3 Questions for Hooves and Beak, 2010 Sound Off! Finalist

You’ve traveled from your home in Lawrence, Kansas to Seattle, where you’re experiencing some musical success. What has your journey been like, musical or otherwise?

It's been strange. Living in Kansas I always had a feeling, an itching if you will, that I needed to move, that I wanted to get out and experience life in other places. My uncle told me I could live with him and his kids, so I jumped at the opportunity. It's surprising in many ways what moving does to you. I came here not really knowing what I wanted, just knowing that nothing was left for me at home. 2009 was a rough year for me, and my music definitely shows it. Too much drinking and other debaucheries I won't mention. I was heartbroken when I first got here. Spent a lot of time drunk in a hot-tub, looking for work, not finding any. To be blunt I was a wreck. I couldn't write music at all, which was terrifying. I had no instruments for the first two months; that didn't help either. I fell in love with the metro system and spent money on things I didn't need. People used to listen to me play piano at the public library though the door. I was this stupid little girl lost in a big city. One day I was sitting in an apple tree in my uncle's backyard and I just started singing again. That's when I knew it'd be all right, that I could be here. A couple of weeks later I got a guitar and started writing like crazy. After I got into Sound Off!, my parents were convinced to ship my harp out. I haven't stopped writing since.

You play harp, accordion, banjo, and piano, but you seem to have settled on harp. Of course you probably hear plenty of comparisons to Joanna Newsom, but your vocals and playing style sound more to us like a dynamic Tiny Vipers. So we have to ask, what are your influences?

The reason I play harp all the time is because it's what people are captivated by, it's what they love to hear. It's really hard to get shows as "the girl who plays guitar." Now you lug a harp into a bar and people just stare. I also in turn have written most of my good songs on it, because I enjoy playing it the most. Not to say that I don't also love playing guitar or the piano. If the piano is my home then the harp is my lover, and the guitar is my punching bag, and the banjo is...well it's hard to pin down a banjo, maybe a pen pal or the dog next door. You love it but never see it.

My Influences. Well, there are two kinds. There are the musicians that I just listen to that influence me indirectly and then the people that have truly changed my music. I like to talk more about the latter: Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, Ani DiFranco, Fiona Apple, Dorothy Ashby, George Gershwin, Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Hope For Agoldensummer, Lou Reed, Andrew Bird... lots of jazz. I like to sing along to jazz lines. Took two years of jazz piano, changed my life forever.

Also if I could, I would like to say something about the comparisons to Joanna. Joanna Newsom is the reason I found the harp. I was 16, and when I heard her play I knew I wanted to learn that instrument. Something about the way she played it touched me deeply and profoundly around the time I started writing music. However, pretty much the only thing me and Joanna have in common is that we are both ladies, and we both play the harp. Our voices, melodies, technique, song-writing style... different. It's like comparing Bob Dylan to Eric Clapton or John Mayer or any one of the millions of musicians that use guitars, you know?

What are your plans for the future?

Oh Dear. Plans? Well my plan was to get a job, make money, and then go back to Kansas, wait to become 21 and then be a bartender and make more money. That was good enough for me 6 months ago. Now I'm wishy-washy like John Kerry and can't make up my mind. Seattle is beautiful and beguiling, she might make me stay over the summer. I've heard the Northwest has the uncanny ability to suck you in and keep you.
I will go back to Kansas eventually. I miss all my friends, my sister, old lovers, people who kept me around and will let me sleep on their couches and eat their leftover pasta. But I will never stay. I cannot be in a place so closed off from everything else anymore. For all the things I love about Kansas there's about a million more I cannot stand. I've realized that it's not where you live, it's what you make of it. I have a sneaking suspicion that people are the same everywhere you go. You move somewhere new and it finds a way to remind you of the place you just were.
That being said I have two new plans. Either get famous and continue to play in Seattle. Get fat on gelato (my new love) and work it off biking to gasworks (my other new love). Or go live in my dead grandmother's house hidden in a small town in northern California and write songs on her grand piano aka hideaway. So my plans for the future are up in the air. I'm saving my money so that some day I can finally leave this country and go newer places and write newer songs. As long as I keep writing music and getting into trouble I'll be happy.

I want to say good luck to everyone at the finals! We are all just trying to hone our crafts so I guess I really don't care who wins, although I'm sure my parents do. I just like the satisfaction of knowing that people enjoy hearing my music and I enjoy playing it for them.