Field Dispatch
Jessie Kilguss | Matt Connarton Unleashed
Speaker 1: It's a great track. I love that. That is Fool's
Speaker 1: Fight by Jesse Kilgus and we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: to Jesse in just a moment. Welcome everybody. We have
Speaker 1: entered our number three of Matt Connorton Unleashed and we
Speaker 1: are live from the studios of w m n H
Speaker 1: ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Today is Saturday, December thirteenth, twenty twenty five. Genius here
Speaker 1: at the news table book and let's see joining us,
Speaker 1: joining us via WhatsApp. Jesse Kilgus is here. Jesse can
Speaker 1: you hear us?
Speaker 2: Yes, I ken, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yes, you sound great. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that song. It's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things you just kind of sway to, you know when
Speaker 1: you hear it. That's really really good. Thank you also,
Speaker 1: so we we love your sound. Also excited to talk
Speaker 1: to you because we were playing actually I played at
Speaker 1: the end of the last hour Win by Charlie neland
Speaker 1: because I was very as I was reading about you,
Speaker 1: I was quite pleased to see that that you've worked
Speaker 1: with Charlie because he was actually on the show with
Speaker 1: us recently and we had a fascinating conversation. He's an
Speaker 1: amazing guy. Oh great, but he's he's your producer? Is
Speaker 1: that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, he produced this record.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've worked with multiple different people on all the different
Speaker 3: records I've made, but Charlie and I have been working
Speaker 3: on and off for almost twenty years.
Speaker 1: Oh no, kidding, wow, yeah, Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he produced this one.
Speaker 1: What is it about? What is it about working with
Speaker 1: Charlie that brings out because the record is great? They
Speaker 1: have a Howard Johnson's there. I love it. What is
Speaker 1: it about? What is it about working with Charlie that
Speaker 1: brings out out this great music in you?
Speaker 3: Well, Charlie's just multi talented, plays a bunch of different
Speaker 3: instruments and is a great engineer and producer. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 3: but I'm a wonderful person too, So he's just very
Speaker 3: easy to work with.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. And
Speaker 1: tell us about the title, by the way of the album.
Speaker 1: I love the title. There's a how they have a
Speaker 1: Howard Johnson's there.
Speaker 3: So that's a line from my song Howard Johnson's and
Speaker 3: I wrote that song. I took a poetry writing workshop
Speaker 3: with the performance artist Karen Finley, and the theme of
Speaker 3: the workshop was Dog Day Afternoon and oh, we had
Speaker 3: to watch the movie and then we had this poetry
Speaker 3: workshop inspired by that and this. I took this workshop
Speaker 3: about a month after my father died. And his name
Speaker 3: was Howard. And there's a line in the movie where
Speaker 3: al Pacino says something like I'm going to Algeria they have.
Speaker 2: A Howard Johnson's or something.
Speaker 3: I just really stood out to me because my dad's
Speaker 3: name was Howard, and it was just so ridiculous too,
Speaker 3: the line, Yeah, yeah, I wrote a song kind of
Speaker 3: based around that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool. That's funny too. That's such a great film.
Speaker 1: But I haven't watched it in so long, and I
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't even remember that line until you said it.
Speaker 2: It holds up. It's such a good movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does. It does absolutely, absolutely, And what
Speaker 1: can you tell us about Fools Fight? That's a great track.
Speaker 1: I really like that, As I mentioned, thank you, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you know.
Speaker 3: That was kind of inspired a little bit by some
Speaker 3: books I was reading by Ellena Ferrante, but it's also
Speaker 3: inspired by my own life and experiences. But I have
Speaker 3: a songwriting club with my friend Rembert Block, who sings
Speaker 3: back up on that song. Okay, she's a great singer, songwriter,
Speaker 3: multi instrumentalist. She and I have a club of two people.
Speaker 3: We meet every month and have to share a new song. Okay,
Speaker 3: So that song came out of that process, which is
Speaker 3: really useful to have, you know, a deadline every month. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about that because that's such an interesting concept
Speaker 1: to me, because is it like, because obviously everybody writes differently.
Speaker 1: Some people like to Some people need to feel a
Speaker 1: little bit of pressure, you know, to really get then writing.
