Daniel Kirkley Interview &tWho Is Daniel Kirkley?
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L> So, you’re from South Carolina? How long have you been here [Nashville]? D> Seven and a half years, and I love it, except for the allergies! L> Yeah, it’s like one of the worst places to live for a singer.
L> I’ve read a lot about you, and you have quite a story. You were pursing medicine and you left that to become a singer! That took a lot of guts. I read about that awkward conversation with your Mom and Dad telling them that you weren’t going to be a doctor. They seemed to be pretty understanding. Sounds like you have a really good relationship with them. How have they helped you in this process? D> I would definitely say I get my best and worst traits from my parents. You take my mom’s type A personality and my Dad’s sense of humor and you have me. We’ve always had a really great open relationship. They really keep me in check. It’s been hard on them since I’ve been gone. My parents are both Realtors, and I’m from a small town, so they are really plugged in there. So growing up there was a bit of a tight reign situation, so even though I’m 28 it’s hard for them to be so far away from me and not know what my daily life looks like. I grew up in church. My parents go to the same church my Dad has attended his whole life, and he met my mom there, and my brother met his wife there. They keep telling me that if I move back home I’ll find my wife there too! L> HA! Did you happen to visit them when you were in North Carolina this week? D> I did. I had a concert about 45 min. away from them, so I spent the night in my old room, which is now the guest bedroom and looks nothing like my old room, but it’s nice to have a place to go home to. L> Do either one of them have a musical background? D> No, I don’t know where that came from? L> So how did two realtors birth a medical/musical person?
D> Growing up the typical guy thing of sports, I tried all that, and there’s a coordination thing that did not get passed down to me. So, my interest turned to music, and I started taking piano when I was in third grade and took piano for about 8 years, and also started taking voice about four years into that. So that was thing that I was good at, so I invested in it. I love math and I love science. I love seeing a problem and getting to a definitive answer. I get the biggest high off of that!
D> I really had everything planned. I was double majoring in classical voice and pre-med, and the whole reason for the music was because I had a scholarship in it. So I was only really doing it because I had to. It was sort of a means to an end. I didn’t really see a future in that style of music for me, and the only other thing I had seen was a music minister in a suit and tie and that wasn’t me either. Every time they would have youth Sunday or something, I would be chosen to lead the hymns, and when I get nervous I get sort of dyslexic. I was always reading the hymn numbers backwards and stuff. That was a major red flag. I remember having a conversation with God saying “There’s no way I would ever do music ministry.” Because again, all I could see was the suit and tie, and I knew that wasn’t where my heart was. Then I worked a summer at a theme park, and experiencing connecting with people and impacting people really got a hold of me. A friend of mine was transferring to Belmont and she started telling me all about the school and getting a job in the industry, and I really started thinking about it. That really planted a seed in me. I still thought I would stay in South Carolina, and maybe get my Masters degree at Belmont, but when I went back I was completely miserable. I was very involved socially, and it all just felt empty and dead to me. I just remember laying in bed in cold sweats knowing I couldn’t stay there another two years. So that’s when I started the conversations with the parents, and at first it didn’t go so well. They thought that I wanted to go because my friend just happened to be an attractive female. After about a month, they realized I was serious. L> I loved the title cut, “Let Love Win” obviously being written by Nicole Nordeman, it had to be good. I also really liked “Everyday People.” I noticed that you co-wrote that, and “Lay it Down” catches my attention every time. Have you discovered who your audience is or what your overall message is? D> Wow! Thanks so much. You never know who is going to grab on to what. I never like to script what I say before my songs, and I just like to share what I feel like sharing, and God really moves through that. It’s things like that that really shock me, when someone comes up and comments on something I said, not something I sang. Like the song “Unrepeatable” on the album. That really began with a conversation with my A&R person. He knew someone that was really struggling with suicide, and he was like, “How do I tell this person that they’re unrepeatable?” So you talk about something as sobering as suicide. I remember the first time I introduced the song with that aspect behind it, and you never really know how that’s going to go over because there are some hot topics in churches and you don’t know how it’s going to go. But every time I tell that, someone comes up to me and tells me they’ve been going through the same thing. So now that song sort of has a whole new life to it. So I’m just being faithful with honesty, and not trying to paint a perfect picture when I’m up there. I think the music resonates with people who are outside the church or who feel like they don’t belong. So often we put on this picture that life after Christ is perfection, but it’s not. Sometimes, it’s worse. Sometimes, you deal with the same issues on a more magnified level, and so it’s being honest with that. I’m the first one to say when I get up there on stage that I have the easy part. I get up and sing to a room full of people who for the most part believe what I do. They are the ones who go out into the world and their platform is at work or at school, and they have to live it out and that’s what’s hard. I just hope I can be a moment of encouragement.
D> He’s a great vocalist, so I’m not gonna say no. I’ll take what I can get! I think he’s done a great job of blending that style of pop and classical and that’s definitely what I bring to Christian music. Probably a little more pop than classical, but the headways he made in that genre is what has made it possible for me to have the platform and for my music to connect with people. L> So you’re okay with the comparison then? D> Yeah. Definitely. L>So how long was it from the time you decided to pursue this until the time you’re actually getting an album released? D> Um, it was about seven years and five months. L> Wow! People don’t always realize that. D> Yeah, well I didn’t know what life was going to be like after I graduated. First I got an internship in a publishing department and then I got a job at Brentwood/Benson and was there for four years. Honestly I had never really written a song until I worked for the publishing company. I really fell in love with songwriting as a craft. I never knew that songwriters work like everybody else. They would come in at like 9 in the morning and leave at 5 and write all day. I always thought it was all singer/songwriter driven, so to see it as an art separate from singing was great. It sort of fell back into the formula/ logic part of me, and I loved it. Then I was approached by some people I was working with at the time, and they kind of brought up the idea of the pop/classical thing, and it just didn’t work out. I think it was really hard working for them at the same time. L> So was the first project in the same vein as this one?
L> Do you think working in the industry prior to becoming an artist helped you or hurt you? D> I think there are trade offs, but overall it helped me to understand the business. Once you cross the line into the ministry side you can kind of control the blurring of the lines between ministry and business and not let that side overcome the other. I think it was hard for me to make the transition into the creative side, but Centricity really focuses on development and they really helped me in that. I’m a different person now than I was a year and a half ago because of the time they put in. More information on Daniel Kirkley can be found at his website: http://www.danielkirkley.com. You can visit his MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/danielkirkley. Reader CommentsReader Comments
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D> For real! Why is Music City here? But other than that, it’s good.
L> The style of your music is very encouraging. Lyrics aside, musically, it’s very uplifting. I know that a lot of people compare you to Josh Groban. Do you like that or do you think of yourself as something different?
D> Well, my first project, is something that I really don’t talk about. I recorded it with some friends at Belmont, and we recorded it for like the price of a Papa John’s pizza. We would record from like 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., and those CDs are out of print forever, because some things should never be heard. The second one was much more kind of pop/rock. It was really my first experimentation with writing. I really wanted to take on the task of writing the entire record, and see what goes into making a record from beginning to end. It served it’s purpose, and I loved it. A friend of mine suggested that I sit down with someone and play them my songs, so one night I did, and Centricity invited me out to their artist retreat. It’s such a family oriented label that it just really connected with me.
