“May you have eyes to see that every soul’s a common ground, break each one open and there’s all this beauty to be found,” K.C. Clifford sings on “Salt,” the first song released from her self-titled seventh album.
It’s been eight years and two kids since K.C. has made a record. A lot has changed in that time period — there are the two children she’s added to her family, more medical emergencies than anyone plans for, and an entire shift in the way listeners devour music made. But the biggest remains within herself.
“It’s my unbecoming,” K.C. says. “It’s choosing to let go of the parts of myself that once saved me but no longer serve me. It’s deciding I no longer have to set myself on fire to keep everyone else warm. It’s my chance at redeeming the dream. First and foremost, this record is for me. That’s why it’s self-titled. It’s me showing up for me for the very first time. It’s me taking up space and not just being okay with it, but thriving there. It’s experiencing agency.”
The three-time Woody Guthrie Award-winning singer-songwriter has been making records since 2000. A lifelong vocalist, K.C. spent her childhood devouring the music her father listened to; a bluegrass musician and original member of Mountain Smoke, his large vinyl collection includes a 45 for every hit from the years 1955 to 1965, along with many others. Her father took a break from music to provide for their family, but music remained an important part of both of their lives.
“If I played my cards right on the rare nights I remember my dad being home at my bedtime, I’d get to go down to his study in my pajamas, hair still wet from my requisite bath. Dad would play records for me, I would dance and we’d sing along. It was the freest I ever saw him — no stress, no weight of the world, no anger — just his love of music.”
There, in his study, she learned names like Simon and Garfunkel, Carole King, The Beatles and Smokey Robinson, not to mention The Supremes, The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder. K.C.’s new record draws from early influences, creating a blend of a little soul, a little gospel, a little ‘70s singer-songwriter, a little Motown, along with a healthy dose of ‘80s pop for good measure.
The album marks the first time K.C. has released an album based entirely around piano; it was produced by Will B. Hunt and features Daniel Walker on piano, Hammond organ, and pump organ; Raul Alfonso on bass; Mike Walker on drums; Randy Sanders and Jared Evans on guitars; Will B. Hunt on percussion; as well as a strings section and gospel choir. It was recorded at Castle Row Studios in Del City, Okla., and Spaceway Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, with strings coming in from Stevie Blacke at Launchpad Studios in Los Angeles.
“All along as the songs were coming together, Dan kept insisting perhaps we should track the record live in the studio, all the players in a room together because this is how the great vintage records were made, before the dawn of the digital age,” K.C. says. “After basic tracks for the last song were tracked on Friday night, and the band had gone home, I had a complete come apart with Dan and Will, in utter disbelief and tears that I was allowed to make another record, let alone make one that sounds like this.”
When K.C. talks about being able to make a record, she’s referencing the other part of her last eight years. At age 37, after years of trying to have a baby, she and her husband realized medical intervention was the only path to becoming a mother. “Worth The Wait” from the new album discusses her experience.
“Infertility was not in my plans. Motherhood was,” K.C. says. “I've never found the right words to explain what infertility feels like as a woman. We are designed to create life, to carry life, to birth life, and then to nurture and nourish life. It's as if the very thing that made me female, made me a woman, was the thing I was incapable of doing. I felt broken. I felt wrong. I felt robbed.”
“A week after my 37th birthday, I got a call from a close friend about a medical study for unexplained infertility. After all the years of me managing the process of getting pregnant, being a part of the study was a true relief. I didn't have to be in control, my amazing doctor was in charge and I was happy to let her be. We were pregnant with Beatrice on the first cycle.”
In 2012, K.C. and her husband welcomed her daughter Beatrice. In 2015, after turning to IVF, their son Hollis was born.
“I live each day knowing I got not one, but two little miracles,” she says. “I am also painfully aware that for many women their happy ending never comes. To this day I carry the effects of the years of stress and treatments in my body. My marriage took its share of the burden, too. Mothering after infertility is a study in wonder. I breathe in my two little loves, and stay in awe of their existence. I would do it all again just to hold them, know them and discover who they are. They were, without question, worth the wait.”
After K.C.’s daughter was born, she and her husband, who’s toured as her sideman in the past, embarked on their first tour as a family. And it was a crash course in how children throw plans out the window. No, really. Way more than you might ever expect. She soon realized that hitting the road was not in their family’s picture, and they settled into life in Oklahoma City. Slowly, K.C. began to find pockets of time to write again. Songs, yes, but also essays.
“When I started posting #TruthBooking essays, I never imagined it would become something bigger,” she says. “I was a new mom battling all the expectations and opinions and I was sick of people only showing their highlight reels online. I set out to be real on social media, cut through the bullshit, and encourage vulnerability and kindness to others and ourselves. To my surprise, other people began to tell their own stories, find their voices, and risk their truth. I've realized this year that I have a desire to help more people do that, and to create a community around vulnerability and holding one another's stories.
And that’s where The Generous Kind comes in. Fueled by online response to her essays and observations, K.C. is putting the finishing touches on a new space online: both a home for her writing as well as a community where others will be able to tell their stories. Future offerings will include workshops and courses, the first set to be launched in early 2020, on writing your own story — something she’s become well-versed in over the past few years. It’s an extension of many of the thoughts and themes presented on the eponymous new record.
“This batch of songs is all about kindness, and the idea that we all, every single one of us, deserve to be seen, heard, and valued,” she says. “By definition, showing up requires being present. The whole concept of being seen, heard and valued disintegrates without being present with one another. It’s about recognizing that every person we encounter has a story, and those stories deserve to be heard and held. And in hearing and holding the truth of each person’s experience, we find that at the core, in the deepest places, we are all very much the same.”
K.C. learned just how powerful writing could be for her as a young adult — after enrolling at Indiana University to study opera, she soon began to feel like everything was coming apart at the seams. In the middle of her junior year, she checked into treatment for an eating disorder. She was twenty. After completing her recovery program, she quit opera. She moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, and her dad gifted her a Martin guitar she still plays.
“During that season of my life, my sanity was intertwined with songwriting,” K.C. says. “If I felt strongly about a situation, or needed to process some big feelings, I would write a song. It was my outlet, how I survived. It would take some years, but eventually, I’d realize other people needed what I was writing, too.”
Within the twelve tracks on K.C. Clifford, she and co-writer Dan Walker approach topics that resonate deeply with K.C., including “Just in Case” and “You Couldn’t Stay,” which center around loss and grief. “Call of Love” and “Rise Up” discuss social justice, humanity and inclusion. “Music In Our Souls,” the first song on the album, is all about rehumanization and the crisis of connection.
“When the opportunity came to write one last feel-good song for the record, I didn’t want it to be empty filler or fluff,” K.C. says. “It’s about coming together and remembering what we have in common, rather than what divides us.”
Both “Ophelia” and “No More Living Small” dive into letting go of the parts of ourselves that no longer serve us.
“As I entered my thirties, I learned the concept of radical self-kindness and self-love, she says. “The ideas felt utterly foreign to me, and entirely out of reach but I wanted to know more. I stayed in therapy, and learned new ways to express my vast and often complex emotional landscape. The healthier I became, the less I needed my old ways of being in the world. This process was messy, and took years. It happened gradually and at times, imperceptibly. One day I woke up and I knew part of me was on her way out, maybe forever. I called her Ophelia.”
K.C. Clifford is about coming into your own, and celebrating all of the pieces it takes to get there. The work there is to do, the unexpected events along the way, and finally, eventually, celebrating what’s there.
“I am more myself than I’ve ever been in all my 45 years. It’s a shedding of the things I put on to hide and mask, so desperate for belonging. I need less of that every day.”