A gifted artist who plays banjo, fiddle, acoustic and electric guitar, McKain Lakey is also a songwriter, teacher, sound engineer and luthier. Her recently released album, SOMEWHERE, showcases her devotion to old time country and folk music. We spoke with her recently to learn of her journey as a young devotee to folk and roots music, her wood working skills, her studies at the celebrated Berklee College in Boston as well as the recording of her most impressive new release.
Tell me about your first introduction to playing music?
I am originally from Washington State, out in the north-west. I started playing music when I was about eleven or twelve. I started taking guitar lessons and my teacher was a lovely woman and the first person that really exposed me to music and in particular folk music. She also introduced me to the community of folk artists in the north-west. They were mostly older folks so I was the young kid running around, trying to learn from all of these players.
It’s quite unique to hear of an 11-year-old listening to folk music.
The first music that I started learning were the songs by Elizabeth Cotton. As it happened my teacher had learnt directly from Elizabeth. For me that was a special way of starting to learn folk music, particularly as a girl, because I felt this was like lineage that was passed down from woman to woman. That was my first exposure to folk music. It also meant that I was connecting with different people and different age groups and also learning the history of folk music. The technical part was important but I was probably more drawn to the human side of it at that time.
Alongside your song writing, performing and teaching you are also a skilled luthier. How did that come about?
I grew up doing a lot of wood working with my dad: he always had projects going around. I gained a deep understanding of working with wood. After college I decided that I wanted to know all aspects of music, including the woodworking and creation of the instruments that I played. I got to know a lovely older gentleman who is a luthier and I basically asked him if I could learn from him. He took me under his wing. It was a sort of casual apprenticeship, learning how to build guitars and other instruments. I don’t do it to make money because I am really slow at it. Building instruments is something that I do between all the other things. It’s really a way to relax for me and something that I love, but not as a career.
Travelling to learn the history of music seems equally important to you. Why is that?
The last few years before the pandemic hit, I was spending half the year teaching music and the other half on tour playing shows. It was a combination of factors and learning the history of music was definitely one. I did want to dig in and learn and see all the various regional areas, the music played there and the nuances of those areas. But some of it was just simply wanting to see the country, meet people and see what life is like in different places.
You recorded your first album WEST in 2018. It’s quite acoustic and stripped back, much more so than your new release SOMEWHERE.
In 2018 I decided to concentrate on music full time. I knew I was going to be spending a long time on the road and WEST was something that was recorded live in a friend’s living room in Birmingham, Washington before touring. The album is certainly where I come from with old time acoustic music. The new album SOMEWHERE was an idea in the back of my head for a long time. Especially after travelling solo for a long time, I was looking for an excuse to make a record that people could dance to.
You selected a producer, Johnny Sangster, who has worked with rock bands such as The Posies, Mudhoney and Supersuckers for the new album. What drew you to him?
Before I started taking guitar lessons as a child, my upbringing was very much rock and roll. I did have a love of gritty and analogue type music with a bit of an edge that goes along with that. With SOMEWHERE I wanted to capture some of that sound and some of that grittiness. I was also interested in recording to tape as I thought that it would be a really cool thing to do. Johnny has a lot of experience doing analogue recording. I knew I wanted to have a folk-influenced album with the rock edge to it production style wise. I felt Johnny was the ideal person to capture that.
Alongside your own playing there is some timely brass inclusions, in particular the ripping sax solo by Jane Covert-Bowlds on Decibel Jezebel.
I still get chills listening to that sax solo no matter how many times I hear it. I just love brass. And it also turns out that some of my very closest friends in Seattle are horn players, so the day that we did horn overdubs was my favourite part of the recording with all my friends just hanging out and playing horns. I was trying very hard to give each of them little features on the album because I love them as people and also their playing.
I also hear some New Orleans influences on the album. Am I right?
There are definitely some. The title track especially was inspired by some Dixieland style. It’s a sound that is still new to me so I’m still digging into and learning more Louisiana specific styles. I’m not an expert by any means but I love a lot of music and the various styles that come out of Louisiana.
When and where was the album recorded?
