Domino Kirke's Return to Music, As Herself This Time | Billboard Soul Sisters

well this is soul sisters are here with Dominic urk and we're telling New York transportation nightmare stories good just to start the morning off [Music] dominoe what's that not much really happy to be enough so much thank you for here so you have a new album coming out in August yes so this like a moment of doing a bunch of press or the beginning of a long um you didn't know it out the beginning yeah yeah just the beginning do what you're learning how to talk about the album yeah and just talk in public yeah it's a whole other thing singing is one thing that speaking is another yeah that's better well I feel like you're such a multi - it personality and moment that I would assume that you're good at all sorts of performative things but yeah I guess just speaking off-the-cuff is a whole nother like animal like charming done today right no yeah I don't have an instrument to tune yeah outfit which always helps yeah you plan it out like do you just awful oh yeah I just look at one of my bandmates like just like tell an embarrassing story about it I will joke will suffice yeah are you going to be performing like you have States lined up or we have some toes that we're looking to that are coming together right now I got in Europe Anya I'm nice yeah and some shows here too but then a little bit more sort of spread out yeah okay so what happens with the other business when you go into music Drive well the other business sort of runs itself at this point which is why I was able to finally make a full-length record and on EP uh-huh because he peas were like short and quit you know they didn't take long to make and you know you can only do so much with four songs right and I said no but it was nice and I was getting my feet wet but I also had this kind of other baby that I was raising yeah and little baby little baby and visitors a day or doula I'm a dual reeow business yeah so we have a collect village like a community center that we started like five years ago and I'm going to do this eight years and it was sort of the way I was able to afford like being on call there was always big gaps of time where I could be creative in between so either I'm going to like take another job which will completely deplete me from and I wouldn't creatively I'll be like done or I was going to find something that I could do in between and do my work actually was like the perfect blend of like being able to be sort of of service and like in the healing arts and like not be like a debaucherous musician is that I felt like you were and I was never debauchery but I like I saw that I could very well be helped I grew up in like a family where my father was in a rock band and like I saw and heard every story and like really knew what I loved it was the debauchery in the 70s - is like a whole other area um so I think I always knew that I would want to have some sort of cushion some other like safe zone that would keep me grounded enough so that I could be like a respectful mother and like you know not be that that mom that just sort of hi as a nanny and like goes on tour like five months then which I could be it I know plenty of like amazing parents that have to do that yeah but I have the choice is really great so I really created a career where I could have both and they really exhibited laughs you're living the dream we just met you and I know everyone's lives are complicated but what you're doing professionally and creatively is like not that either one of us would be comfortable being in that field another but these are finding we've all been born before so we all know how to be there when someone what about you I tell that to all the chain we train doers now and that's sort of I'm not really uncool anymore but I'm planning a factories and that's really easy to schedule and like it makes it so I can actually have some semblance of a music career um so I like you know we have these 20 year olds who are like I haven't had a kid but how you know but I want to be a doula yeah right well if you are at all in touch and you were born because we're here you know you're going to be able to do this it's just about being more present than you've ever been right and just meaning you think that we can still access something remember us yeah yeah official oh that's a whole other yeah I don't know how you love podcasts yeah like do it can we do there's no music sing us a little song yeah I do say your the morning ladies oh yeah yeah sometimes they like the head brushed yeah they like going to them yeah yeah whatever I have a question we're up well we're obsessed with your whole family and we're very much you can exams oh yeah yeah oh Lola in particular we're huge most are in the jungles family she's like the best yeah and I know that she's also a musician and she doesn t Pia recently right yeah yeah you were the musician first before her yeah I'm eight years older than them okay so I was like so you were doing it I was doing it it was a little bean okay yeah did she kind of get into it through you I mean she would hate that I might uh okay no like in her in her own right of court like learned how to play every instrument like over the course of a year and like just had the time and I joke because I'm like I had a kid at your age you have time to like go on the road