Some Guys Have All the Luck
Kim Ware and the Good Graces exist in the ear-candy space between timeless power pop and cosmically inclined Americana. This whimsical, mystical melting pot of sound forms the basis of their fantastic new record, Grand Epiphanies. Across five brilliantly crafted songs, Kim and her band snapshot their individual and relatable approach to songwriting and songcraft, allowing the space for stories to grow and connections to evolve. The set is pinned together with exceptional musicianship and creative camaraderie, unquestionably a hallmark for the Good Graces. And as the buzz and excitement surrounding Grand Epiphanies continues to gradually build, Kim sat down for a chat with Aldora Britain Records to reflect on her musical journey so far. We discussed formative creative memories from her adolescence, the beginnings and early days of the Good Graces, a selection of their recorded output to date, and much, much more. That exclusive in-depth conversation is published here in full for the very first time.
Aldora Britain Records: Hello Kim, how are you? I am excited to be talking with such a fantastic artist from over in North Carolina. It is amazing how music can bring us together. Let’s start off by travelling back in time. What are some of your earliest musical memories and what was it that first pushed you towards pursuing this passion of yours?
Kim Ware: Thank you! I'm good. Trying to keep it together, so much going on here in the States in regard to political and social turmoil. It's nice to have your questions as a distraction today. So, earliest musical memories, (this is really going to show my age!), are playing eight-track tapes, (yes!), in my 2XL. Gen X folks might be familiar with this, at least if they saw a picture. It's a little toy robot with an eight-track player in it, if I remember correctly it came with its own sort of educational tapes or you could also play music in it. The first eight-tracks I got were from my uncle and they were a ‘Greatest Hits’ collection by The Beatles. I remember specifically playing ‘Penny Lane’ over and over.
“I came to realise that I had the ability to take all the jumbled, messy thoughts spinning around in my head and make some sort of sense with them by putting them to song. That's always been amazing to me, how you can say so much in just three and a half minutes.”
Around that same time, I was maybe about seven or eight years old, I recall listening to my mom's 45s. My favourite was Nancy Sinatra's ‘The City Never Sleeps at Night’. I still love that song. It was songs such as these, pop songs with interesting lyrics and good melodies, for the most part, that first inspired me. It would be years before I'd pick up guitar and start writing my own songs, but it seems like I've always had little melodies in my head.
Aldora Britain Records: And now, let’s take a leap forward to the present day and a brilliant project of yours out of Kings Mountain. The beginnings of the Good Graces must have been an exciting, invigorating time. How did it all come to be? What was the initial spark? Is it an outlet for your solo musings or more of a collaborative kind of feel and approach?
Kim Ware: I'm a drummer, that was my first instrument. I got my first kit when I was sixteen, then joined a band while in college, in Wilmington, North Carolina. I've continued to play drums to this day, with only a few breaks here and there, mainly a few years ago due to the pandemic.
In 2004 I moved to Atlanta and met a few songwriters, namely Jeff Evans and a couple years later Mary O. Harrison. I ended up joining both their bands for a while as a drummer. This was the first time I had played with singer-songwriters, and I became really interested in the craft of it. I was an English major in undergrad, so I think I've always been drawn to words and using them in some creative, artistic way. It's all kind of funny I guess, verbally I often feel challenged to say what I want to say clearly and concisely and feel like I'm understood. But I came to realise that I had the ability to take all the jumbled, messy thoughts spinning around in my head and make some sort of sense with them by putting them to song. That's always been amazing to me, how you can say so much in just three and a half minutes.
Aldora Britain Records: You are fresh from releasing an exceptional new record called Grand Epiphanies. This was also my introduction to your music, so it already holds a special place in my record collection. What are your memories from writing and recording these songs, and how would you say you grew and evolved as an artist throughout this process?
Kim Ware: Thank you so much, I'm glad you like it. Most of these songs were written a few years ago, with the exception of the cover, of course, ‘Some Guys Have All the Luck’. I tend to write songs when, kind of like I mentioned above, I'm struggling with making sense of something. I rarely write with much more intention than that really. It's all pretty organic, which is, to me, one of the most interesting parts about it. Almost like the song has always been there, I'm just in the right place and time for it to emerge, if that makes sense.
