The title track on Kristeen Young’s new EP, V the Volcanic, refers to Violet Bick from It’s a Wonderful Life. Every song on the record, in fact, is written from the point of view of some overlooked cinematic character (including the angry apple tree from The Wizard of Oz). Young, who was wearing plastic bubble dresses long before Lady Gaga, left St. Louis for New York in the ’90s; at the time, her inventive look (dresses made from Wonder Bread bags) and distinctive sound (keyboards with vocals that made Kate Bush and PJ Harvey sound practically C.P.A.-ish) was, for whatever reason, too much for the Midwest. In New York, she was discovered by Tony Visconti, which led to her contributing vocals on David Bowie’s Heathen and opening for Morrissey on his 2007 tour. She came back to St. Louis last fall to shoot the video for her band’s “Fantastic Failure” (written from the point of view of Elizabeth Taylor’s go-go–era Queen of the Nile in Cleopatra) at City Museum and Citygarden. We talked to Young earlier this year, during a musical residency at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles. She’s performing two shows in St. Louis this month, at Sci Fi Lounge (201 Crestwood Plaza) on August 19 at 8 p.m., and Cicero’s (6691 Delmar) on August 26 (call 314-862-0009 for more times and prices).
St. Louis Magazine: I wanted to talk to you first about the video for “Fantastic Failure,” because everyone was so excited about it. This is your first video?
Kristeen Young: I didn’t make a video till now, mostly just because I’ve been on my own. I’ve never been on a label, really. So I’ve never had a budget for that, and other priorities seemed to exist. It’s seemed for a while that videos weren’t that important, but last year I just knew I had to do it. And video’s important now again. And I always wanted to do it, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to.
SLM: What was the process of shooting like?
KY: We did it over two and a half days. It went pretty quickly; we shot at the City Museum on a Friday night, and then the next day we went to a practice space and shot the indoor performance stuff there. And then Sunday night, we shot everything with the kids on the street. It all went pretty smoothly. We were lucky with the weather, which I know can be pretty dodgy in St. Louis. [Laughs.]
SLM: Now, you’re doing residencies? You’re in California?
KY: Yes, I’m in L.A. doing a residency, and it’s kicking off the release of the EP, and it’s going really well. I probably should have done this a long time ago too [Laughs], but I’m a slow learner.
SLM: Now, when you say residency—are you in a nonprofit space?
KY: Oh, I’m just playing every Monday night at this venue called Hotel Café, this small little club. That’s all it is, I’m just playing there weekly.
SLM: Ah, OK—I’m being a pinhead about this, and thinking it’s academic!
KY: It’s an industry term, but it can be academic also.
SLM: I was reading about the EP, and I guess one term you could use—though I hesitate, because it’s been used prejoratively—but it’s kind of a concept album? Or a holistic thing, where all the songs came from movies you were watching. I love that you wrote from the point of view of the Angry Apple Tree from the Wizard of Oz.
KY: I was hesitant to delve into Wizard of Oz, because it’s such covered territory, with Wicked and everything. But no one’s ever said much about the apple tree [Laughs.] It’s such covered territory.
SLM: Also Violet from It’s a Wonderful Life. That movie drives me crazy, but she is such another wonderful underrated character.
KY: The movie drives you crazy because it doesn’t make any sense! The message in it is so weird—serve everyone else, don’t do anything for yourself, everyone else’s dreams came true, but to have friends you have to give up all of your dreams…[Laughs.]
SLM: Did you have other material that didn’t make it onto this EP? I was curious what your songwriting process is like, whether you’re the kind of artist who has outtakes, or writes straight through and uses everything?
KY: Sometimes in the past, I’ve written a little more than what ended up on the album, but for the most part, I’m not like that. I aim and shoot, and I know what I want to write. This one, I knew I wanted it to be seven songs, so I really didn’t do any more than that.
SLM: And it sprang out of this whole funk thing, which is kind of charming—on the website, you talk about this ’70s–’80s Rick James thing you were first inspired by.
