The Joy In It: Singer/Songwriter Kacy Hill
Photos of Kacy Hill taken in her back garden in Los Angeles.
Kacy Hill is an artists whose career has so far been that of simultaneous advantage and inhibition.
Kacy Hill was born and raised in Arizona before relocating to Los Angeles in her teens. Through mutual connections, she met a producer and began her musical endeavors, in some ways hindered by her lack of classical training, but in other ways, the lack of formality allowed her to explore music uninhibited by tradition, or all of the weight that comes with artistic context. She was signed to G.O.O.D Music upon the release of her second song, an accomplishment in itself, but also an intimidation, because when you get success quickly, what do you do? You make more music, you justify your success, you find it within yourself.
Unpretentious, unimposing, but not without substance, Kacy Hill is a band you should know.
Okay basic question. How long have you been playing music?
How far back do you want to go?
How far back are you willing to go?
I’ve been playing music for as long as I can remember. I grew up playing oboe and saxophone, sang in choir - I grew up in Arizona and it wasn’t really a job option to play music. I wasn’t in pop culture. I would go to shows and was into the MySpace scene, but I wasn’t into the pop star world. I was into small shows, indie bands, but I didn’t play guitar or write songs. If anything, if I were going to do music, I was going to go to school to be an oboist.
I moved to LA right after high school and thought I’d stay for a few months, take a year off from school and get some financial independence or whatever. Within the first month, I modeled for American Apparel which snowballed into all these other jobs, and this photographer introduced me to a producer and I started writing songs with him. I feel like I’ve done things in reverse, because I got signed really soon after that. I got a deal with the second song that I wrote.
What’s the reverse aspect of that?
If most people take ten years to figure out their craft and get signed, I feel like I got signed and am only now, eleven years in, unraveling things and figuring things out. I feel like I’ve been a part of so many eras of music. Like in my career, I started off in this Hip-Hop world, and am now going backwards and figuring out what I’m wanting to do.
So you found success quickly. Is that scary? Do you have any strange feelings or insecurities about kicking off so quickly and now having to face expectations and like prove that you’re good?
There are a lot of parts to that answer. I tell people sometimes that it is terrifying to have the first thing that you do be…
Good?
I don’t even think it was good, I think someone just saw potential in it. I had really intense imposter syndrome. Maybe that’s the beauty of things sometimes because they accidentally work. I don’t know why it was working, I just had one song, and didn’t even know how to make more.
What was the pressure trying to learn to make an album and moving on into the music industry?
I didn’t know what I was doing, I was very insecure. I didn’t grow up with money at all, and at the time, my dad was really struggling with money. It was this weird world that I was living in where I was surrounded by people who were very successful, and then I got this big check, and didn’t know what to do. It was a hundred thousand dollars, which was the most money I had ever seen, but you have to live off of that for a year and pay people out their fees, so it ends up being not a lot of money, and I’d call home and my dad’s scrambling to find the smallest amount of money. I felt like I had to provide somehow, but I couldn’t, because I was living in an expensive city and my money was just disappearing. It was tough to fit in with people who have a lot of money and being invited to dinners and being like, ‘wow I cannot afford this’. The imposter syndrome ran so deep.
All of that said, I don’t have any hate for ‘nepo-babies’ - money or generational wealth as it pertains to making art. I think that plenty of people are talented who grew up in positions of privilege.
I can hate them for you if you like.
It took me so many years to realize that I wasn’t inherently a failure because my first project didn’t do well, but rather a lot of people who are in music and art are able to be successful because they have someone providing for them so that they have the privilege of time. By that I mean when you don’t have the support or stability, you don’t have time to work on your craft because you’re just trying to make ends meat. Every minute you spend in your life is spent trying to survive, and you’re supposed to use your extra minutes to make art.
Someone once said that a poor person’s time is more valuable than a rich person’s, because there are more stakes, more impact.
Even in times where I feel like I’m having a good year, there is still this fear that I have in the back of my head. It’s interesting to realize that that fear doesn’t exist in everyone.
This is an interview about music, right?
Totally! We got side tracked. I was just thinking about the dissonance of someone who grows up without money entering into an industry where everybody has money. I felt a need to assimilate.
Do you think about things economically when you write music?
I think that I am now so far from that era of my life. That was more so the very beginning, where it’s taken me years to unravel that. I’m into this, now. I feel so much more secure in who I am and I think that I’ve surrounded myself with people who have similar values, and that’s a gift. The community that I have is so able to talk about things like that, and maybe it’s just that we come from similar struggles and have an understanding of the world that way. It’s taken me so long to appreciate music making, and to find the joy in it. When I say I did my career in reverse, that’s also kind of what I mean. Eleven years in, I finally am able to really enjoy making music.
I’ve found that when you listen to your discography, there is a lot of searching from album to album or track to track. I’m not quite sure what you’re searching for, but it can be heard in the genre bending and incorporation of different thematics. Have you any thoughts on that?
Sure, I can see that. And every pursuit has been very authentic and inspired by things at the time. Or perhaps learning something new, each project, I’ve learned something that I bring into the music. The second album was me sitting down at the computer and learning production. Then I did all the vocal recording and engineering. On Bug, I did a lot of production and had more of an engineering involvement. On this new album, I decided to really lean into learning guitar. On different albums or tracks, I think it was about learning a new skill and making a project around that.
Who do you think that you make music for? Do you have an idea of your audience and do you consider them when making music?
When I make music, I think I’m just trying to make something that I think is kind of good. When you make something and you’re like, ‘oh shit, this is good, this is exciting,’ it’s a very specific feeling - like you’ve made something worthwhile. I think that my audience, when I’m playing a show, I feel like I see myself in them. They’re weirdos, and I mean that in the most loving way, because it’s how I see myself. I feel like we are all kind of weird - never quite fitting into one thing, the floaters. These are terms of endearment.
