Interview with K.Flay

I had seen K.Flay (stage name for Kristine Flaherty) several times before I got to photograph her. It’s always a high-energy show with a blend of alternative rock, hip-hop, and indie-pop blasting to the rafters. Recently, she was struck deaf in one ear by a “freak” condition and she had to re-calibrate everything. I really enjoyed getting on to a virtual call with her recently to talk about that, since I had a similar thing happen to me. So much so, we didn’t really have time to talk about the upcoming album, MONO, which arrives in September. In the meantime, check out the video for her latest single, “Shy” – it’s a fun one. K.Flay herself was so great to talk to. I can’t wait for her next time in Denver to see this force of nature again.

K.Flay Interview

Aimee:
So, just a quick background on me – because this is about you – but I just wanted to mention, I actually have hearing loss in my right ear as well from a life-threatening ear infection. Not the same as your situation, but I guess I want to start out with the obvious question. Let’s talk about what you’ve been going through, and tell me how it’s affected your life, and your music career… all that good stuff.

K.Flay:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I’m sorry about your ear. That sounds very scary. Since this happened to me, I have been hearing all these stories of ear issues and it seems so much prevalent than you would have thought. For me, I woke up one morning last fall. Two weeks before I had gotten back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I had been training for that, which was, in some ways, a fun experience and in some ways just a test of will. I was getting ready to go on a writing trip for working on another artist’s album and then getting ready to tour. I was a little bit in just cruise mode of, okay, life as usual, and then I woke up and couldn’t hear out of my right ear and also had really bizarre tinnitus.

And I assumed that something actually was in my ear. I started getting really, really bad vertigo. And then, I was intractably vomiting. My now girlfriend, whose is right there [we all wave], took me to the ER. And essentially, I started getting bad news. You know when you’re in a place and someone’s going to give you bad news, that was the vibe. The first nurse who saw me and was like, “There’s nothing in your ear.” I’m like, “What? That doesn’t seem good.”

And so, I ended up, to flash through that period, immediately started getting potential treatment for this condition, which is called sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), which is a fancy way of saying all of a sudden, you lose your hearing.

Aimee:
Yeah, I was reading about it, and I had never heard about it, and it’s wild.

K.Flay:
It’s totally wild. Their best guess is that a virus makes its way into the inner ear canal and explodes and wreaks havoc. And then, some people, the cilia cells are able to recover through steroid shots and treatment. I did hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is another treatment they found can work. But the whole thing and the experience of it happening and also the nature of these treatments, the doctors the whole way through are basically like, “We don’t really know.” And I think often we look to medicine, and we look to hospitals as like, you’re going to have some knowledge that I don’t have and some expertise, which of course they do. But this was was one of those instances in which we’re all sitting in the room going, “What’s happening?”

Aimee:
That must have been so overwhelming.

K.Flay:
Yeah. I think when these random things happen, it’s a real test of our outlook on the world and how we’re going to ascribe meaning to things. I’m a pretty firm believer that nothing happens for a reason, but we create meaning around the things that happen. And that’s the beauty of being a human being, is that creation of meaning. So luckily, I was able to adopt that mentality right off the bat, bad shit happens, good shit happens. What are we going to do with that? And I had a really, really strong support system around me and also had done my fair share of sitting in discomfort and handling that, just staring it dead in the eyes. I felt equipped to incorporate the end result, which is that none of the treatments made a difference.

Aimee:
So do you have have total hearing loss in your right ear?

K.Flay:
Yeah, so I have total hearing loss and also, I don’t know if you experienced this, but constant and pretty bad tinnitus.

Aimee:
I’m very lucky, honestly, that mine is more just the ocean. It’s a hum. It’s there. I can mostly ignore it. Sometimes, when the storms come in and the pressure changes, then it squeals a little bit. But for the most part, it just sounds like you have a shell to your ear.

K.Flay:
Yeah, mine started out as the ocean and then became a squeal.

Aimee:
That’s what I’m scared that it’s going to get to… the painful squeal. But I do have some hearing, and I wear a hearing aid. I mean, obviously people around you know your story, but I’m sure that people are like, “Well, it’s because of concerts, right?” I get that all the time.

K.Flay:
Right? The other day someone was like, “Too much rocking,” and I was like, “Actually…”

Aimee:
Exactly. No. Not that.