KY: I was going through a period where I was just very sick of myself, and I wasn’t feeling like a great success; there had been a series of events that led me to that place. I’d never had writer’s block, but that was the first time I felt like I didn’t want to write from the same place I had been. The idea of keyboards made me ill, and nothing inspired me. So I was just watching a bunch of TCM (Turner Classic Movies), and just all of a sudden got a song idea from one of the characters’ perspectives. And I thought, that’s what I’m going to do—just drown in these movies, and become the characters. Because I always write from my own perspective. I know that when you take on other characters, you can’t get rid of your own perspective, but at least it’s a lesser percentage. Also, I was really tired of the place I was coming from musically…I didn’t want to come from such an angsty place. I was just so down. So I just started thinking about going back to what I was excited about when I was a kid, and what I was listening to as a kid. When I first started writing, I went back to St. Louis and stayed at the Cheshire Inn. And I did a lot of programming there, working on songs there, because the early songs were the more funk-oriented songs. It was so much fun! And it lifted my spirits to work on that.
SLM: I know you, like a lot of artists have a complicated relationship with where they’re from. Sounds like you were doing some processing there, and making peace with St. Louis, in a way.
KY: I have always, even after I moved away, I always come back; I never stay away. I always come to visit a couple of times a year. I love St. Louis. This is going to sound strange, but I just love the streets. I love the way it looks, I like the way it feels, I like the restaurants, I like everything about it. I think the people, not everyone, cause I still have people who come to see me play there, I always felt like the media or something always had a problem with me there, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why. I feel like it’s their problem, because I don’t really have a problem with them.
SLM: People were passing your video all over Facebook—they were very excited about it. So maybe people are just starting to figure it out now?
KY: I felt like people have been really supportive of me there. But even during the Morrissey tour, and I came to St. Louis and opened, they [the media] called my dress fugly, my bubble dress that Gaga went on to steal and wear [Laughs], so I just think it’s bizarre. I just don’t understand it—do you have to call my dress ugly? Other things have happened too, that are just bizarre to me, and I don’t understand it, but it doesn’t stop me from going, because I love it there.
SLM: When Gaga came out wearing that, I had déjà vu, now I know why!
KY: I designed it, too; it was more than just wearing it.
SLM: Someone told me that you designed dresses out of Wonderbread bags, too.
KY: On my first tour, I wore a dress that I made out of Wonderbread fabric [Laughs.]
SLM: Speaking of tours, that’s what you’re headed out to do after you finish up these residencies, right?
KY: Right. I’m hoping for this to happen in August. I might be shooting another video in St. Louis in August, too; it’s exciting. It will probably be inside, I’ve got another idea for it.
SLM: So what are the shows for this tour going to be like, in terms of the aesthetics?
KY: I always make my own outfits; I’ve made some outfits for these shows. I’ve been playing by myself, prior to this I was playing with a drummer for quite a while. I’m doing all these shows by myself, and I do have set where I play some piano-oriented bombastic stuff….and this tour is also based on residencies, so it’s different than anything I’ve done before. I just felt like I needed to pare down. It won’t stay this way forever, but for these few months, it’s going to be like that. It feels like ridding yourself of the old stuff before moving on to something else. But it’s been also empowering in a way, to see that I can do this by myself completely. Then when you know that, you can build from there, because you feel self-confident enough to do things by yourself, that’s a great place to build from.
SLM: Anything you want to add?
KY: I guess I could talk about why I shot the video in St. Louis. First, because New York and L.A. are so overdone. You’ve seen the images a million time. But also because the message of the song is about doing something grand and wonderful, even if you don’t feel like a huge success, or feel invisible. That message is on the whole record. I thought that would be a great reason to shoot in St. Louis, too. It’s overlooked. A lot of people don’t even know where it is! Some people think it’s in Louisiana, or just have no clue at all. So it had to do with the message of the song, too. And it’s an extremely beautiful place, but so many people don’t even know.
SLM: Some of those shots are among some of the most stunning footage of this city I think I have ever seen.
KY: I know! Seaton Lin, the director, was capable of doing that because he didn’t grow up there seeing the same Arch images constantly [Laughs.] So he came from a completely different place. And he found it to be very dramatic, which is why it ended up like that.
