drummer, but ultimately they said they could not choose, so I had to make the choice, and choose myself and my mental health.
But I knew that wasn’t the end of my life in music. I was “too involved now” to quote Jack Dawson. I loved performing my own songs on stage and I knew I would do it again. Shortly after, I started a band with my brother, and though I would wind up moving on from that band after 4 years, I do think continuing to start anew is a testament to my resilience and the type of resilience you either have to have or have to acquire as an artist especially in our current climate in the US where artistry is equated with frivolity.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn the notion of success being connected to monetary gains that had been pounded into my brain from school, family and society starting at a very young age. Its that brainwashing of a capitalist society that we all need to break free of. Certainly I still want my music to reach people, but I’m no longer focused on “being famous,” and I no longer believe that success has to mean just one thing. I now measure my success in what I set out to do/create and whether I accomplished it or not.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.KiirstinMarilyn.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/KiirstinMarilyn
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KiirstinMarilyn
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/Kiirstin
- Other: http://www.tiktok.com/@KiirstinMarilyn
Image Credits
Joesph Buscarello, FotoCavallo, Diego Pabon