A Conversation with Kim Richey

Kim Richey: Hello.

Puremusic: Hi, Kim. Frank Goodman calling from Puremusic. How you doing?

KR: I'm pretty good. How are you?

PM: Good. You got some time?

KR: Yep. I'm just driving on my way home.

PM: Oh, really? Would you rather I call you back after you get there?

KR: You know what I might do, I'm going to take maybe about ten minutes to get home, and I can call you on a land line. That might be better.

PM: Okay.

KR: And then I won't be a danger.

PM: Yeah, that's a good idea.

KR: Okay, Frank. I'll call you back.

PM: Super.

. . .

PM: --tape machine rolling here.

KR: Sorry it took me longer. I got lost. I don't quite know my way around here yet.

PM: I'm so tickled that we're doing this interview. I've been a fan of yours for a long time, and I think Rise is absolutely the best.

KR: Oh, thank you. I'm really, really happy with that record. I had the best time making it, and I just couldn't be any happier with it.

PM: Well, what an interesting crew you ran into out there.

KR: I know! I was really lucky.

PM: Yeah. And we'll get into that, because that's got to be an interesting story. But I'd like to backtrack just a minute, because there's no bio for you right now at the Lost Highway site. Maybe they're going to get one soon, but there's not one now. I've run across a couple of the duplicated mini-bios at a couple of fan sites and stuff. But if you wouldn't mind, what brought you to Nashville originally in the late 80s?

KR: Well, let's see. I was living up in Bellingham, Washington. And Bill Lloyd is a good friend of mine, I met him in college.

PM: Yeah, he's a good buddy of mine, too.

KR: Oh, yeah?

PM: Yeah.

KR: He's a sweetheart. I've known him like forever. We played in a band together in college. And, you know, then he went on to do the Foster & Lloyd thing. Bill is really good about keeping in touch with everybody. And we kept in touch, no matter where I was living. I moved all over the place. And he kept trying to get me to go to Nashville, and that's how I finally ended up there. It's pretty much Bill's fault.

PM: So Bill was an instrumental figure in your life, and caused a turning point at that time.

KR: Well, yeah. Just about everything good that happened to me musically can be traced back to either Bill Lloyd or Radney Foster.

PM: It's interesting that both you and Bill have walked the line--and kind of erased the line--between country and pop. You both seem to be people who proved that you could write country when it was time to do that but who really, in your hearts, were probably pop people.

KR: Uh-huh. Pop or folk. Well, you know, I grew up listening to a lot of 70s stuff, kind of popular folk, rather than serious folk music.

PM: Right, the singer/songwriter wave--the James Taylor wave and all that.

KR: Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, all of that. Neil Young.

PM: Yeah, likewise.

KR: Yeah.  continue

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