K.Flay:
Not enough rocking, apparently. I could have been blasting this shit.

Aimee:
Right, exactly. And that was the thing where it was, I was at a bad period of my life, and other people could have fought off the infection I got easily, and I just wasn’t able to.

K.Flay:
Totally. Just as a side note, one of the people that I climbed Kilimanjaro with had had a flesh-eating bacteria on the whole left side of his body in the past. And the doctor’s like, “If you make it through this, it’ll be a miracle,” and he was like, “If I make it through, I’m going to live my life in a crazy way.” And so, the first thing he did was climb Mount Kilimanjaro. But to hearken back to the question more broadly, I think the experience of having your sensory world reconfigured a little bit, especially as a person who uses their ears…

Aimee:
Well, it’s your job, yeah.

K.Flay:
Right, in more ways than just the average human. I think what it did was it put me back in the beginner’s mindset, which is an interesting place to be and a very fruitful place. A lot of people worship at the altar of that, and I don’t disagree because there is an unselfconsciousness, there’s a lack of judgment, there’s an urgency and a joy, there is curiosity instead of, “Well, I know how to make music, and this is how you do it.” It’s like, “How am I going to make music Is this interesting?” It’s questions versus answers.

Aimee:
And you have a new album, named MONO, coming out in September.

K.Flay:
Yes!

Aimee:
Was it done before, or was all of it done after this?

K.Flay:
Some of it was begun before, and all of it was finished after.

Aimee:
How did it change your process?

K.Flay:
I mean, first and foremost, it created that sense of urgency. The urgency of that debut record of, “I have some shit I must say, and I need people to hear it now.” That feeling you have when you first discover a new skill or a new ability, and you’re like, “I’ve got to show people this.” Secondly, there was a sense of freedom and a reconnection to taste. At the end of the day, anybody who’s making creative products or creative projects, all you have is your taste. That’s it, right? And so, other people are going to have a similar taste and they will connect with that. Sometimes, that taste connects with the zeitgeist, and then you have a giant moment. But just perspective and sensibility, that’s really it.

And I think so often taste and sensibility get diluted and adulterated as you exist in this world. You lose that compass north a little bit, and I think for me, I felt very reconnected to my taste and my sensibility and what I like. And I wasn’t too worried about if other people are going to like it, which not in a way of, I know better than anyone, because I don’t, but in a way of understanding that, as a person who makes music, it’s part of my job to retain a perspective and to develop a perspective and to block out the other voices. So the hearing loss was very helpful in that regard because I’m like, “Well, I don’t even give a fuck.” I don’t have to make this next record. Everyone was like, “You can quit music now. We would understand.” So it’s like when you lose your last fuck, you have no fucks left to give, that’s how I feel.

Aimee:
It’s funny because when I had my hearing loss, it’s a long story, but I was at a crossroads. Partly, I was fighting to have this creative freedom to do my concert photography and all these other things. So you’re exactly right. I laid there sick for nine months thinking, “Okay, well, what’s going to happen now?” And as I got better, I was like, “This is the right path.” And got excited about it. So, I 100% agree with everything you said. It’s very inspiring, I guess.

K.Flay:
No, I mean, it’s interesting to think about the ways in which discomfort and adversity and loss connect us to the present moment. In my own experiences of grief, whether that’s the death of a person, whether it’s the loss of a relationship or a big change, or the loss of my hearing, on one side, those moments, you are there. You are firmly located right now, and I think there’s something about being situated in the present. Culturally in many ways, we’re taught to fear that, and we’re given lots of things to take us out of the present moment. And when you’re in the present moment, you’re just in touch with a flow state. You’re there. And so, I think, in terms of making the meaning, it can be a beautiful result of loss, is a deeper connection to now.

Aimee:
And then, don’t you think, when you’re making this music, that’s almost like a time capsule of that moment in time – that you captured the feeling?

K.Flay:
100%, and I think I should note that the flip side of watching a film or watching television or listening to music or reading a book is that it reconnects you to your present. That’s the ultimate beauty is when you listen right to something or you engage with something, and you’re like, “Oh my God. Now I have insight into my own life and experience in new ways.” So I think that’s totally accurate.

Aimee:
How’s it going, being on stage?

