A Conversation with Kami Lyle

PM: So, as sticky a wicket as it may or may not be, the obvious question really is: The first album is so incredible, I love the second album, it's great. Why did it take so long for the second record?

KL: What the hell have I been doing? To me it went really fast. I mean, mostly I was having a lot of fun.

[laughter] 

PM: Yeah, I can relate, because I was having some of that with you, I think.

KL: Exactly. Let me think... I met and married my husband, and somewhere in the middle there I grew all our flowers and planned our wedding, which was really wild. We moved twice, bought and sold two houses. And marriage, there was a lot of marriage. And I don't know, it takes me a really long time to like pack and unpack, and choose the right house, and all of that stuff. I don't know, Frank. Make something intelligent out of that.

PM: Okay.

KL: I also spent a lot of the time really, really enjoying myself, writing--the first half of that time, I really wrote a lot. The second half I really practiced a lot, and throughout all of it, we played a bunch of gigs. So it doesn't feel like wasted time.

PM: Oh, no, and I don't imply that. It's just that time flies, and where was it flying to? And I think you answered that, it was flying in musical, matrimonial--just in the directions that it will. I mean, you certainly married one of my favorite people and favorite musicians, Joey Spampinato. How's that working out for you?

KL: It's great. He's making coffee as we speak.

PM: Right. At 10:20 p.m. That's great, you're really nocturnal creatures.

KL: Yeah, we are. [laughs]

PM: So on top of that working out well for you, which is easy to imagine, Joey being who he is, how about the move from Nashville to Cape Cod? How is that working?

KL: It's so great. It means the world to me to wake up every morning and love where I am. Everything here is different, the sky and the air and the colors. I love it. We've wanted to be here for so long, and every day is worth the work it took to get here, that's for sure.

PM: Yeah, that really is huge, to wake up somewhere that you love to be. That's something a very small percentage of the world gets to do.

KL: Uh-huh.

PM: And a huge value is not even placed on that in our culture. People think that, "Well, maybe I'll get to somewhere that I kind of like, at least, for my retirement." And then so many people die shortly after they retire.

KL: Yeah, I know.

PM: So I've certainly had the pleasure of living places that I loved, and I applaud you having done that. When I visited you guys over the July 4th weekend, it was amazing out there.

KL: Thank you.

PM: And you seemed really happy.

KL: I'm completely happy. Every day here is--if you even have like a free half hour to go someplace, you can go on a field trip or a little adventure, or see another beach you haven't seen before, or go running and wave at the seals, or ride your bike and see coyotes. It's the best.

PM: Have you found gigging to be a good scene?

KL: Gigging has been awesome. This summer was so much fun. We've played between three and five nights a week, I think--three or four nights every week this summer. And every venue that we play is haunted, so that's fun.

PM: Wow.

KL: Although pretty much every place up here is haunted.

PM: Why is that?

KL: I don't know. The Cape is really cool, it's really rich and thick with history. There are pilgrims and pirates, and all the different Indians...

PM: Yeah, it's just old.

KL: --and cool cemeteries. The Cape is like spooky and cool and beautiful, like all at once, which I just love.

PM: Have you found good musicians to play with?

KL: Great musicians. I miss everyone terribly that I used to play with, of course. Besides just leaving friends behind, it was really hard leaving bands and variations of bands behind. But it's a really cool thing up here, because people that are playing music, they're playing music because they really, really want to, and they really love music. This isn't so much a center of music business.

PM: Right. It's not about the music business, it's just about the music.

KL: Yeah.

PM: So aside from what you mentioned already, bands, parts of bands, and some of the people you used to play with, do you miss anything about Nashville?

KL: You know what I miss? I miss [laughs] my favorite Mexican restaurant really bad.

PM: You really were a big Las Palmas fans.

KL: We were all over that place.

[laughter]

KL: That was just the best. And when you're someplace where you know that there's a certain food that you cannot get there from a certain restaurant that is like 1,500 miles away, then that's what you really want, often.

PM: [laughs]

KL: So I miss that like crazy. And I miss my garden really bad. It was leaving like 10,000 flowers behind was very, very hard to do. I actually brought some of them with us.  continue

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