An Interview With Bluegrass Musician Kelly McFarling

Kelly McFarling is an Atlanta-born, San Francisco-based bluegrass musician with a new album out in May and a cross-country tour starting tomorrow, and she is — full disclosure — also a friend of mine. But the only reason we’re friends is because I’m hoping someday to steal a piece of her clothing and use black magic to become her. Anyway, the album is called Conspire (its official release will be on May 2 in San Francisco, but she’ll be selling it before then on tour), and here she is performing one of its tracks — “This Change.” (You can also get her first album, Distractible Child, on Amazon or iTunes, or hear one of its most popular songs, “Atlanta,” over here. It’s all great.)

Kelly, when did you get that amazing haircut?

The hairs have been in a state of constant cutting and rearrangement for a while — but the real short shortness came this fall — mostly because of a bad blonde bleach job that I impulsively participated in. It was fun for a while, but turns out bleaching your naturally black hair really does cause it a fair amount of damage. Cutting that hair off does a fair amount of damage control.

Who are all those adorable guys in your band?

Adorable guys in my band are as follows:

Jonathan Kirchner on the upright bass.

Andrew Laubacher on the drums.

Tim Marcus on the pedal steel/guitar.

I think the other two guys singing in the video you might be thinking of are the band Goodnight, Texas — made up of Patrick Dyer Wolf, and Avi Vinocur. We’ll be touring with them on this East Coast tour. They’re all adorable and wonderful human beings:) I have spent more time in cars with these humans then probably anyone else in the world, and I still love them deeply, and can’t believe how lucky I am to have such great folks in the band. They’re top shelf top notch high five kind of individuals.

What’s the craziest thing a lovestruck fan’s done at a show or elsewhere? (And don’t be modest, because I know it happens!)

Well — let’s see — crazy fan lovestruck things … There really haven’t been that many crazy things, but one time I got a pretty amazing email of someone professing their deep love of the music — but most importantly their utmost desire to see me do a duet with Mary J. Blige. They claimed that that would be the best thing they had ever seen in their lives, and they encouraged me wholeheartedly to please try to make it happen. That I really owed it to the world to make this collaboration a priority. I think the whole email was in all caps. I’m still working on the McFarling-Blige proposal.

Your new album, Conspire is half you and half another woman, Lia Rose. How did you two link up?

Lia Rose and I met at a comedy/music show in San Francisco. We both played a set, and loved each other’s music. She asked me to sing some harmony for her at a few of her shows, so we started hanging out and making/talking music together. One night we were eating tacos and talking about how we each had about six songs we wanted to record, and Lia suggested we both record six and put them on the same album. I thought is was a great idea — cross-promotion-wise, female-collaborations-wise — and it’s an interesting and different way to release music. We thought this would be a cool project — something different, and I knew my fans would love her stuff and vice versa. It’s a divide-and-conquer tactic.

What percentage of the time do you wear cowboy boots?

I have one pair of cowboy boots I got in Austin in 2009. I wear them 100 percent of the time I perform, 50 percent of the time I’m not on stage, and 100 percent of the time in my mind.

What’s the last album you listened to all the way through?

Well since I just drove 12 hours across the state of Nevada and Utah solo I’ve been doing a lot of full album listening. My favorite for this trip has been Cary Ann Hearst’s Lions and Lambs. That and Michael Trent’s The Winner. These two folks are my old and new favorites. They’re out of Charleston, South Carolina, and I think they’re two of the most talented, raw, and inspiring artists I’ve come across. I highly recommend — especially for driving and singing and wailing in a car by yourself. The other big one is Wolf Larsen’s Quiet at the Kitchen Door — which was just released officially into the world on March 31. Its a beautiful album by one of my own personal heroines.

Kelly McFarling is very likely coming to a city near you: her spring tour starts April 10 in Athens, Georgia, and moves through Atlanta, Duluth, Durham, Charlottesville, D.C., Baltimore, Boston, New York, Knoxville, Asheville, Nashville, and San Francisco. Go! She’s so good!

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