trips alone how to play guitar yeah yeah I wish you know so she's a note she's I don't know she's really worked hard to be able to be like a multi-instrumentalist like she really can just pick up the bass pick up a guitar and play like a great overhead of music yeah sad music gmv oh go she can't play any other but she's an amazing air over any time is that the word oh yes okay um so yeah I mean she was always acting in school and she was in musicals and she had a band in college and I always knew that she was like you know gonna gonna like try to you know pull it together but uh-huh the timing was great after Mozart right you know she's more well-known as an actor and now she you know she has a fan base right so were you giving her advice as a musician not really yeah just like we play such different music her musics a lot more sort of just like country into me and mine mine's just a little more a little sadder and a little like just more Hana it's they're like little art pieces yeah no they're very intricate very lyric heavy and you don't really remember the hook right you know okay how's your music always been that layer has it evolved into that no it's sort of all I tried to do sort of this other thing when I was signed to Mark Ronson's label right years ago but without lapsing the pop thing like the sexy girl thing uh-huh how did that feel awful yeah and I like and I would you know wear the right outfit and get just drunk enough somehow and like stay after the show and like just flirtin ufff with about that they maybe would write something and it just felt I felt kind of awful all the time but the wrongs the film I want mine either so I was writing I wasn't writing them but yeah so of course felt a little bit just very insincere like performing I learned how to perform when I played with domina the band fear and touring and like that was something I had no skills in terms of like touring and just like turning on for an audience right remember so it's just like no high heat like I would wear like no shoes and just stand there and sometimes I'd cry Mike really just like sort of like a a bleeding-heart on stage before I joined a band because I would just play like Pete's candy store and Joe's parlor they like teen like playing like singer-songwriter song you know but it didn't feel good I know that was great and then they then mark saw me perform with my friend Jordan and he signed us and he was like now you're going to do this and I was like oh like okay and it didn't last I ended up falling in love with a bluegrass musician and who I met in the subway really like got quite a Virginia play it started playing a washboard is really fan baby and stopped playing music for a few years so in that relationship it wasn't a musical it wasn't it with the with the bluegrass yeah yeah it was he played banjo and in order to play with him I would have to it I ever played spoons or washboard so it was musical and I wrote and I sang but it was nice to get away from sort of like high heels and high heels and Us Magazine so but what was that decision exactly was it I'm going to follow love because this doesn't feel right it was more it wasn't like conch yeah it it was pretty unconscious I just couldn't see myself go like it was sort of a era of Amy Winehouse here and and marks first record and we were sort of the baby of that that little crew yeah and I saw where it was going and you know we played Lily Allen's first US tour in her and that was really fun but I just always felt like I was being a little insincere like didn't quite fit and I when I met my son's father I just sort of it was like a quick escape was just the way out yeah and then interesting cause thinking about Amy and even Lily Allen my impression of her back then is those were women that weren't necessarily trying to fit into something but you know they were funny murdered they were writing my songs got on yeah that was I'm all like I was writing with this guy Jordan but I really more just you know the front woman right where Amy and and Lily were writing their own stuff and there it had been like a very long relationship with Mark I think the development and just thought they were breaking the year that we were just starting yeah so it was also my Karim just the timing was weird and we were sort of put to the image sort of like the bottom of the barrel uh-huh when it came to it yeah you know so I just sort of I took I just decided that it was time for me to take a break from that but not necessarily play music and then I had then I got pregnant I was like okay now I'm going to take a real big although I did play a washboard on like a nine months pregnant belly running which is Ryan I'm convinced my son is like crazy person I'm just having and I was not really in that all through the way and I'm yeah he loves loud me like loud everything he falls asleep the louder the music really the most shoot he becomes that's perfect for a New York City baby yeah he loves I'm pretty yeah so when you move down there it didn't like you are giving up on the dream it was just enough reprioritizing and shifting bitterness young like what 21 that at that point I was 25 when I had my son's it's 23 when I met his dad and in Virginia for like a year okay back and forth who never needed to say to yourself what would I want to do alternately than music that was never know because