I recorded the EP just up the road from where I live, at Union Recording Co. in Gastonia, North Carolina. I had seen a Facebook post from a musical acquaintance of mine, Justin Faircloth, about the studio, which he had just opened with Steven Fiore, who writes and releases songs under the name ‘Young Mister’. I thought it would be worth checking out due to its proximity to my house in Kings Mountain. Fast forward a few months, this was in early 2024, and we got to work on the songs.
Making Grand Epiphanies was a different process for me, in that I pretty much gave Justin and Steven full rein over the production and arrangement of the songs. I quickly saw that they were just so good at it. I thought, this might be a good experiment in relinquishing control a bit. But also, at the time I was finishing up grad school and doing my internship which was incredibly challenging. I honestly didn't have much mental capacity left to do much more than bring the songs in on acoustic guitar, sing them, and then let them make them what they thought they should be. It was really neat to listen to them evolve, and Steven and Justin picked everything up so quickly, like they had known the songs all along. Observing that was very rewarding, to see someone so good at what they do treating my songs with so much thought and creativity.
“I tend to write songs when ... I'm struggling with making sense of something ... It's all pretty organic ... Almost like the song has always been there, I'm just in the right place and time for it to emerge, if that makes sense.”
Aldora Britain Records: I am definitely drawn in by your dynamic songwriting and songcraft. That initial foundation for the songs. How do you approach this part of your creative process? Are you drawn to specific themes or topics? Perhaps coming from more of a personal, observational, or even fictional perspective or point of view?
Kim Ware: Pretty much like I said above, very organically. I'm drawn to real life as art, always have been. From the more mundane, personal stuff, like that conversation you had with a friend that didn't quite go the way you would have intended, or that book you read that you can't stop thinking about, to the bigger, more universal stuff, like the sociopolitical conflict that's happening not only in my country but seemingly most everywhere, all of these things end up in my songwriting. I also tend to use songs to sort of pay tribute to people or places that had an impact on me. My dad passed away back in 2019 and as a result, and even leading up to, I must have five to ten ‘dad songs’. I reference my grandma from time to time too. I released an album in 2019 with lots of references to ‘home’, and this was before I even knew that the very next year I'd be moving back to my old hometown in North Carolina. It's so fascinating to me how songs do that sometimes, how even the songwriter might not realise what they're ‘about’ until years later.
Aldora Britain Records: Let’s get more specific with this now. I would like to focus on two personal favourites, ‘Wish I Would’ve Missed You’ and ‘Missed the Mark’. For each, what is the story behind the song, and can you remember the moment it came to be? Did anything in particular inspire them and what do they mean to you as the writer and performer of each?
Kim Ware: Ah, you like the sad ones! ‘Wish I Would've Missed You’ was simply an attempt at capturing a feeling. While some of it is somewhat autobiographical, I took a lot of creative liberties. It was written in January a few years ago, just after the winter holidays had concluded. I tend to get pretty sad during the winter, and that year was no different. I'm not a big fan of Christmas, in general, all the focus on spending money really irritates me, and I'm not particularly religious. But that particular holiday season, once it was over, I found myself really missing the visual part, the decorations. Like, literally missing how it seemed to serve as a mask of sorts, or a temporary distraction, from not only stress I was feeling personally but just the collective tension that's been present in our country for a while now. I found myself reflecting on that, which then probably led to more introspective thoughts about regret and grief and tried to put all that to song. I wanted it to also sort of have this 70s, sad, singer-songwriter sort of vibe.
‘Missed the Mark’ I wrote back around 2021 or ’22, I believe. It came to be thanks to someone in the ‘industry’ suggesting that I write some songs from a less personal perspective, less vulnerable. More third-person sort of thing. I thought about it, but something about that suggestion bothered me a little. I guess because I knew I had never purposely tried to write from any perspective. And I liked that, it had never felt forced or unnatural to me. So, I think I sort of doubled down on the vulnerability! I was thinking about imposter syndrome, so many creative types deal with it, and how all we really want is to be accepted, to feel like we belong. But for some, like me, even when we experience that belonging, we're afraid that there's some sort of catch, that the other shoe will drop somehow, and it'll be taken from us. It's something I've struggled with for a long time, and I guess I just wanted to try and be really honest about it.
