Louisiana native and Brooklyn resident, Kristin Diable, has been touring regularly and releasing albums on her own imprint, Speakeasy Records since the early 2000’s. Recently her tune “Gypsy Queen” was picked up by the TV series, One Tree Hill.
We bumped into each other at a college music conference last year. She happened to be coming through WI for a show so I thought we’d get her down to Madison for a special night at Mickey’s Tavern, sharing the stage with Jentri Colello.
After the show we recorded one of her new tunes called, Minnesota and had a chat about the writing process.
I thought I would notate the interview but that proved to be excessively laborious and I had audio for it so I thought this piece could be more mixed media. I concluded that my interviewing voice is akin to a stoned monkey so I did my best to edit out myself asking the questions.
The hook line
of the tune is, “Most days I don’t think of you at all” which is a powerful and interesting line, in that it is both intensely personal but also accessible and relatable as a listener.
“I know exactly what those words mean… and it’s what they’re not saying…It starts off in all different ways like sometimes I’ll get a line and that line says everything – that one line – it’s just it. And I have to write the song around that line. Those are the best songs I think – and those are rare – those are the really special songs”
“Generally I’m not trying to condense my experience into a song
because I’m experiencing all of these things…. It’s slow… It processes really slowly and you know three months after I’ve experienced something it’s like this fuckin’ revelation and everything makes sense all the sudden. But I didn’t even know that I was aware it made sense. All the little pieces were just sitting there in your person and you put them together and suddenly you have this great song and you understand your life… and songs are uncannily insightful in new scenarios that you haven’t even figured out yet…”
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