Song for her state — Kasilof’s Shields wins Alaska Song of the Year honors

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kelsey Shields performs at Odie’s on Friday.

Redoubt Reporter

The seeds of music have been rooted in Kasilof’s Kelsey Shields her entire life. That they’d sprout into something was as inevitable as a willow tree sending up runners or dandelions turning from viscid yellow tendrils to achromatic airborne fluff.

This is a kid who could plunk out a tune she’d hear by ear on her toy piano, and retained that ability with guitar, banjo and grown-up piano as she also learned the technical aspects of written notation. She learned to read at 3 years old, and as words traveled from her eyes through her brain to her mouth, they picked up a tune along the way, so that whatever popped into, then out of, her head was more often than not delivered via some kind of singsong melody.

“I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing,” said Lea Shields, Kelsey’s mom. “From the time she was really little she would sing her books. We made up songs to nursery rhymes, to storybooks, to her favorite books, and she would sing those. We’d sing Bible songs, all kinds of children’s tapes. My husband’s pretty creative and he would tell stories and sing songs and she would mimic those. So she was always singing, sometimes to the annoyance of her brothers.”

She’s loved music as long as she can remember, and even earlier than her unaided memory stretches, as evidenced by family videos showing a toddler Kelsey standing in the dining room singing whatever randomness occurred to her.

“There’s these ridiculous home videos of me making up songs. Those embarrassing things that your parents do — like, ‘Why did you spend so much time taping this?’” Shields said. “I think I just always loved music.”

What was undetermined, however, is what form that musical bloom would take. Were it sprouted somewhere in the Lower 48, it might have turned out something like a rose, with its sweetness and beauty manicured into the cultural cache of mass-produced popularity, arranged with sprays of ferns and baby’s breath and gilded in shiny cellophane to a ribbon-wrapped, $19.95, perfect-to-the-point-of-plastic-looking dozen.

But she was planted in Alaska, and the influence of her environment has had a Mount McKinley-sized stamp on her songwriting. What results is more authentic than manicured, with a little dirt in the delicacy, more fireweed alongside a glacial-fed salmon stream than the easily replicable bouquets of 1-800 Flowers.

“Mud boots on a girl are pretty and the boys smell of oil and spruce trees,” she sings in “Take Me There.” “City lights are bright and pretty but the frost on my window in the morning shines too.”

The combination of her natural talent with how it’s been grown won her dual honors in

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kelsey Shields, of Kasilof, drew a crowd to her recent performance at Odie’s Deli in Soldotna.

the 2012 Alaska Song of the Year competition, announced May 19 in Seward. Shields won Best Folk Song for “Flat Lands,” and Best Alaskana song for “Take Me There.”

“It was really exciting. I was feeling honored, the songs that I was up against I thought were well-written. And it was actually my birthday (May 19), so I was thinking it was a very cool birthday present,” Shields said.

Both songs are off her full-length album “Stories,” released in September 2011. Really, though, she could have submitted most any of her songs in either category.

“I entered a couple into the folk category and one in Alaskana, which could have been almost everything that I write. I write a lot of songs about this place,” Shields said.

“I think my songs, to an extent, always reflect where I am in life. I tend to write autobiographically. Lately a lot of them have been about kind of the magic of Alaska, in certain ways, because of the other places I’ve seen. The world is an amazing place, but it’s also the contrast of how nowhere is quite like the Kenai Peninsula,” Shields said.

Like these lyrics, from “Flat Lands:”

“Take me to the wilderness where I can’t see other people. You, me, dear, and the midnight sun — I can see you, until winter. We’ll find a cave in the mountains and get snowed in until spring.”

Shields grew up in Kasilof with her parents — Pat and Lea Shields, and two older brothers, Joel and Kaleb. She went through a combination of Tustumena Elementary, home schooling, Soldotna Middle School and Skyview High School, graduating in 2006. Throughout she did band, choir and created her own music.