“I was thinking about imposter syndrome, so many creative types deal with it, and how all we really want is to be accepted, to feel like we belong. But for some, like me, even when we experience that belonging, we're afraid that there's some sort of catch.”
Aldora Britain Records: I have been doing some crate-digging over on Bandcamp, leading me back to 2023’s Homely. This is another stellar snapshot of you as an artist. Thank you for the music! Let’s explore it in more depth. How do you reflect back on this record as a whole now, and is there anything that you would edit or change when looking back with the benefit of hindsight?
Kim Ware: This one is only available on Bandcamp so I'm so glad you found and mentioned it! I wanted something that was super stripped down, something that sounded more like my solo and duo performances. And I wanted it to be homemade. So, I recorded it myself, at home, and I mixed it as well. It was my first time doing that and it was definitely one of those experiences where I just jumped in and learned by doing. That was the intent, so it completely served its purpose. While I love hearing the full-band arrangements of my songs, it is really good to have this more stripped-down representation of what I do, for folks who might be into hearing the songs closer to how they originated.
Aldora Britain Records: As you well know by now, I love that Good Graces sound and your approach to making and creating music. That soulful and rootsy foundation that comes through. How would you say this style of yours came about, what goes into it for you, and who are some of your biggest influences and inspirations as an artist currently?
Kim Ware: Well, as a drummer, I think I've always had a very rhythmic approach to playing guitar. So that's definitely been there since the beginning, and I guess that's the more obvious answer. But something that I actually haven't ever really thought about until just now is how drums are traditionally background and foundational, which is also much more comfortable for me, as an introvert. So, I suppose approaching guitar more like a percussion instrument is a way for me to be more comfortable with being centre stage too. To this day, even though I've been writing songs on guitar since 2006, I feel far more comfortable, more ‘me’, when I'm playing the drums. All of that is to say that I guess songwriting, for me, is almost a way to explore that discomfort. To not run away from it. To accept it for what it is and know that it's still okay, even lean into it.
As far as influences, the 90s is a big one for me, stuff like Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donnelly. When I first heard the Indigo Girls, also back in the 90s, I really started to pay attention to and play around with vocal harmonies, even before I was a songwriter. I'll always be a fan of their songs, and them as people, and while my stuff is probably more akin to Amy's songs, I got to say Emily Saliers is about the best bridge writer out there. It took me years to even understand how to put bridges in my songs. Lucinda Williams is another big influence, but she's not big on bridges. I'm also a big fan of more recent Americana stuff like Kathleen Edwards, Lydia Loveless, Jaimee Harris, Neko Case, and indie artists like Courtney Barnett, Phoebe Bridgers, Waxahatchee, and MJ Lenderman. And I adore Rickie Lee Jones. I got to see her for the first time a few months ago and I'd go as far as saying it was lifechanging.
My friends influence me a ton too. Writers like David Childers from nearby Mount Holly, Danielle Howle from the Charleston, South Carolina area. I used to listen to so much Danielle stuff in the early 2000s. Many years later we became friends which is a little wild to even grasp sometimes, given how important her 2002 album, Skorborealis was to me. I mentioned my friends Jeff and Mary O that I used to play with. They are both amazing songwriters from Atlanta. My friend Andy Gish, also from Atlanta, writes for a band called the Yum Yum Tree, they are wonderful. A guy named Jackson Harden from around Charlotte, he writes these beautiful, delicate, Elliott Smith-like tunes. Another friend Mike Nolan has such a pure, 90s-ish voice that I could listen to for days. My friend Wyatt Espalin, we've toured together a few times, he's amazing. Tracy Shedd, who has released records for Teen Beat and more recently the label that releases my music, Fort Lowell.
“I suppose approaching guitar more like a percussion instrument is a way for me to be more comfortable with being centre stage ... even though I've been writing songs on guitar since 2006, I feel far more comfortable, more ‘me’, when I'm playing the drums.”