K.Flay:
Surprisingly, it’s not that different. I go into a, blackout’s the wrong word, because I’m in the zone, so I forget what’s happening. There’s adrenaline, there’s whatever other things are flowing through my brain and blood. And so, I think I’m pretty unaware in many ways of my physical experience. So the show has felt really good. It’s, I think, better than ever. Strangely, because I did so much preparation, it’s funny, my pitch and my voice are better than ever. So I don’t know if that’s just me preparing super-duper before, or who knows. Maybe that’s just improved with the hearing loss somehow.

Aimee:
You’ve worked hard.

K.Flay:
I worked really hard to get in physical, mental shape for it. The hardest part for me was, I forgot how noisy it is everywhere. So sleeping on a tour bus is noisy. Buses, it’s extremely noisy, the air conditioning, the generator, the engine, the bumps. Backstage noisy, the show noisy, and it’s hard for me to hear. And then, my tinnitus gets super inflamed the more noise I’m exposed to. Honestly the biggest challenge was just readjusting to being in this state, in this environment of noise.

Aimee:
You know what’s funny is one of my “superpowers” that came out of of my bad ear is that, when I’m at shows and somebody’s annoying, I always just turn my bad ear to them so I can’t hear them.

K.Flay:
Yeah, totally!

Aimee:
And actually, that leads me to… so my husband always gives me a crazy-ass questions for interviews. He’s like, “Okay, ask her what superpower she’d want,” you know, speaking of superpowers.

K.Flay:
Superpower, my initial response is none because I think they all feel like a curse. I think the lesson we get from all these superhero movies is that with great power comes, like Dumbledore, great responsibility. Definitely not invisibility. Definitely not bending time. I mean, I do think it would be fun to fly. I can’t see a huge downside to flying. It seems pretty benign in the scheme of things, and you could get places quickly. So, I think I’m going to go with flying, though let it be known I am reluctant to accept a superpower.

Aimee:
I love it. It’s just funny because I feel like all the questions we ask in interviews, there’s always the same questions, and I’m sure you’re getting tired of talking about your hearing loss and stuff.

K.Flay:
No, I’m happy to talk about it. I think it’s always funny too because for me, it’s old news, but for other people, it’s new news. I think about, okay, well our time here on Earth, any of us, for me, the way I’ve oriented my life, it’s largely about just experiencing things fully and exposing myself to other people and new places and ideas. I might not like this one as much, but this event is a new experience. It’s exposing me to a new way of being in the world. It’s cool in a way, in your thirties, in your adult life, to transition to a new way of being. For all the frustration and grief there, it’s cool, and it’s in accordance with how I’m trying to live.

Aimee:
Right. And to be honest, one of my things my therapist said  that has always stuck with me is that you know you’re processing grief when you can start to see some good thing about the event. So then, I think you’re going to Europe in the fall? You’ve got still a lot of touring to do as you’re releasing the album. So, I mean, usually I ask what’s next. But is there anything else that you would like me to talk about in this post?

K.Flay:
I think, yeah, just the record coming out. I’m really excited for people to hear it. It’s my fifth studio album, but it feels like a debut to me, the spirit in which it was created and the energy of it, and I’m just excited to share that. And yeah, we’ve got a few more US dates in August, UK and Europe in the fall. And then, of course next year we will be a lot of touring this record and playing this record. Nothing’s announced, though.

But as I said to someone recently, that we were talking about music in the modern age of the internet, and I was like, “Yeah, but at the end of the day, what else is there to do but put out a record and go on tour, post videos, do your thing?” I think right now everyone’s trying to crack the code, but in fact, the lawlessness of TikTok in particular, I think, has reoriented me to the basic fact of the job, which is make music, disseminate it, promote it, make some more music. What else is there to do? Nothing. So I feel connected to that.

Aimee:
I’m often recommending people to see just really great shows. The last time I saw you was amazing – and I am sad I missed this recent show in Denver with Grandson.

K.Flay:
Thank you! And I will say, our last Denver show was so great, and it was the biggest show of the tour.

Aimee:
Really? Oh, that’s great.

K.Flay:
I mean, Denver’s a great live show city. I feel like people show up, and people are stoked. But it was the biggest show of the tour, and it was a really fun night. I mean, the show was great, and it was just nice too being on tour with a friend. Jordan’s [Grandson] one of my very close friends and we both have great fans in Denver. It was just a very good environment, all around. So, I am looking forward to everything that is next as I just move forward.

From K.Flay’s Facebook Page

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