“There’s something really magical about performing a piece with a group of musicians, and I love that and I miss that, but playing my own songs kind of fulfills a different need. I’ve always scribbled poems and songs and stuff in my journals. I guess it’s just the easiest way I have of saying something,” she said.

Shields was exposed to music in a variety of ways. Her dad is musical and the family participated in music at Kasilof Community Church. Shields also grew up with close family friend Shannon Darling, who was Shields’ “musical mom,” Lea Shields said.

Her early tastes were largely shaped by the music around her — folk, Bible songs from church, “and also a little bit of Jed Clampett thrown in there for flavor,” Lea Shields said. Her first solo performance was at Tustumena Elementary, singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

Shields taught herself to play guitar in middle school, which launched her into more earnestly writing her own music. It tended toward a decidedly 1970s-ish flare at first.

“They were a bunch of protest songs, basically. About things that could be made better. I was a freshman. And I grew up listening to oldies with my dad, so that didn’t help,” Shields joked.

Eventually she started morphing more of her own experiences and perspectives into her music. Currently she’s been writing songs inspired by her family history — such as the story of her great grandparents meeting and writing love letters to each other. One of which, “Opal,” is on her “Stories” album.

She recorded her first EP, “Flannel,” while in college, at Corbin University in Salem, Ore.

“I had done a little demo before that but this was my first real experience having to translate what I’d written into a recordable, full-band piece. That was a growing experience and really a lot of fun,” Shields said.

She started out majoring in music but switched to English.

“It’s a really small private school so all it had to offer was, like, ‘Learn how to sing Italian songs.’ It just wasn’t really fitting, so I switched to English and read a lot of books and wrote lot of papers and loved it,” she said.

She graduated and moved back to the Kenai Peninsula in December 2009, when she began recording her second EP, “Tidewater,” with local producer James Glaves.

“It’s kind of a more stripped-down CD, I guess, than the last one had been. Kind of more of an acoustic feel, because I wanted to do more of that,” she said.

Since graduation she’s traveled a fair amount, visiting her brothers and friends in the Lower 48, and taking a trip to Europe after finishing her “Stories” album. That’s all still working itself out in her music — where she came from, where she’s been, where she might go, where she returns to. In that chain, Alaska is the common link.

“I love Alaska a lot. There are a lot of benefits for me to moving, such as being near my brothers and being somewhere where there are more places to play music. But I can’t imagine not living here, so I’m torn. Time will tell. I think even if I go away for a while I can’t imagine not coming back,” she said.

“One idea I’ve been working on is about how I did grow up here, and a lot of my identity is wrapped up in this place because of that, so if I go and meet someone somewhere else, will they really know me? I’ve been trying for a couple years to get that out and I have not succeeded yet,” she said.

Currently Shields is the music and entertainment booking agent for Odie’s Deli in Soldotna, and will work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game this summer. She plays regularly at Odie’s, Veronica’s in Kenai and a few other venues locally.

“I would encourage people to visit local venues and get out and experience the talent that is in this area, because there is a lot and you might not hear it if you don’t seek it out,” she said.

She isn’t sure yet how she wants her interest in music to grow in the future.

“I was the superdriven, ridiculous, straight-A, goal-oriented child all throughout school. And I graduated college and have been doing random jobs and going on trips since, so I don’t know — I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I have not decided whether or not to drop everything else in my life in order to pursue it, because it can require that. To chase music as a profession you kind of are at its beck and call, so I just haven’t decided whether or not that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Lea Shields said self-promotion is not ingrained in her daughter’s nature, so publicizing performances and her recordings has been a challenge. That’s why she’s particularly pleased with the Song of the Year awards, because that may get more people listening to her daughter’s music.

“She’s not the type to seek fame and fortune but she loves to share. She loves to do her music but it’s not her personality to promote herself,” Lea Shields said. “We love the music and are excited for other Alaskans and other people to hear it. Her heart is just for making music and sharing that fun and enjoyment with others, and I appreciate that about her.”