it sort of sound me like I never never had a plan B other than music I used to teach diatonic which is like Pilates like phys I was always sort of into wellness and healing my body work but I never saw myself making it a career I was really into babies and really into pregnant women since I was a kid I was always very protective very tuned into like the pregnant belly really think that came from no idea yeah just like really and told myself one day that I would maybe go to midwifery school then I had my son and realized like the process was very just so intense and life-changing and I thought I would have to I would want to see other women giving birth before I went to school for it and so the woman who a friend of mine who was a doula said you should try this like it's a great you know it's not it's by no means a hobby but it's it makes sense to you because you seem to have these love and you'll come in your life we're like friends of mine and huge bands would come off tour and let go work at a coffee shop right like you're in that band and you're just made my cappuccino and I don't understand why you're here yeah and it's like you know they it's also like getting back into your community as well like like just I'm gonna grounding after tour um so for me to to try it I did I went to a few births and music wasn't really at the forefront of my mind I was just like trying it and it just took over yeah what year was this about from 2000 and 2010 okay look I've run the line my son was six months old okay I was in Brooklyn yeah imagine you had a doula for your own I didn't but you had a Miller why yes I had a midwife and that's when you're like I wish I had had a doula I thought I had an assistant and an assistant in a midwife system is someone who assists the Midwife but she's not really there to sort of go like forehead to forehead with me which is like what I do was really for them for the laboring person not for the Midwife and so the assistant was there but she just didn't know how to connect to me and she didn't have the best touch and she was going through stuff I could feel like she was going through stuff in her own life and I had a small apartment to feel everything and like pregnant women are like superheroes they feel like really everything in the room they smell everything as well which is crazy so you smell you wear real deodorant to birth or you'll be in trouble oh that's organic no no like crystals gonna be enough and mothers like you're in college yeah I gotta get out of here and Eve so she was wonderful for as a medical student but she wasn't there for me and I felt that gap in the care I thought I think it was really the reason why I went so gung-ho into the works yes I really wanted to be like what I didn't have yeah and I wasn't very close to my mom at the time and so I didn't have that and I'd find a lot of people aren't close to them or don't have that maybe back in the day it was like grandmothers and aunts and sisters attending but there's always women yeah I want to ask you about something that you said in a video yes I saw you on once you said that you come from a family of narcissistic women Oh but yeah well I was going to say it doesn't sound like you are terribly narcissistic in terms of when you're talking about what you do you inspired you to do that but maybe you are maybe that somehow an important part of it maybe I don't know I don't think I'm a narcissist okay I really don't I think I've really investigated it here like I've gone to therapy and I'm sort of like how did I go to this bullet although I think most artists are inherently a bit nurses well I've always struggled to be an artist only like that my things I always sort of gone I've seen the dark side of the narcissist of the of the artist and then the children come second and the partner comes burned and you know when it's just about your career and your schedule and everything else is like a detail ya have damaging that is and there are so few artists whether it be actors or musicians that I really respect their lifestyle like the way they've handled their lives in the public eye and like the order they've sort of done things in and I think I've always been very nervous about messing with the order of my life you know and sort of like even now my manager will she will a menace I like struggle with the idea of going on tour yeah I might have he's eight I can't leave him you know like can I bring him with me like maybe but that's not going to make me like a really hot ticket you know like you gotta wait til spring break and Christmas break and how does that sound to you and they say hot ticket are you like I don't care I've never really cared that's the problem drug are they I guess I want to just like slow make when I was a kid I would my mum would ask me to sing because she she thought I had a good voice and she I would turn my back would go hide in the bathroom close the door and then I would think they could ask me to sing to like at the dinner party or like friend should come over uh-huh and I thought it's how I hated it but I loved singing yeah I just couldn't and you did choose to go to school for it like I did pursuing it as a kid yeah I loved that I could go to school and sing all day instead of take math and I ended up going to LaGuardia where I had to do academics and my major and ended it I ended up