Speaker 1: Some some people can't stop writing, and they actually write
Speaker 1: more music than they could ever or books or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, than they could ever actually use. Like, do
Speaker 1: you find that useful to have that little bit of pressure,
Speaker 1: like to have that deadline.
Speaker 3: I do. We've been Remembert and I have had this
Speaker 3: club for over two years now.
Speaker 2: It's really useful. Just sometimes I feel.
Speaker 3: More productive with writing and like I have more ideas.
Speaker 3: But sometimes it's just useful to flex the muscle, even
Speaker 3: if I don't like the song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it kind of forced well, obviously, and
Speaker 1: you know it's a successful partnership. Clearly. Are any of
Speaker 1: the other songs on the album did they also come
Speaker 1: out of that?
Speaker 3: Yes, Saint Teresa in Ecstasy came from that process.
Speaker 2: Hm, what else is on there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think all of them except for Howard Johnson's.
Speaker 1: Oh no kidding? Okay, Yeah, excellent, excellent? And what about
Speaker 1: your approach? You know, I was I was reading something about,
Speaker 1: you know, a nostalgia clever layered nostalgia online. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that is that something that that you might have
Speaker 1: said or I forget exactly where I saw that As
Speaker 1: I was researching you, I thought you had said something
Speaker 1: about that somewhere.
Speaker 2: That doesn't ring a bell?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, some of my songs are
Speaker 3: can be pretty nostalgic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Well it's funny though, because there's almost a timelessness to
Speaker 1: it in a way, like you listen to a song
Speaker 1: like Fool's Fight and that could that could have been
Speaker 1: any time? Really, you know, that's obviously it's it's a
Speaker 1: current song, but it could have been you know, it
Speaker 1: could have been ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and it
Speaker 1: would fit in any era. If that makes sense, and
Speaker 1: which which I think is cool when you have something
Speaker 1: that it could it could have come out anytime and
Speaker 1: it would have sounded relevant to that period.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, that's a that's a really nice compliment. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no, like I said, I mean, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing is it sounds like that to me. It
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me a little bit of you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember when I was a kid and
Speaker 1: the MTV had a show called one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: Minutes on Sunday nights, and it was two hours of
Speaker 1: It was two hours of music that you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: hear on mainstream radio at that time. And uh and
Speaker 1: a lot of the music, you know, the alternative music
Speaker 1: from that period. I remember it. It had that sort
Speaker 1: of sort of that timeless thing about it where it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, this is this is something happening now
Speaker 1: that's not in the mainstream, but this could have this
Speaker 1: could have happened ten years ago and it would have
Speaker 1: sounded you know, or maybe it would happen in the
Speaker 1: future and it would sound good. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm also really curious to ask about your acting career.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, sure, that's that's interesting to me. And and
Speaker 1: and I'm very interested too in how that informs your
Speaker 1: approach to music or or whether you kind of compartmentalize
Speaker 1: all that as some people do, or or or you know,
Speaker 1: or do the two kind of influence each other.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't act anymore. It used to be my prime,
Speaker 3: primary art forum. I haven't acted in about twenty years.
Speaker 3: I all wound out on it, Okay, but I did
Speaker 3: I did, you know, go to college and graduate school
Speaker 3: for it. And I did work professionally on the stage
Speaker 3: in England, and I did one movie The Crew with
Speaker 3: Daniel da Lewis and went on a writer and yeah,
Speaker 3: but I had this amazing experience working on it. I
Speaker 3: was part of a Tom Waits musical that the star
Speaker 3: was Mary and Faithful and the other star was Mary
Speaker 3: Margaret O'Hara, who's another amazing songwriter, singer, songwriter Canadian. If
Speaker 3: you don't know her, she's worth looking up. And the
Speaker 3: band of that show was incredible. The music was by
Speaker 3: Tom Waits, and the band was all these musicians who
Speaker 3: had worked with all of my favorite musicians, and Mary
Speaker 3: and Faithful was one of my favorite singers at the time,
Speaker 3: and It was an incredible experience, and it made me
Speaker 3: think that I wanted to maybe not act anymore real
Speaker 3: kind of yeah, and that's when I started to think
Speaker 3: about focusing on music more because I have always been
Speaker 3: a singer. But yeah, and in terms of how my
Speaker 3: acting life background performed informs my writing. I think creativity
Speaker 3: is just seamless and you can direct it towards any
Speaker 3: art form. So it's the same energy I use for
Speaker 3: same energy I would have used for acting. Just I
Speaker 3: funnel into music, okay, and.