And some of my friends out of the Chapel Hill area, like Jphono1, Erie Choir, Mayflies USA, Regina Hexaphone. An old friend named James Reardon from Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote some incredible songs in the early 2000s with his band Rodeo Boy. He was one of the first local songwriters I came to know who really had a knack for clever wordplay. My friend Chris Jackson from Greensboro and his old bands Lookwell and Citified, I'd just as soon listen to them as just about anything. I know that's a lot! But I could add even more. All these folks have influenced my writing in some way, I'm sure. And I'm not ashamed to admit my admiration of Taylor Swift. She's so prolific that some stuff I could do without, but I really loved 1989, Lover, and the Folklore / Evermore stuff. I like to think my music might be a hodgepodge of all those influences, and some are more evident than others depending on the song.
Aldora Britain Records: A broad question to finish. There have been a lot of changes in the world in the post-COVID era, both throughout society, with political turmoil and even bloodshed in Ukraine and Palestine, and within the music industry too, AI for example. How would you say these several years have impacted you, both personally and as an artist? How do you think this time has changed the music
industry, both for the good and the bad?
Kim Ware: The impact has been pretty profound, really, and will probably continue to be. If anything, I've become more grateful for music as an outlet. They haven't taken that from me yet. It's something I can go to any time I need it. More and more I just appreciate that part of it, almost at a very spiritual level. Like this is such an honest, real part of me that, when it works, can facilitate a connection with other people, and that is more important now than ever. I wasn't around in the 60s but I hear lots of folks comparing this time to then, and many even say this is worse, as far as the division, the fighting, the uncertainty.
Personally, I have a very collectivist mindset. When my community is hurting, I'm hurting. And while I may not agree with my neighbour down the street, we're still all connected. So, from that respect their wellbeing matters to me. As humans we are all in this together and unless we just hunker down and never leave our homes or interact with another human at all, we have to coexist with each other. So, each person's wellbeing really does affect how well, or not, our entire system operates. Currently, it needs a lot of help. It's scary and exhausting and affects nearly everything.
“I have a very collectivist mindset. When my community is hurting, I'm hurting. And while I may not agree with my neighbour down the street, we're still all connected. So, from that respect their wellbeing matters to me.”
I have never really considered myself part of the ‘industry’, but I guess I am. I mean you can find my music on outlets like Spotify and YouTube, so I'm part of the machine, albeit a teeny tiny part. I play drums in a punk and riot grrrl band, and we collaborate on the songwriting, each member contributing pretty equally. Some of that music is outwardly political in a way that is critical of the current administration. Heck, a few of my own songs are too. So that's an obvious way that the turmoil has affected my art. In regard to AI, honestly it scares me too. I've never used ChatGPT and don't intend to. Even if something takes longer to make and has imperfections. That's what makes it real. We need that.
Quickfire Round
AB Records: Favourite artist or band? Kim: Lydia Loveless has been my favourite writer and singer for several years now because of how raw and real she is, so I'll go with her.
AB Records: Favourite album? Kim: That's tough! I have several desert island albums, but honestly, again, thinking about Lydia Loveless, when her album Real came out in 2016, I think I listened to it every single day for a solid year or so.
AB Records: First album you bought with your own money? Kim: Neon Nights, a various artists cassette of pop and dance hits from that time, around 1982.
AB Records: Last album you listened to from start to finish? Kim: Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood.
AB Records: First gig as an audience member? Kim: Huey Lewis and the News, Charlotte Coliseum, 1984. I think for the Sports tour.
AB Records: Loudest gig as an audience member? Kim: Probably Weedeater at some little bar during SXSW around 2008, but I was standing about two feet from them.
AB Records: Style icon? Kim: Not a single person but the SNL skit, ‘Forever 31: Styles for every color of the bummer rainbow’.
AB Records: Favourite film? Kim: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
AB Records: Favourite TV show? Kim: I'm revisiting The Office, American version, and it's so comforting. So, I'll go with that for now. I love ensemble casts, it's hard to top that one.
AB Records: Favourite up and coming artist or band? Kim: I mentioned MJ Lenderman in regard to influences, I really love his writing and the other acts that he's associated with too, Wednesday and Waxahatchee.