getting kicked out in junior year because I was failing and everything but doing really well in music but flunking everything else was that around the time when Mark Ronson's took you up no Muslim luck I think it's out of it yeah minimal and I say Mike Ross need to know yeah what happened mark saw me play at pianos right when pianos opened with my friend Jordan and it was a give us Domino the band I am and before that he had played like places like jazz pardon like the bill as a great baby well yo'self was great I played one of sixteen yeah that's good I know it was really like a thing this is how I would do old know Joe's Pub was a band I got together just to play my songs like set hired guys we were writing at 16 yeah how do you roll man yeah and then someone was interested in me through that show I think his name was what I was his name he said he did like all the Chaka Khan records and he's like an 80s producer anyway he loved my voice and him and his wife signed me to their little label like sending cars to pick me up from my mom's house and I just I remember feeling like we already know like I'll walk there Thanks I don't know why I just have a problem with a lot of attention yeah how did your parents feel about that they loved it yeah I have those but I have those parents yeah that would love me to be well-known for my art uh-huh they don't get it they didn't care that I didn't great get like great great in school it was really about sort of being so they knew that or they felt that art was your thing yeah so that's what parents do they're like oh that my son no my daughter's really good at that oh is that so you're going to do that thing for the rest of your life okay like that Yeah right exactly normally I like jazz I really thank are you gonna make a living if I even though you're great at it yeah like how do they feel about your being a doula hmm for the first like three years they didn't really they thought it was Ray you know honorable and night so that my dad was very proud once my dad came in my office and he saw all the babies pictures on the walls of that I've been there for um and he said this is better than any platinum records any gold record or whatever and I was like crying obviously you see me um and then my mom says she's going to hate this and she let me near the surface um she struggled the New York Times did an article on doulas and I was beated and that's when she started liking really what I did well being proud of it I gotta you know she asked for that she was like this through you comes with the world you know is the world you want your child to be and I don't it's just you know I'm sort of trying to carve out a different path you know for my son it's like I see that he's good at all these things but I'm not going to sort of you know give him that role to play Oh were you actually on tour with your dad like would you get on the tour bus and only like in the summers I love them because the tool buses have those little bunks mm-hmm and I David I can fit me and hug my goo like the other man your children regards all right and then I imagine him sleeping in those bunks and I was just like whoa how do you do this yeah like for months on end right so would you be alone on tour with him or was your did you have your sisters there and your mom and my I would he would like take a different kid like depending on a holiday yeah it was like a lucky thing yeah it was really fun I mean also a bad company and free like well three was before my time but going to a bad company show in America it's like it's so for life like mullets and beret I'm hairy back and like gotta feel like a foreign country yeah I'm saying yeah you know but so fun to see my dad up but the glamour part of it didn't entice you you didn't say oh and on it be on this giant stage and having a decent Doering sounds and all of that we've heard of it yeah here's anything it was tough because tour like touring took my dad away right so I would go on to be like this is what you leave us was just like screaming fans like I'll scream it you know I do you know you know but you tell that I was going on to her like ten yes and my brain just couldn't like absorb like you know his two worlds normally he has funny I mean I'm sure it has an effect on how I view yeah well you and from what I understand of Jemima I don't know what Lola's much but really see you two definitely seem like reluctant star you hasn't messaged Jemima stories like she got pulled into doing girls and she never wanted to act and I know she's an artist and amazing artist and that seems like more of a choice yeah her life but you guys did this amazing job of receiving the gifts from your parents without like misunderstanding what to do with that mm-hmm yes so they at least did that yeah yeah okay so how do you feel about the new album are you feeling I'm worrying about now I'm so excited it's the first record I've finished I always did as I said LPS and sort of didn't have time to know how to fit this sort of thing into my life and how many songs on it it's 11 songs um so yeah it feels really good I encourage house my doula collective carriage house birth is at a place where I can leave it now yeah so it feels like the timing is great and I'm really proud of the songs like the people I wrote with Luke temple who's playing with us today and Joan wasa was like a very