Speaker 2: I perform live all the time.
Speaker 3: I still really love performing as a singer, so so
Speaker 3: that kind of informs my performance style.
Speaker 2: When background in acting.
Speaker 1: When you were really heavy with the acting career, when
Speaker 1: when that was your primary focus, was it always kind
Speaker 1: of in the back of your mind that maybe you
Speaker 1: might sort of switch to a different modality with your
Speaker 1: creativity or.
Speaker 3: Or you know, or yeah, I've always been interested in
Speaker 3: creative writing, and I've always been a singer, so it's
Speaker 3: and I never really liked musical theater. I mean, a
Speaker 3: Tom Waits musical is different than a regular musical theater.
Speaker 3: But so it was always in the back of my
Speaker 3: mind what to do about music how to incorporate it
Speaker 3: into my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, okay, okay, very good, very good. So then
Speaker 1: it was so that it was working on that musical
Speaker 1: that made you think, Okay, that's the that that kind
Speaker 1: of gave you a push more into that direction. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I and after that musical, I actually had
Speaker 3: to move back to the States from England, Okay, And
Speaker 3: because I would get a visa for every acting job
Speaker 3: I got there, but I couldn't get an overriding visa
Speaker 3: to just like get a job while I wasn't acting,
Speaker 3: and so so that was tricky, and I decided to
Speaker 3: move back to the States. And the acting world in
Speaker 3: the States is very different from in Europe, and so
Speaker 3: I just kind of fell out of love with that
Speaker 3: and started experimenting with music.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: When when you say the acting world is very different
Speaker 1: in the United States, what do you mean? I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't have to you don't have to get too
Speaker 1: far into the weeds. But I'm just I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's more of a inspected art form.
Speaker 3: In the UK, especially, there's a real tradition of you know,
Speaker 3: going to drama school and studying the craft, which I
Speaker 3: loved and.
Speaker 2: Here it's very commercial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What was it like working with Tom Waits? He seems
Speaker 1: like he's probably an intense guy, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, he actually wasn't part of our production. He advised
Speaker 3: from Afar because this was in London and it was
Speaker 3: a remount of The Black Writer, which I think was
Speaker 3: first done in the nineties. Oh. The director was Robert Wilson,
Speaker 3: who just passed away, and it was written by Tom
Speaker 3: Waits and William Burrows gotch Yeah, but Tom Waits wasn't
Speaker 3: part of the rehearsal process.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So then so then when
Speaker 1: you came back to the United States, I mean, was
Speaker 1: that was it right away that you that you got
Speaker 1: out of acting or did you kind of work your
Speaker 1: way out slowly or.
Speaker 2: It was gradual I would say, within a year or so.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I stopped liking it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: feel like it's such a tricky profession that if I
Speaker 3: figured if I wasn't enjoying it, then it wasn't worth
Speaker 3: putting my energy into anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, I mean everything always looks so glamorous from
Speaker 1: the outside, right, but when you're actually doing it, you know,
Speaker 1: people don't see what really goes into it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, I can imagine it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: enormously challenging when you so, when you made that switch,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you're doing music, did you ever
Speaker 1: or maybe even today, like, do you ever think back
Speaker 1: and do you ever feel like getting back into acting
Speaker 1: or is that definitely completely behind you?
Speaker 2: It's definitely completely behind me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just burnt out on it, and the whole idea
Speaker 3: of that makes me feel uncomfortable. Yeah yeah, yeah, so no,
Speaker 3: I mean if somebody offered me a million dollars to
Speaker 3: be in a movie, I would do it.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, yeah yeah. Somebody offered you a role
Speaker 1: in a superhero franchise or something, you know, you'd have
Speaker 1: to say yes to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but but yeah, I've I put that to
Speaker 3: rest a while ago, and I haven't looked back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well you're on a great path now. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I love, I love what you're doing. Have do you
Speaker 1: do you write any song? Like have you written any
Speaker 1: specific songs about your experience in acting?