Shields said she may consider opening a studio someday, and for now is excited to expand her performance venues in the state beyond the Kenai Peninsula. One of the prizes she won in the Alaska Song of the Year Contest is a gig at the Tap Root in Anchorage.

To expand her listenership, she needs to spread out more into urban areas, and possibly the Lower 48. But that doesn’t mean she’ll branch so far from her roots that they won’t still nourish her songwriting:

“Take me to your beating heart — I will hear you playing for me. Even in the strongest storm I will find my way back to you. We’ll watch the sun rise and fall. The volcanoes resting, but never cold.” — “Flat Lands.”

“Music is something I will always do — always,” Shields said. “I will always be recording, I will always be performing and writing songs, and my ultimate dream would be to help other musicians do the same.”

For more information on Shields, visit www.myspace.com/kelseyshieldsmusic and www.facebook.com/kelseyshieldsmusic.

Her music is available for purchase at Veronica’s in Kenai and online through iTunes and CD Baby.

Song and Dance Man: Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Legendary 1965 Press Conference

Bob Dylan’s 35^th studio album – Tempest
- was released on Tuesday, smack dab in the middle of a stormy political season. But it isn’t a political album, of course. Bob Dylan is not a political artist. He is a bluesman, borrowing what he needs from an array of elements and spinning them into songs that transcend the original source, resulting in some of the more poignant, introspective songs of the modern age. In the late 1960’s, for example, during the height of the Woodstock-era, rock ‘n’ roll, anti-war counter-culture, Bob Dylan was making quiet country records in Nashville. In fact, Bob Dylan has written precisely zero songs protesting, or even referencing, the Vietnam War. His brush with “protest” music at the beginning of his career was simply a vehicle – one more riff to borrow as he found his voice. Dave Van Ronk, the legendary folk singer who worked the same Greenwich Village clubs in those early days, remembers Dylan as being “politically naïve.”

He can also be a very funny songwriter and entertainer – a self described “song and dance man.”

Don’t misunderstand me, I am well aware of the impact of landmark songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “With God on Our Side,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Masters of War” (which Dylan claims is “not an anti-war song,” but instead an attempt to capture a collective mood from a specific time). An artist can be non-political and still write the occasional topical song. After all, topical songs are a part of the American folk music canon – which Dylan understands and emulates perhaps better than any other artist. But the simple number of these songs pales in comparison to the rest of his vast and monumental catalog.  For each topical song from this brief, albeit significant, period of his career, there is a sad and lonesome love song like “Boots of Spanish Leather” or “One Too Many Mornings,” or a comical absurdist tale like “Motorpsycho Nitemare” or “I Shall be Free.”

Well I took me a woman late last night

I was three-fourths drunk, she looked all right

Till she started peelin’ off her onion gook

Took off her wig said, “How do I look?”

I was high flyin’

Bare naked

Out the window

While the 1964 album “The Times They Are A-Changin’” most certainly has political overtones, many of the songs, such as the title track or “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” are about the civil rights struggle. This makes them songs about humanity, not politics. They are bigger than politics, which is why they resonate even today. “People focus on the senators and congressmen in The Times They Are A-Changin’ but never the Nietzschean aspects,” Dylan said in a September 10, 2001 USA Today interview. “The spirit of ‘God is dead’ was in the air, but Nietzsche was the son of a bourgeois pastor. That turns the rationale on its head.” In a brand new Rolling Stone interview that hits shelves Friday, he openly discusses the effects of slavery on race relations, as well as his disdain for the detractors that refused to let him move away from topical music in the 1960’s. But when asked to elaborate on his thoughts about the current president, he replied, “I don’t have any opinion on that.”

This reluctance to be cast as a political artist is evident throughout a now-famous press conference held at the KQED studios in San Francisco on December 3, 1965, amidst the backdrop of a sweeping youth and counter-culture movement in America. It is a bizarre mixture of performance art and stand-up comedy in which the cultural icon boldly and humorously (and repeatedly) dismisses the idea he is a political spokesman. There are awkward moments and Dylan is clearly agitated and evasive at times, but also charming and very funny.