big influence on me and happened to be a good great friend so writing this record with them was like such a privilege yeah and you got to stay local right yep we did it in Hudson and lacrosse yeah nice amazing are you ready to be vulnerable on space again and yeah yeah you'll get right it now um yeah but now you just have to do well I don't have to be anybody else yeah yeah and the songs really feel like they carry me like before I felt like I had to sort of put it on and this just feels like you know very intimate and I ready describe the difference between sort of being a doula which is like this act of service giving and being a musician which is more of an act of selfishness and I think that's like a perpetual kind of struggle for an artist where you know you want to be doing this thing how much is it a service to people because I think different artists have different feelings about like oh whoa I'm giving something that's going to be tonight healing or or you know somehow a gift in different ways but it's hard to reckon with that because Shiller really I mean it's a narcissistic act to I talked to my husband about this pen he's he was on Gossip Girl and sometimes people pull him aside and say you don't understand like Gossip Girl got me through the hard times and my car I'll get anyone through any hard time and he said son first like he'll say he said he saw met a woman once on the train or something she said I was in law school and studying or she was a doctor in medical school and the a she would put on Gossip Girl and it would like calm her down or like space like open up her create space in her brain that she could like breathe and I'd get back to where she you know where she really was a said of all this studying and just being constantly overwhelmed and he she thanked him and he they didn't know what to do with it he was like he's so used to people just wanting through a photograph you know radio like people like walking with their husbands and then grabbing hand me like that telling me um he felt and he said that's similar to like you know what I sort of struggle with with music like I'm just playing songs like what is that really doing for anyone you know and like I think when the songs are coming from that place it you know in you that where you feel like it is an act of service like I'm telling you a story that I you know maybe I got through something or maybe my voice has an effect on you in some way and maybe takes you out of your life for a minute like that is it is an actor catalyst okay that's something I'm sort of getting more used to feeling and thinking about music that's great okay and your voice that I can do it really and then your lyrics in that boat the entire I mean it's completely stripped out it's like you and guitar and what else is there a lot of stuff in that but it's very a lot of ambient madam it's very minimal and super soothing and then at the same time I want to like focus in and listen to the lyrics and especially you know I imagine it's a lot of stories about that yeah a big experience that you're going through as a doula must be the most furred place kind of dinner who doesn't yeah to a fertile ground for yeah songwriting onions like yeah I wrote the entire universe yeah Luke and I wrote like he he told me I lost my grandparents like one year after the next and loss of loss in my life in the past five years and Luke was like just write just like write down like just write essays about your life and your grandfather passing and who he was and just just write and send me what you write and I just sent him just almost journal entries and then he should have sifted through and he'd arranged songs like a format out of what I sent him and then we'd meet up and come up with melodies and so it was a very like cathodic like yeah it was I mean it literally he took journal and like pages out of my journal madam understands the best have a partner that you can work with him that way yeah no yes I that the fact that I get to play with him today is such a it's just it's such a change ya know it's beautiful I put it on this weekend to listen to and think about this podcast and I was going to multitask and do both settings and then I ended one running down my laptop and it's laid on my couch listened to the album is really nice yes it's amazing it's beautiful yeah okay so beyond waves is what college if we haven't said that both full-time out August 25th yeah yeah there you go guys check it out when it comes out and yeah you're doing a facebook live perform yes so you guys can see that on our Facebook page and this podcast will be on YouTube well that's where you're watching it right now is bigger is listening to it you can also watch on YouTube alright thank you so much thank you thank you

Channel: Billboard

Views: 9,970

Rating: 4.7802196 out of 5

Keywords: Billboard, billboard channel, official, billboard magazine, music, official billboard channel, domino kirke, domino kirke interview, domino, kirke, interview, new album, new music, album, domino kirke beyond waves, beyond waves, beyond, waves, HBO Girls, mozart in the jungle, bad company, celebrities, celebrity, music news, singer, tv, television, songwrtier, soul sisters, soul, sisters, podcast, billboard podcast, soul sisters podcast, 2017

Id: HO6BnMhPawE

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2017