Travel, Trees, Bus Exhaust, Airports, People Watching, Christmas, Overbearing Stage Moms,
David Sedaris, August, Honduras, and Sleep.
Sounds Like
My Biography by: Reid Davis
With Amy Kuney, appearances are certainly deceiving. Sure, the singer/songwriter looks youthful, perhaps even younger than the early 20s bracket she occupies, but just wait until she sits down at a piano and starts singing. The onstage presence and authority she displays is impressive for an artist of any age, and that’s before you even notice her songwriting, which resounds with finely observed details and engaging left turns.
Perhaps this is because Kuney isn’t your typical young artist. She has nearly 20 years of musical experience, having begun piano lessons at age four. Between church performances and piano recitals, she’s been onstage for most of her life, to say nothing of 100 live dates in the past year. And her childhood spent partially in Honduras has given her life experience beyond that of most Americans.
In fact, if you ask Kuney, it was more life experience than she was expecting. At 17, she and a group of friends were kidnapped by rebels while on a Guatemala sightseeing trip. (Their captors, by the grace of a higher power, eventually let them go), but the experience, harrowing as it was, threw Kuney’s nascent songwriting into high gear. “I built a studio in my basement using shower curtains and mattresses and I just put everything into my writing,” she recalls. “I wrote this song, ‘How The Wind Must Feel’, and sent a recording of it to a producer in Los Angeles named Peter Barker. That’s how it all started.”
Music supervisors have taken notice. Not only have Kuney’s songs landed on One Tree Hill and the daytime drama Passions, she also played a folk singer on a memorable episode of Gilmore Girls, an occurrence she modestly chalks up to “beginner’s luck.”
Now, as debut Bird’s Eye View is released, more will have the opportunity to know (and love) the talented songwriter that fellow artist Kate Voegele calls “an amazing lyricist” and compares to Fiona Apple and Sarah McLachlan and whose voice Ann Powers, of the Los Angeles Times, calls “especially lovely”.
Amy Kuney was born in Oklahoma and spent her early life in Tulsa, a middle child in a large family. It was an unremarkable suburban existence until her father decided, on the heels of Hurricane Mitch’s devastation, to move the family to Honduras to do missionary work. Amy was 13 at the time.
So exit suburban housing and trips to the mall, and enter a foreign culture via a cinder-block home, its courtyard surrounded by razor wire. At first, Kuney rebelled. “I had been very uncooperative about living in Honduras. And I very purposefully had not learned the language. I didn’t really embrace the culture. And even when I wanted to learn Spanish there was a subliminal block there and it just took forever.”
There was one thing, however, that Kuney got in Honduras that was largely unavailable in the U.S—silence. “It really jarred me,” she says. “I had to figure out how to entertain myself. At the very beginning we had no radio, no television and we didn’t know anybody there.” So Kuney spent even more time at the piano, and eventually learned the guitar. At the same time, she wrote short stories and poems before she penned her first song.
But before long she was filling up her notebooks and sending songs to L.A. producers she randomly found on the Internet. This was how she found Peter Barker, who can be thankful that his last name begins with a “B” since Kuney was calling alphabetically. Barker eventually signed her and his label is releasing her debut album, Bird’s Eye View, this fall.
Though she’s co-written with others in the past, all of the songs on Bird’s Eye View come straight from Amy Kuney’s notebook, voice and unique perspective. “I’m a bit of a control freak,” she admits. “I can’t put something out unless it’s something I can
stand behind 100 percent.” And the album is all the better for being the direct result of Kuney’s life experiences, from the knowing exhortation that “there is life beyond the razor wire” in “Simple Things” to the intriguing situation of being “a third party at a table for two” in “Love Is Trippy.”
“I wouldn’t consider myself a songwriter necessarily; I really see myself more of a storyteller,” she says. “I’ll start by writing the story behind it before I actually turn any of it into a lyric.”
In terms of production, while the arrangements definitely serve the songs, Bird’s Eye View, produced by Scott Seiver and engineered by Barker, is the furthest thing possible from a stripped-down, coffeehouse-friendly singer/songwriter album. Such choices aren’t surprising once Kuney reveals her love for artists like Rufus Wainwright and Jon Brion, whose left-turns are legendary.
