Kari, Kate & Olivia: Boldly braving the ‘boys’ club’ to create compelling music
Packing a concert lineup with all-female artists hasn’t always been easy or common or even welcome.
Just ask singer-songwriters Kari Lynch of the Kari Lynch Band or Kate Pillsbury of The Crane Wives, now veterans of the region’s music scene who’ve battled through adversity, toured the country and worked tirelessly to champion their songs in spite of a “boys’ club” climate that often pervaded the music industry.
Pillsbury noted that female musicians often experience a succession of “micro-aggressions” from those in the music business who dismiss their talents, something that can limit performance opportunities or hamper their growth.
But times are changing, especially with the explosion of talented female singer-songwriters and musicians emerging across Michigan’s music scene in recent years.
“It’s been really cool to see all these up-and-coming women and just more women putting themselves out there and doing it,” said Lynch, who not only fronts her Nashville-based country/Americana band but also releases alt-rock/pop songs as a solo artist (...)
Living the Dream: earning a living doing what you love - Meet Kari Lynch
CANVAS REBEL MAGAZINE
We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kari Lynch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Kari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I think when you choose to pursue a career in the entertainment/creative arts industry, you also choose to take on risks throughout your career. You’re choosing a career path in which there is no guarantee that you’ll be successful, no promise that things are going to work the way you want them to and your ability to reach milestones in your career depends on many different factors that you have zero control over. You have to bank on yourself and believe in the art you are creating. You have to sincerely enjoy what you’re doing and you have to find a way to be ok with making mistakes, failing, being disappointed and then trying again.
In the very beginning of my career it was all about taking risks, trying and then trying again, throwing darts in the dark and hoping something sticks. As an independent artist, you’re in charge of every facet of your career. For me, waiting for someone else to come along and do it or “make it happen” for me wasn’t an option, so I had to learn my way through it, try something and if it didn’t work, try something else. Because of this process, I picked up a ton of useful skills that continue to benefit me now in all aspects of my career. I may not have set out to be a booking agent, a PR rep, a social media manager, an agent, a band manager, a production manager…etc., but I didn’t have that team of people to do it for me. I had to learn those skills and take care of those duties on my own if I wanted to maintain my career, continue to improve my art and build my base in an upward motion. Making the decision early on to just go after it with everything I had and if I needed something done, to learn how to do it the best I could and just do it, benefited me greatly and continues to benefit me.
When I was first beginning to make a name for myself as an artist/songwriter/musician, I was also finishing school and had bartending and serving jobs. At one point I knew if I truly wanted to be able to give my music career all of the time and energy required to make a living from it, I was going to have to do just that. I quit my other jobs and made playing shows and pursuing a career in the entertainment industry my full-time job. It was incredibly difficult and painstaking in the beginning; I’m not going to sugar coat it. I was truly so broke and tired ALL the time from working 12-14 hour days. I played a ton of shows (5-7 nights a week) for several years and spent all of the my free time outside of playing live shows, writing songs, booking shows, recording, fine-tuning my “product” and just practicing as much as I could. After the first few years of being a full-time musician at this speed, I was able to feel some ground beneath me. I was able to save enough money so I didn’t feel like I was constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel. I was playing better and better shows and venues all of the time and the freedom of not having another job tying me to one place, allowed me to travel and take my show on the road. This allowed me to start building my fanbase outside of my home city.
I can successfully say that I have been a full-time musician, songwriter and I’ve worked for myself for the last 12 years. Because of the additional skills I taught myself and learned along the way, I also now work with a production company and get to experience more growth on the business/logistics end of the entertainment industry. I work in this industry full-time on multiple sides of it and I genuinely enjoy the ever-changing work flow. I’m able to write often and work on other creative projects as well. I’m still pursuing many goals and have yet to reach some of them, but the thing about this industry and being a creative person is that you never really reach an end point. You never really feel content with the level you’ve reached because there’s always something new to discover and learn, another goal to reach on the horizon. While that feeling can be difficult to grapple with and it gets exhausting at times, I am the type of personality that, for the most part, thrives on that kind of pacing and enjoys setting new goals for myself and improving along the way, so it works for me.
I’m not saying this is the only way to reach your goals as a full-time musician/songwriter/artist…it’s what worked for me. The best advice I could give anyone though is no matter what, stay true to yourself and your art along the way, always. Honesty and real, raw talent always cuts through, even if it takes a little longer... (click below to read more at Canvas Rebel online)
Kari Lynch Plays The Listening Room in Grand Rapids, MI with special guest opener, Kyle Rasche.
APRIL 29. 2022
LocalSpins.com: Highlight Video from Kari Lynch's homecoming show at Listening Room in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Read Kari's interview with LOCAL SPINS - LOCAL SPINS INTERVIEW
Life & Work with Kari Lynch - Nashville Voyager Magazine
Hi Kari, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve loved music, singing, entertaining and creating from as early as I can remember in my life. I was always listening to music and singing for my family, writing and acting out skits, writing poems and short stories, and living inside my imagination full-time growing up. I was about 7 years old when I began to write my own music and when writing music became everything.
I performed my first original song called, “Do You Love Me” (and yes, I somehow still remember every word) shortly thereafter and I was hooked and convinced that writing songs and performing them was what I was meant to do for the rest of my life. And, I’ve been writing songs and performing them since. Writing has always been my way of figuring out the world around me. If I don’t understand something, I write about it to try to understand it better.
Writing brings me clarity and connection with others, and it’s consistently been my outlet for dealing with difficult moments, situations, and hard times throughout my life. It has been my constant saving grace.
I grew up in a very small town in Michigan called Clare, MI, and was very involved with theater, music and sports. My hometown is so special and supportive. I loved growing up in a small town. Sometimes I wonder what opportunities I might have had earlier in the music industry if I grew up in a bigger city, but I honestly think the community my small town provided truly helped shape me into the type of artist and person I wanted to be and that feels priceless to me.
When I turned 18, I moved to Grand Rapids, MI. In Grand Rapids I studied music at GRCC and studied writing at Grand Valley State University, where I ultimately received my Bachelor’s degree in Writing. Grand Rapids is also where I started playing my first, real live shows and where I formed my band, the Kari Lynch Band, an Alt-Country/Rock Project. I love Grand Rapids. That community has always been so good to me and it was a great place to get started.
But I always knew that I had to move beyond Grand Rapids at some point, to put the feelers out musically and go be a small fish somewhere...(click the button below to read more at Nashville Voyager online.)
