Talking To...Kim Richey
HM: (laughs) Okay, so if you can't pick a favourite cut, are there any that have been exciting when you've heard that someone was going to cut it?
KR: You know, really, anytime somebody's gonna cut one of your songs is a great thing because the law of averages is just against it. Think of all the songwriters and all the songs they have to choose from. Then just pretend that you're the singer and you get ten songs and this is your album. You only get ten songs. Which of those songs mean enough to you to use one of those ten spaces? So it's really a great thing when somebody cuts one of your songs. Especially if they didn't have a hand in it - that's even more hard to come by.
HM: Where they just hear it and love it?
KR: Yeah...yeah...it's not something that they co-wrote, or, you know, they had a part in it, or something like that. Any one of them is a huge compliment.
HM: That's a lovely way to look at it.
KR: Yeah, isn't it amazing though, when you think about it you're better off buying a lottery ticket or something.
HM: I suppose when you think how many people must submit songs to artists...
KR: Yeah, then there's the thing that there's the whole song and maybe you like this song but you just don't quite like that part of the song so there has to be something about the song that they will get really totally behind the whole thing.
HM: That reminds me of Patty Lovless song written by Gretchen Peters. I think it was Like Water Into Wine. She adored the song but felt one verse wasn't quite right for her so she either changed it or left it out, with permission. Has that ever happened to any of yours?
KR: Somebody did once - I can't really remember who or what but I remember I said I didn't see any reason to change the verse. So they didn't cut it. So...
HM: Fair enough. It's your song.
KR: (laughing)
HM: You should have the final say if it is changed.
KR: (laughs) Yeah, absolutely.
HM: I guess it's kind of a back handed remark - you must wonder 'Well, what's wrong with it? I kinda liked it how it was.'
KR: Yeah, it's weird. You could understand if it was something maybe too personal that they wanted to make more accessible to people, something like that, but if they just didn't like it or something that would be different.
HM: I guess it'd be like them saying 'Kim, I love that song, but I really don't like verse 3 so can we change it?' Clearly they don't actually love the song...
KR: (laughs) You got it.
HM: Something I came across Kim, that I found interesting was that your bio says you were raised in a coal mining village.
KR: Yeah, but it was a tiny place. Not raised actually, just born there because my father died when I was two so then we moved to Dayton, Ohio, a bigger city. My Dad did work at the mines but it was a strip mining place but on the surface. I went to a big pit in Wales and they took us down into the mines and it was amazing but my father drove one of those things - I don't know what they are called but they look as big as a house - something that went along the top. So that's what he did.
HM: That's really interesting. I don't know if you know but this area was once a centre for mining. I actually live over in South Shields but my house is yards from a closed coal mine.
KR: Really?
HM: Kathy Mattea was here a while back singing her Coal songs too, about West Virginia.
KR: Yeah. Some places have done okay reinventing themselves and finding other ways and others haven't been able to figure out...
HM: Haven't recovered.
KR: Hmmm...
HM: Butte in Montana comes to mind as you say that.
KR: Really?
HM: Yeah, you know when you walk through a small American town and you can feel what it was everywhere and know it will never be that again. Like it's hanging on to it's past because it can't move forward, almost.
KR: Yeah. That's a great description. You can tell when all the kids are leaving too. It's not where they want to be and it's not drawing other young people to it...
HM: Kinda like everyone who's there is going to die there...
KR: Exactly. Just hangin' on.
HM: It's a shame. So, would you ever go back to Ohio?
KR: What you mean to live? No. My parents live there and it was a nice place to grow up but... You know, I'll be over in London; that's where I'll be spending most of my time.
HM: Yeah, you've been there on and off for a while now. How did that come about?
KR: Well, it came about, funnily enough, from being in Nashville because people came to Nashville from London to write and I met a few people there - Charles Martin being one of them - then started coming over here and writing with people and met friends of friends and got to where most of what I was doing was centred over here more than in the States.