“I didn’t want this album to sound like any other,” Kuney asserts. “I didn’t want anyone say to that the production reminds them of someone else. I wanted it to stand on its own.” Just one track, “Rocket Surgery”—with its sampled Enrico Caruso backing vocal, Dixieland horn section and wide-panned handclaps—is all the evidence a listener needs to realize the mission was accomplished and then some. But that doesn’t mean that the infectious hooks of these songs, led by Kuney’s forceful alto, would sound out of place on the airwaves. “We tried to make it interesting but also easy to listen to,” Kuney observes. “And I think we found a good balance.”
And of course, it’s always easy to sound comfortable in the studio if you’re knocking ‘em dead onstage, and Kuney’s spent the past year doing just that (check YouTube for proof), leaping just as enthusiastically on stage in front of three people as in front of 300, and enduring the inevitable trials. “I stayed in this hotel in Spokane and there was blood on the shower curtain, then at 3 a.m. someone was jumping against my door, trying to get it open,” she recalls. “Then in Nashville I got to watch an actual drug bust from my room at night.”
While the sheltered, suburban Amy Kuney might have been freaked out by these road rigors, the post-Honduras Kuney took it in stride. After all, she owes her musical career to that then-unwelcome sojourn. “If I had not moved to Honduras I’d probably still be in Oklahoma, wanting to do what I’m doing now but without the time or the energy to make it happen. Fortunately, I’ve gotten to live a very exciting life.”
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Music at the prompt
SINGING "COLD WATER" WITH DAMIEN RICE IN ICELAND:
"ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE" OPENING THE SEASON FINALE OF ONE TREE HILL:
Check out my Youtube videos!
Singing "Volcano" with Damien Rice in Iceland
Singing "Hallelujah" with Kate Voegele in Houston
My cover of Kate Voegele's "Wish You Were"
My performance of "Thank You For Last Night"
My cover of Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter"
My cover of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”
My song, “All Downhill From Here,” that was featured on the season finale of One Tree Hill
Me and me covering the Juno song, “Anyone Else But You,” by the Moldy Peaches
My cover of Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song”
My cover of Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love”
My cover of OneRepublic’s “Apologize”
Lyrics
--Simple Things-- Verse 1:
Simple things
We take pleasure in the simple things
We take pride in little victories
And we wear our simple crowns
Oh, tugs of war, we battle ships and thunderstorms
And naked is our uniform
It’s our simple hand-me-down
Chorus:
It’s a beautiful morning
Beautiful morning
Dressed up in summer and tied with a bow
Let’s be courageous and face tiny dangers
Let’s climb those fences
With signs that say “don’t”
Beautiful man I’m a beautiful woman
Find simple pleasures wherever we go
It’s the simple things
That make us feel at home
Verse 2:
For a simple view
We’ll sleep up on your daddy’s roof
Cuz our sleeping bags are waterproof
And they leave static in our hair
For poor Heaven’s sake
The sky is tired of being scraped
(And) pigeons crowd the fire escapes
There is traffic in the air
Bridge:
We get high on simple things and
We take flight on dips and swings
We fly…
Verse 3:
Aren’t you tired of being prisoner of your desires?
There is life beyond the razor wire
That you’ve strung around your mind
When you complicate the simple pleasures it’s too late
Cuz you’ll know better than to take pleasure in the simple
Things in life…
--Rocket Surgery-- Verse 1:
You’ve marched
To your pomp and your circumstance
Bravely
You’re starched you’re a formal affair and I
Can’t breathe
You’re smart you know all those big words
And their meanings
But you aren’t very good at remembering
Small things
Verse 2:
You say that you love me but I ask you
How much
So you spread your arms wide till behind you
Your thumbs touch
And you hold that position as I add it all up
Oh, in cold hard mathematical terms you’re
In love
Chorus:
So hold me, don’t think too hard about it
Would common sense allow it?
You wait too long and you’ll lose me
Just do it when you get the urging
Oh its not rocket surgery
When you know you love someone it’s easy
Verse 3:
Your book heavy head is so weighted with
Deep thoughts
As you lay in my lap and we struggle with
Small talk
Try writing it down but you trip on
Writers block
So we just “hmmm mmm mmm”
On and on and on and on
Bridge:
We’re a pair you’re smart I’m romantic
Kiss like you care your mouth is mechanical
Words are air; over my head they blow
So blink once if you like it
And blink twice if you don’t
Three times, if you love it
And then just keep the closed!