For example:

When asked to explain his attraction, he responds, almost lawyerly, “Attraction to what?”

When asked what poets he digs, Dylan replies, “W.C. Fields.”

The former got a good laugh. The latter, perhaps a bit over the heads of many in the small audience, received a small, polite chuckle.

When asked what he – “The Spokesman of a Generation” – would do if he were to be drafted, his answer was sober and honest, “I’d probably just do what had to be done.”

This was followed by a question asking if he would be participating in the Vietnam Day Committee demonstration that night. Dylan answered with a smirk, “No. I’ll be busy tonight.”

Laughter.

Regarding the shift away from the acoustic folk music of his early career, Dylan’s answers are telling.

“Concerts are much more fun than they used to be.”

And about those “protest” songs he used to sing:

“It would be kind of dishonest for me to sing them now because I wouldn’t really feel like singing them.”

Despite Dylan’s clear attempt to move away from the false label of protesting prophet, the questions about his “message” kept coming. The funniest exchange came when a young but well-meaning high school student asked if he prefers music with “a subtle or obvious message.” It is a ridiculous question and one senses that had it been posed by one of the stuffy suit-and-tie journalists asking similarly silly questions that day, Dylan would have torn into her. He doesn’t, but he also doesn’t let her get away with it, following up and forcing her to refine her point. She finally caves with a burst of laughter and admits she only asked because she read in a “movie magazine” that his songs are “supposed to have a subtle message.” The room erupts in laughter and Dylan seems to enjoy this exchange as much as anyone.

In a moment foreshadowing current political trends, one journalist who clearly hasn’t been paying attention to the tone of Dylan’s answers thus far asks, “What are your own personal hopes for the future and what do you hope to change in the world?”

Was he expecting Bob Dylan to say he hopes for a world full of peace and love? That he hopes for an end to all war and violence? Perhaps he will attend that Vietnam Day Committee demonstration after all in an earnest call for change?

Dylan’s answer: “To be honest, you know, I don’t have any hopes for the future and I just hope to have enough boots to be able to change them” [emphasis added].

Boots. The “Blowin’ in the Wind” author’s hope for the future is to have more than one pair of boots.

This was met with awkward silence, although Dylan’s eyes reveal how much he personally enjoyed his answer.

Dylan’s struggle to shed the “Spokesman of a Generation” label – a label he never wanted – is perhaps best documented in the 2005 Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, which uses several clips from this press conference. For those interested in the subject, it is well worth seeking out the entire hour-long press conference, which is commercially available on DVD as well as in ten-minute segments on YouTube. Dylan does not seem nearly as tired and agitated as he often does in other press interviews from the time. He is mostly jovial and seems to be in good spirits, yet he still displays little tolerance for those attempting to cast him as something he isn’t or associate him with people and ideals he has very little interest in.

Another recurring theme of the press conference is Dylan’s urging that he not be taken so seriously. One especially moving moment in No Direction Home contains rare footage of a very young Bob Dylan freshly arrived in New York City. The black and white home movie contains no sound. Dylan’s gracefully animated movements, scaling walls and pulling a hat from his guitar case, evoke that of the great silent film stars, especially Chaplin’s Little Tramp. He is charming and funny without saying a word or playing a note. Watch just a few moments of this footage and it doesn’t seem so ridiculous that when asked, “Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or as a poet?” he replied without missing a beat, “I think of myself more of a song and dance man.”

The audience laughter indicates they thought this was a pretty good joke. But was it?

Matt Powell is a writer, musician, lawyer and entrepreneur living in Venice Beach, California. He has a Bachelor of Music from Berklee College of Music in Boston and a Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. He is the guitarist and songwriter for The Incredible Heavies and The Sharbettes, as well as the co-founder and designer at Plecas Powell Design, a mid-century modern furniture design company. He often writes about music as a means to explore the interconnectivity of broader issues and themes.