We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Okay Kenedi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Okay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

As an artist, I think you’ve picked the wrong career if you’re concerned about being misunderstood or mischaracterized. It’s common knowledge that art is up for interpretation, I think the unspoken side of the same coin is that the artist is too. For me personally, there are occasions when I’m writing a song and I know exactly what i’m trying to say. There are other times when it seems like the song knows more about what it’s trying to say than I do. Who could understand that? I think the beautiful thing about music is that it never quite belongs to its writer. Songs take on their own life and become something of its own to every person who hears it. I always explain it like this: I may have someone in mind when writing a song, but when someone hears it they’ll think of someone else. Suddenly, that song has a new meaning I didn’t give it. It went out and became something to someone I may never know. That might be the most beautiful thing about music – it’s inability to stay confined to one person’s thought or ideas.

I think an artist’s job is to give language to the human condition. It’s so easy to get caught up in life that we forget what it means or feels like to be human. We need art to hold up mirrors to ourselves and explain our humanness back to us. We need art to make us pause and reflect on what we are. And because being human could never be summarized from a single experience, we need to experience that art with other people. People who do not look like us, people who do not believe like us, people who did not grow up like us. We need art like we need each other. And I’m not sure there’s anything more universal than being human other than maybe being misunderstood.

Okay, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I can’t quite remember when I started writing music, I think I always have. I have little journals from around 5 years old with “Kenedi’s Songs” scribbled on the front in childish handwriting and a few missed letters. I remember writing throughout my middle and high school years, I still have those loose-leaf pages tucked away in a storage bin somewhere. I took piano as a kid. taught myself guitar and was heavily involved in music in school. It wasn’t until I was 19 that someone asked me to show them songs I had written. I sat on the floor of my current bass player’s (Micayla Wise) apartment and shared songs with her. She immediately said, “we need to do something with this.” She has been the major player behind Okay Kenedi since then. I refined some writing and started performing some original music around town with a small band for about 2 years. In 2021, I felt like no traction had been made and decided that I needed to move on from music. I had my last show booked at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta in September 2021. The show was nearly vacant with an audience built by about 4 friends and a few strangers. I decided that if it were going to be my last show, I’d act like it was a sold-out arena. I delivered my last show and unbeknownst to me, Dan Hannon (Manchester Orchestra, Paris Jackson, Julien Baker…etc.) was in the room. He approached me after the show and after a few months convinced me to keep trying. I began working with him in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in January 2022 alongside Michael Shane Wright and Jared Przybysz at Ivy Manor. Together, we recorded a debut record that is set to release this fall. It has been preceded by 4 singles this year. I am very excited about the music we’ve made and more so about the fact that I’m still in the business of making it. This record is a genuine introduction to what I believe will be a long, successful career with already so much history behind it.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

You can’t always be practical! I think it’s difficult for non-creatives to walk alongside their creative friends / loved ones and come to terms with some of their decisions and timetables (or lack thereof). We’ve ventured into a career that requires us to be fluid and for better or worse, slightly impractical…but i guarantee you, no legend was made on practical decisions. On the books, indie artists are out of their minds. It’s very difficult to make a living as an artist or musician, it’s not a stable career, the hours are wild and you never know what might happen next -and we know that! There’s a reason we weren’t able to convince ourselves out of it. The best thing non-creatives can do to support the creatives in their lives is to be understanding and supportive. We both make the world go round.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Go to live shows, buy merch and share music. While streaming music is an important part of any musician’s career, it is the worst way to make money as an artist. Streaming services pay so little per music stream, it would take thousands of streams for an artist to pay one of their bills (100,000 Spotify streams = around $400). Attending live shows, buying merch and helping create traction behind an artist’s work by sharing them on social media are all viable options for throwing real support behind the artists you love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.okaykenedi.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/okaykenedi/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@okaykenedi
• Other: TikTok: @okaykenedi

Image Credits
Micayla Wise likelystorylily