(Bridge)
We're a pair you’re smart I’m romantic
Kiss like you care your mouth is mechanical
Words are air and over my head they blow
So blink once, once if you like and blink twice
Twice if you don’t three times, three times if you love
It and then just keep them closed
(Chorus X2)
--Angel Tangled in the Telephone Lines-- Verse 1:
I prayed I prayed on my knees
On my knees…
Oh I prayed all night
My chin upon my chest
I prayed for a light
To help me get through this
And in the morning
Outside my window I see
I wasn’t alone,
Help was on her way to me
Chorus:
There’s an angel tangled in the telephone lines
The telephone lines, the telephone lines
Would you say you built our city too high?
Our city to high, is sitting too high…
Verse 2:
Hear sirens crying
We called the fire chief
And all his firemen
Came to cut the angel free
And she will bless them
They bow their heavy heads
This is as close to heaven
That they will ever get
Bridge:
We can’t be too sure
According to the chief
Why our ropes are too short
Our ladders won't reach
--Would You Miss Me-- Verse 1:
Monday, Monday dreaming oh, it always ends the same
You ache for Saturday but you can’t reach
If I found you lonesome for someone you’ve never met
You haven’t found her yet would that be me?
Chorus 1:
Would you miss me today if I met you tomorrow?
If I met you tomorrow? Would you miss me?
Verse 2:
You’re homesick for a place you’ve never been-
I’ll take you there; yes I will take you there in stranger’s skin
Oh, the road that leads to “morrow” limitless and wide
So keep an open mind and let me in
Chorus 2:
Would you miss me today if I met you tomorrow?
If I met you tomorrow? Would you miss me?
Would you know that you need me before I said hello?
Hello? If I met you tomorrow, would you miss me?
Bridge:
Wait for it, Wait for it, Wait for it, you’ll be glad you did!
Verse 3:
I know you kiss the back of your hand like it was my face
You hold your pillow like my waste; just put me in their place
--Thank You For Last Night-- Verse 1:
A taste, can last me miles
I know you waste your eager smiles
On perfect strangers on the street
It doesn’t bother me; it doesn’t bother me
Verse 2:
Because I know they’ll never see
The things you show only to me
And I and only I reserve the right
To say things like thank you for last night
Ohh oh yea…
Verse 3:
We woke up with the morning news
Some girls would kill to wear my shoes
And they can try to fit my size
But these shoes are mine and only I
Can thank you for last night
Ohh oh yea…
Bridge:
Oh...and my words always fall short
This is too big to use them for
When I say “thank you”
I mean so much more
Thank you for last night
Ohh oh yea
Verse 3:
We made slow motion love
We had to race to catch back up
And there’s no way to say this right
But I just in all politeness want to
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Thank you for last night
--Love is Trippy-- Verse 1:
A third party at a table for two
I’m sorry I don’t mean to intrude
But it was me and you before you met her
And all the live songs you wrote for me
(You) stuck her name where mine used to be
But my name in them fit the Rhythm better
Prechorus:
I’d go if you had a ride
And I’d smoke if you had a light
And I fall every time for this
Chorus:
And love is trippy like that
Sometimes you think that you’ve got it
Nobody’s gonna trip you
Outta this one baby
But love will slip through your hands
You never know how to hold it
Control it you’re gripping
It’s tripping you up
Verse 2:
Says the woman who sings at the bar
This is for you, you know who you are
I was you once, looking for someone
I never found…
She paints in a low smoky voice
Pictures of bruises, bad days and boys
And how they stood her up just to let her down
Prechorus:
She’d win if you were the prize
(She) gives in to all of your lies
She falls every time for this…(Chorus)
Verse 3:
For all of the girls who feel like they’re overdressed
Undersexed, starving for yeses or maybes
Tired of always being ignored
He might see the available chair
Beside me, the invitation is there
But I’m not the kind of scratch he’s itching for…
Prechorus:
I’d go if you had a ride
I’d smoke if you had a light
I fall every time for this
--Appreciate Your Hands-- Verse 1:
You try, you try, you strive
You aim to please
But nobody cares, nobody sees
I have a taste for talent wasted
Oh, waste it on me, waste it on me
Chorus:
Bury your shovel by the door
Nail your hammer to the floor
This job is for a gentle hand
You have so much love to give
And I am here to welcome it
As long as you’ve got time to spend
And Ill be the kind of work…
That appreciates your hands
Verse 2:
You’re a hero gone to waste
Untouched, unused
(But) I’ve never been
This beautifully rescued
Medals on your chest No one salutes
I am in debt; I don’t deserve you
--Time Machine-- Verse 1:
Look, I’ve built a time machine
To take us back to when
Your favorite word was “please”
And mine was always “yes”
Verse 2:
Grown ups and “no no” words
They spelled over our heads
We’ll go back with all we’ve learned
And translate what they said
Bridge:
We’ll fast forward a year or so
We can’t wait here we have to know
Will we still be each other’s or alone?