I was supposed to be in Washington last March for a friend’s wedding when Covid hit and as a result I was stuck in the north-west for a lot of the pandemic. I had been planning to record in Seattle and then tour out there but I wound up stuck in Washington. We started recording in August and spent a period of nine days on the album. Three days of basic tracking, three days of overdubs and three days of mixing. Those first few days it was just me, bass and drums, we recorded all of them live. I was in a booth and they were masked in another room. We recorded all the basic tracks together which I loved. We had horns fiddle, guitar and pedal steel overdubbed.
Where can people get copies of the album or stream it?
The album is accessible on all streaming platforms at present. I already have CDs and a bunch of people have already ordered them which is awesome. I’ve been directing people towards Bandcamp to order it as they are better to artists than most other places. I would love to do a vinyl and that is something that I want to look down the road a bit.
What expectations did you have when writing and recording the album?
As I mentioned before, on one level the goal was simply to get people dancing. (laughs) That was possibly one aim for me given that the album was made during the pandemic and I was definitely missing dancing, celebrating, being with people and being in a joyful space. On a very base level I just want to make people happy as I thought ‘everything is so sad now: I want a reason to celebrate.’ The flipside had been getting people dancing also possibly means better festival slots, especially coming from a background where I have been playing acoustic, solo music in most cases. I had probably made people sad and crying playing solo, so hopefully this album will make them happy. This album has been in the back of my mind for a bunch of years and I think there was a part of me that wanted to prove something to myself. I went to Berklee College to study music. That was a really challenging time for me. It was pretty hard and very competitive. I actually came away from that experience feeling pretty down and possibly lost as to where I was musically, and not actually wanting to play music I know at that time.
Tell me more about your experience at Berklee College.
Part of the experience was not being seen for what I was capable of. There are a lot of very talented people that go to that school, so it is very easy to get lost. After that experience I felt like I had something to prove with SOMEWHERE, as in ‘this is what I do, this is what I am capable of and this is the level that I set for myself.’ I wanted to make that a reality for me: that was the personal side of actually proving that to myself. A large part of my experience at Berklee was very much gender related. At the time that I was there the college had only thirty per cent women attending. I found that culturally in the school there was quite a lot of disregard for the experiences of women students. At least that was true when I was there. Often the culture at the college was looking at students and thinking ‘okay you’re a cocky, we need to take you down a peg or two.’ Whereas, I started being pretty intimidated in the first place, so being taken down a few pegs I was in negative peg territory (laughs.) It was also a culture shock for me going from a rural town to the middle of Boston with a lot of people who had been training to go to Berklee for ever. I randomly applied to the school and received a scholarship, so maybe I was a little bit out of my depth at that time.
Do you consider there were many positives from the time spent there?
I’m not sure. That’s actually a question that I ask myself a lot. The things that I am most grateful about are the friendships that I made there, people that are very important to me in my life both musically and for their friendship. When I was there, I was a vocalist, though I did not do a lot of singing as I got caught up in a lot of trauma. I studied audio engineering which was great in some ways and challenging in other ways. I am grateful that I got the theory background of music at college but most of the technical skills I had already developed myself, either before or after Berklee. Most of the study that I have done pretty deeply around folk music history in the US has been since going to college, basically learning things myself. It was helpful to know that I was capable of learning what was put it front of me there, that part should be credited to the college: but as far as the experience of the school itself, I feel that I have been in recovery for many years. (laughs) It’s difficult for me to say overall how I benefited from the experience. Although, it does look good on my CV, so I’ll just run with that.
Have you been able to set up touring dates now that things are starting to open up again?
I have been very slowly dipping my toe into playing and booking shows. My schedule at present is still pretty open but I’m hoping that things will begin to open up as the summer goes on and into the fall. I am hoping to strike a balance between doing some solo shows and then bringing the band for bigger shows and for festivals. I am envisaging a five-piece band. That would be me, bass, drums and probably Jane on saxophone and someone ideally playing fiddle or pedal steel. I would consider travelling anywhere that wants to have me. (laughs) In the short term, it’s North America but I would love to come out to Ireland and the UK at some stage.
Interview by Declan Culliton