Megan King
I started singing when I was little, to track tapes of my mom’s from church. I went through a slight rap phase in middle school where I would tape songs from the radio and replay them until I knew all the words, like Salt n Pepa and Tone Loc. I quickly realized I would not have a career in the rap business, and decided to try to learn how to play the guitar. I had a casio keyboard, a recorder, and a clarinet under my belt, so I figured the guitar couldn’t be so bad. My dad had this awesome Ibanez Steve Miller Artist Series guitar in the closet that I used to pull out and look at when he wasn’t home. It had these beautiful mother of pearl inlays and gold plates on the back. I never touched it though, I was too scared he would find out. I had this theory that my dad was a secret agent, and would dust for fingerprints every time I did something I wasn’t supposed to. Ha!
When I was 16, I developed a huge crush on this singer in a punk band, and decided it was high time I tried to play the guitar. Especially after I realized a Green Day Song that was playing on the radio only had three notes in it, all of which you could play by placing one finger over the neck of the guitar and moving it up and down three consecutive frets. For those of you that don’t understand that, let’s just say that you could play it without knowing anything about the guitar. Needless to say this made me brave.
I explained to my mom and dad (who had hopes I would be a doctor) that I wanted to play the guitar. They were pretty excited, but said they couldn’t afford to buy me one at the time, so dad let me play his Ibanez. My grandpa king bought me a guitar book for Christmas, and that’s where it all started. I would sit in my room for hours at a time with that book and that Ibanez trying to learn chords. Within a few weeks I had written my first song and joined my first band. And needless to say, got a date with the punk-rocker.
Things with the punk rocker guy didn’t work out, but I continued to hone in on my craft. My dad took me to the same music store in Plymouth, IN where he had purchased his Ibanez years ago, and bought me my first acoustic guitar in 1997. It was an Oscar Schmidt. I LOVED it. I later sold Oscar for a Seagull, which got traded for a Takemine, and finally I have my one and only Gibson named Annie (after my grandma) that I will never be able to sell. I’m still holding out for a hummingbird, a Doves in Flight, or SJ200. But I won’t give up on Annie.
Since my days in the bedroom with the Ibanez, I have played all over the nation, and at regional showcases such as the Ohio River Valley Folk Festival where I opened the stages for artists such as Roger McGuinn (The Byrds) and Todd Snider (the Beer Run song). In January 2008, I decided to do my first complete solo project in which I had no outside help on the album (aside from final mastering). I picked 8 conceptual songs for an idea I cooked up—Pretty Songs. I wanted to do what I thought I did best, pretty songs. All instruments, vocals, production, and artwork for the album was done by moi. I’m extremely excited about this album for a number of reasons.
First, many musicians get watered down in the studio by other influences, and you aren’t experiencing the true vulnerability and passion that they have. Secondly, as much as we like something that sounds great, we miss out sometimes on the beautiful imperfections that make a piece of art human. We work so hard on perfecting something, instead of what’s more important—relating that piece to your audience and getting a message across that they can relate to.
John Steinbeck said, “A sad soul can kill you quicker than any germ.” I remember sitting alone in my room as a younger person, reading the lyrics of a new tape or CD, and thinking, “How did you know I felt this way?” I would cry in those silences. It was safe there with the music. I felt a little less alone, simply because someone else was able to call out exactly how I felt. There is comfort in that. Music has the ability to heal us.
With Pretty Songs LP, I was able to record these tracks in the privacy of my own basement, amidst the creaks and hums of a hot water heater, the interruptions of a telephone, or the rattle of my dog’s collar as she whined for me to let her outside. These songs are unashamedly naked and transparent.
They are the liminal spaces that we forget…
The sometimes too-hard-to-ask questions…
The secrets we never tell.