Verse 3:
So on the count of three
A year from now tonight
Well both turn in bed to see
Who could be sleeping on the other side
--Under My Bed-- Verse 1:
Come to my window, my house is asleep
I’ll leave a light on for you
The chain-linked fence slaps against the wind’s cheek
Breaking the silent curfew
Chorus 1:
Through cupped hands, we make plans
So they won’t take us away
Though harm sleeps, our instincts
Are fighting to keep us awake
Come and live under my bed
Verse 2:
(My) closet is where all the wild things hide
When I’m alone they take charge
But your flashlight’s a gun
Yellow bullets of light
Battles my fear of the dark
Chorus 2:
Through cupped hands, we make plans
So they won’t take us away
Though harm sleeps our instincts
Are fighting to keep us awake
Come and live under my bed
It’s what I’ve always wanted
Verse 3:
Wake ups are hiccups I have in my dreams
I hold my breath till I’m blue
Though pins and needles my put me to sleep
I’ll never lose feeling for you
Chorus 3:
Through cupped hands, we make plans
So they won’t take us away
Though harm sleeps our instincts
Are fighting to keep us awake
Come and live under my bed
It’s what I’ve always wanted
Don’t tell anybody especially grown-ups
Cuz Grown-ups would not understand
So come and live under my bed
--Bird's Eye View-- Verse 1:
Birds are cattle of the sky
They graze on heaven’s lawn
A mile high
They have their heads in the clouds
Why bother bringing them down?
Why oh why?
Chorus:
Oh I've seen everything new
From a bird’s eye view
From the clouds
Now that I know all that I’ve missed
Gonna make it harder to live
On the ground
Verse 2:
The world is their nest
And the sun is their call
And like a sleeper’s chest
It rises and falls
Oh to be…be so easily moved
A worm is a wet dream
From a bird’s eye view
Verse 3:
Birds are cattle of the sky,
They graze on heaven’s lawn
A mile high…(Chorus)
To give you an idea of how life was in Honduras, I've added a slideshow of pictures so you can see my house, my neighborhood, and the mission where my parents still live and work...(see below)
So...on my way home today I managed to convert my friend into an Amy Kuney fan...and listened to "Simple Things" about fifty times...it's been permanently stuck in my head ever since...it's addicting in an amazing sort of way. ;) I saw leah's comment(s), and thought... Are you aware of the fact that you're HILARIOUS? :P There's a 99.9% chance of me seeing your show on the 11th, and that makes me really (extremely, totally) excited. Hope everything's going well! <3
so i just read every single one of your blogs that ever made its way into existence. i should've been doing homework, but i did that instead (thank you, procrastination). i feel like i'm stalker status now. i have one (or is it not considered a word?) word for you: HA!
i let out the most obnoxious laughs i've ever heard in my life while reading those. keep in mind i'm sitting alone in my room and no one else is home. thank goodness because i might've scared my parents.
anyway, you're amazing and i miss you. i've been lurking around your myspace for so long that every time i think of you, your default picture pops up in my head and i wonder how you keep your arms up like that. i must see you in january.
i send ALLLL my love your way, and i hope you're doing absolutely fantastic.
