It’s 10 am local time in Portland, Oregon when Lonesome Highway makes contact with Kassi Valazza via Zoom. An early bird by nature - ‘I usually get up around six, so this is late for me,’ she says - Kassi is between tours, having recently completed a run of solo dates on the West Coast. She heads for Europe in April, for dates in the UK and Ireland, including two shows at Kilkenny Roots Festival. Recently signed to Loose Records in the UK, her latest recording, KASSI VALAZZA KNOWS NOTHING, is due for release in May. Born and raised in Arizona but currently living in Portland, her music on the album is a cosmic journey with gentle and considered ballads plus more diverse and psychedelic inclusions. The album’s title is somewhat tongue in cheek with her studio backing band being TK & The Holy Know-Nothings.
Was your relocation from Arizona to Portland, Oregon career related?
No, I actually wasn't even playing music when I moved to Portland. I went to school there to study painting. I had friends who lived in Portland and I wanted to leave home but also be close to home. So, I stayed on the West Coast and went to Portland and I've been here almost 10 years now. I actually only started playing music professionally in Portland.
I understand that your dad was a musician. What type of music was he playing and listening to?
Yeah, my dad was a little bit of a music snob and also my mom was kind of strict about what I could listen to. So, I felt that it was easier to just listen to whatever they were listening to. My dad listened to a lot of folk and country music. He grew up in the 60s and bands like Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills and Nash were really big influences for him. That's kind of what I was hearing.
I can hear a lot of West Coast 60s music in your work, but also UK folk music from that decade with Sandy Denny certainly coming to mind.
I actually didn't grow up with Sandy Denny or Fairport Convention’s music. It wasn't something that my dad was actively listening to in America. I found that stuff on my own and over the years I’ve fallen in love with that electric folk sound. It's incredible.
Whereas many of your peers might quote Townes Van Zandt and Joni Mitchell as their main influences, you’re more likely to make reference to the lesser-known but hugely talented, Michael Hurley.
Yes, I got to know him through Portland. One of the first shows I played in town was opening for Michael Hurley and he completely blew me away. I'd never seen somebody able to play music in any kind of way like him. He'd either have a sax player with him or just a bass player. He always has these weird combinations of performers and ensembles of players and it always sounded so interesting. You'll still never hear anybody like him. He's completely his own creature, which I love about him as an artist. I think that's what makes a really incredible artist, somebody who sounds entirely like themselves.
He's been recording music back to the mid-70s and yet he is still very much an underground artist.
Which is also why I love him. I don't think his intention was ever to get famous. I think he just does stuff because he likes doing it and I think that's often where really good music comes from
There seems to be a vibrant music scene in Portland with The Laurelthirst Pub very much the centre for alternative roots music. Looking at their listings I see that Jerry Joseph, TK & The Holy-Nothings, The Pine Hearts and you are all due to play there soon.
Oh, yeah. And that's where Michael Hurley plays all the time too. We're really lucky to have that space. I've had an excellent time playing shows in Portland, everybody here is so supportive of the arts. Even during COVID, they were trying to find ways to safely put on shows and support musicians. I feel like we've been doing great here.
Your last full-length album DEAR DEAD DAYS was released in 2019 but I understand it had been shelved for a few years before its release.
Yeah, well, we had recorded it and it was pretty much done. There were things about it that I just didn't like, so I just wanted to redo it. It took almost four years to finally finish it and put it out. And I'm glad I did that because it sounds a lot better than it would have. I did it with a group of friends, I didn't have a label and was not working with a manager. It was literally me and a group of my closest friends just trying to make art. And I was lucky that years later people found out about it and liked it.
What changes did you make and what did you not like about the original recordings?
There were people on it that I felt weren’t doing what I needed for the songs and so we changed a bunch of songs and I wrote some new ones. It was like when there's no time limit and you don't have professionals glaring at you trying to get something done. Why not just take as long as you need to make something? I think there was something really magical about those days in the process of making that album. I've definitely done recordings where I could have worked on it for ten years and probably never have been satisfied. But I do think there is something special about that project when we all knew that it was finished. It was recorded all over Portland. It's so hard to get housing here because it's so expensive. I had moved in those four years maybe seven times. So, all of those songs are recorded in different houses and basements. What makes it such a special record is that it was really disjointed, kind of a mess, yet like a quilt, it finally came together.
Your 2022 four-track EP HIGHWAY SOUNDS is a genre-shifting listen that includes desert noir, country and folk. Was it your intention to create four distinctively different tracks for that record?
There were four different types of tracks on the record all right. It's funny and may sound stupid, but I never intended DEAR DEAD DAYS to be a country album and I never intended HIGHWAY SOUNDS to be a Western album. I just like a lot of different sounds. I think as an artist you can't put yourself in a corner because if I was just doing the same thing over and over again, I would be miserable. And I'd probably be a banker rather than an artist.
Watching Planes Go By, the first single from the new album opens with the lyrics ‘Michael blames his broken foot on lost time, sitting by the window watching planes go by.’ I wondered if this was a reference to Michael Hurley.
I don’t know, maybe. I think all of my songs are just reflections of myself and people I know. I don't think that we should take them super literally. That’s the fun with songwriting. When you hear something, you should be able to relate it to yourself in some way. I like a lot of balance in everything that I do and I think a lot of the melodies and the way that I write music is very much the way I feel. There’s also a lot of sunshine in my music. I feel that it's really important to balance that out. Also, I just might not be a very positive person in general.
That track and others on the album like Welcome Song are beefed out with some fabulous fuzzy guitar breaks yet other tracks on the album are considered mid-tempo ballads. What are your criteria for both musical directions?
It's all different, it's all depending on how I'm recording. On the new album everything was live, all the vocals and all the instrumentation. We recorded in a room together with the band TK and The Holy Know-Nothings, who are just such incredible musicians. You're rarely going to find a songwriter that writes and composes every single song; it's a combination of people working things out together, a combination of what I want and what the band hears. It’s all about collaboration. They hadn't heard the songs before we went into the studio and within the course of five days, we had it done. Anything can happen when people don't know the songs because it’s a lot looser and more magic can happen, and you don't overthink it. And I think that's what happened with this album.
The guitar work on the album is amazing.
Yeah, that's Jay Cobb Anderson and Taylor Kingman playing together. There's a song on the album where they're kind of playing duelling guitars. And that was really fun for me because my favourite part of playing music live is just not doing anything and watching the others play. It was really fun for me to record those with them – they're incredible and I also feel the songs worked out.
You delayed the release of the album until May of this year. Was there a particular reason for that?
I think that was mainly down to the problem of getting vinyl. Some of the wait time for labels is up to two years so I got really lucky working with Fluff and Gravy Records and Loose Music because this album is coming out way sooner than I thought it would. They are getting it out way quicker than most labels would have.
You’re due to play dates in late April and early May in Ireland at both Kilkenny Roots Festival and The Workman’s Club in Dublin. Will you be solo or with other players?
I’ll have two friends with me playing keys and pedal steel. We’ll be doing a different rendition of the majority of the songs from the new album. With a little trio, it will be a psychedelic quiet intimate time at the shows.
Interview by Declan Culliton