We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kayla Adiletto. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kayla below.

Hi Kayla , thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

As a kid I was always very interested in music, whether it was singing in the car (sometimes to my mother’s dismay) or putting on a one man show to my imaginary audience in the basement… I desperately wanted to be involved in music. There came a point in high school where the next natural progression for my music was marching band and I wanted no part of it. It all kind of died there, or at least that was what I thought. It took dating a musician in college to remind myself what I had always quietly known to be true, I’m a musician.

Before we became Nylon Ghost, there were other iterations of our band, some of which pre-dated me. Initially, I was so worried about how we were being perceived by the music scene we were in. Are we cool? Do we fit in? Truly all the wrong things. After dissolving that band I had a lot of time to reflect and grow as a person and that was when I started to write music I was proud of.

After some 2020 jam sessions at the conclusion of 2020, we decided to formally get the band back together as Nylon Ghost. We have added a member to the band and continue to expand on our sound every day. I firmly believe we are writing our best music right now. But what I want my legacy to be has almost nothing to do with the music. I’m sure each member of our band would answer this question differently, but for me, I want my legacy to be what I was able to contribute to my peers. I want to help create the bill to make sure female singer songwriters are on stage as much as possible. I want the green room before a show to be a welcoming place where the bands can hang and collaborate, maybe for the first time. I want to be there when someone is playing a song for the first time and then the 20th time, so I can tell them how it’s gotten better every time. For me, being apart of other people’s music journey through mine, is what I want to be remembered by. When the music being made is good, there’s a little stroke of magic that happens. There is something to be said about being there when it happens.

I organized a show in Atlantic City in NJ at Anchor Rock Club in May of 2024, all the bands were folks I knew through the music scene, some of which I had never gotten to play with before. Everyone was hanging out together in the green room and before we knew it members from different bands were on stage collaborating live in front of an audience for the very first time. I’ll never forget that. It brought us all so much joy and energy to be together and collaborating. A bunch of us went out after and partied into the morning. It was really special.

Sometimes making music can feel lonely or isolating. It’s easy to get into your own head. I make bringing others in a priority. I hope that doing that gives just as much to them as it gives to me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I touched on this a lot in the last question, but I got into music because it was inevitable. It always felt right and I think I was bound to find myself here. I am not formally trained in the way some musicians are, I can’t read music, and I would not say I’m a particularly good guitar player, but I think I have a pretty good ear. More importantly though, I surround myself with a band of people who all have something I don’t. Each member of Nylon Ghost brings SO MUCH to table. I’ll bring a melody and lyrics to the group, I’ll talk about a song in very grand conceptual kind of way and then they all bring their individuality to it. If anyone ever heard our music and enjoyed it, it’s important for them to know that it wouldn’t be what it is without Bruce McCausland, Nolan Maher, Michelle Gannon, and Ben Adiletto; every member of Nylon Ghost.

We’ve also gotten to work with other incredible people like Scott Stitzler at Studio North in Philadelphia. Scott has this incredible energy, he makes you feel very comfortable very quickly. He meets you where you’re at and works to take you to the next level at a pace that suits you best. Scott gets me to sing in ways I didn’t think I ever could. He knows what I’m capable of before I do.

Our friend Daniel Wright is an INCREDIBLE musician. He’s played with the likes of Seal and The Who. Dude is a Yamaha Artist. He’s played on several of our songs and really stepped up and been a mentor throughout our song writing and recording. We’re so lucky to know people like this.

When I think about our band, I think about collaboration… that’s what I want other people to think about when they hear us or see us somewhere.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s okay to be sincere. I think when you are young there’s a lot of concern about being cool, edgy, mysterious… that’s great, those things are all appealing, but you can still be sincere too. The first band I was in, I was more worried about the songs being cool or being edgy and mysterious when interacting with people before or after shows. It was forced, it felt weird… hell, it even made me uncomfortable. When I started putting myself out there in an honest and sincere way, was when I started to see the progress I was looking for. Whether that’s how you interact with audience members after the show, or your tone when you reaching out to venues or other artists. Just be yourself. People can smell bullshit from a mile away. Everyone has to play the social media game and we all know what that looks like. I think there is something to be said about authenticity and sincerity, that’s something people can latch on to and believe in. Most importantly, the music got better when I started being honest with myself and others. I could write lyrics that were coming from a super vulnerable place because I knew that the persona I was putting out there was consistent with that. When it’s all coming from a real place, you are just constantly practicing this kind of radical authenticity, and in turn, you can really create stuff people can relate to.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For a show in Philly, Sloppy Jane was looking to borrow some gear from a local band, so I volunteered ours. If you’ve ever seen Sloppy Jane live, you know what an incredible performer Haley Dahl is. When she’s on stage, she really goes somewhere, it’s really special to watch. I was talking to Haley after the show and I asked her, “When you are up there and you are being ‘her,’ where do you go? Is it like Haley takes a back seat and she takes the wheel?” She smiled and gave it some thought, and I’m paraphrasing, but she said something to the nature of, when I’m not on stage, I’m thinking about being being on stage, and when I’m up there, I feel the most myself. Again, this is the gist of what she said, but when she answered my question, something clicked. I think to some degree, when we are actively getting to authentically and sincerely create the art and be the artist, in that moment… That’s when we are allowing ourselves to be kind of feral, fully what we were meant to be. That is the real gift.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/nylonghost
• Instagram: @nylongh0st (the o in ghost is the number zero)
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7bZfMCTGXPqbpcMdYbjYfB?si=NVisxwvES1G_UgGM6sYfyw

Image Credits

Images by Bruce McCausland and Sarah Bruno