Speaker 2: I have not?
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, no, I haven't, but you know what
Speaker 3: I am doing now also in addition to music, is
Speaker 3: I just trained to be a breastwork practitioner.
Speaker 2: I saw that you're a hypnotherapist.
Speaker 1: I am, yes, yes, yeah, oh good for you.
Speaker 3: So you're doing I mean that's kind of yeah, and
Speaker 3: I would say that that's maybe influencing the way I
Speaker 3: write or the way I sing even.
Speaker 1: Oh that makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, Breathing
Speaker 1: is such an important part of how you're saying. I've
Speaker 1: been looking in a bread work myself actually because I
Speaker 1: use it, well, I use a little bit of it
Speaker 1: in my sessions, you know when I tell this the
Speaker 1: client to you know, focus on your breathing and focus
Speaker 1: on the rhythm of your breathing and all of that.
Speaker 1: But but I've been thinking about really learning, you know,
Speaker 1: really getting into it and learning more about breath work
Speaker 1: because I think it would be helpful and and everything
Speaker 1: else I do, or or even you know, even doing
Speaker 1: the radio show, just not running out of air when
Speaker 1: I'm you know, talking and you know sometimes if you're
Speaker 1: talking a lot, you know. Yeah, but no, that's that's
Speaker 1: really cool that you're doing that, And yeah, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that would be very helpful with your singing.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, it's actually it's not any sort of like
Speaker 3: gentle meditation that I'm doing. It's yeah, it's this three
Speaker 3: part proniama all through the mouth, and you oxygenate your
Speaker 3: brain so much that your brain shuts off and just
Speaker 3: all your feelings come out. Yea, So people people don't
Speaker 3: find it gentle. It's often kind of like, uh, people
Speaker 3: often cry oh wow, but it's really intense but powerful
Speaker 3: and useful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I got to learn more about that. That's
Speaker 1: very very interesting. That's very interesting to me. Oh that's wild.
Speaker 1: That's wild. Yeah. And as far as your your music,
Speaker 1: are you do you play out? Do you play these
Speaker 1: songs out? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Excellent all the time. I just had a record release.
Speaker 3: Actually, Charlie and I shared a bill for both of
Speaker 3: our record releases at this.
Speaker 2: Club in New York that's called Berlin, Okay.
Speaker 3: And I sing regularly with this band called the Loser's
Speaker 3: Lounge at Joe's Pub, and I sing with a couple
Speaker 3: other bands too. But yeah, I perform almost once a
Speaker 3: week these days.
Speaker 1: Oh wonderful, good good. Yeah, you're in New York.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I am in New York, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. Oh the other thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you to getting back to uh they aa Howard Johnson's
Speaker 1: there the artwork. I really like the cover.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, Yeah, that was my friend Scott MX Turner
Speaker 3: did that.
Speaker 2: I love it too.
Speaker 3: It's very retro.
Speaker 1: And it is it is maybe maybe that's where I
Speaker 1: got the idea about the mist Alga, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: is very retro. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, that is excellent.
Speaker 1: That is excellent. And then what about what do you
Speaker 1: have in the future, what's kind of your trajectory? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you know this album hasn't been out that long,
Speaker 1: right right, Well.
Speaker 3: You know, I did an artist residency this summer in Iceland.
Speaker 3: I was in East Iceland for a month, oh wow,
Speaker 3: and I was writing all new songs there and they
Speaker 3: gave me this beautiful space, this recording studio and all
Speaker 3: the instruments. But I brought these tiny synths that I
Speaker 3: was playing. So I've written a whole bunch of new
Speaker 3: songs on these tiny synths. Found nothing like like the
Speaker 3: current record that I'm really excited about this new stuff.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to be recording that with my friend
Speaker 3: John Kengla, who plays guitar in my band. We're going
Speaker 3: to be recording that sometime this year and hoping to
Speaker 3: put that out. I don't know when, but that's what
Speaker 3: I'm into right now. Okay, synth music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, very good, very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, Jesse, it's been wonderful speaking with you. We're going
Speaker 1: to you know, in a moment, we're going to play
Speaker 1: this other track after we Let you Go. We're gonna
Speaker 1: play Saint Teresa and Ecstasy.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 1: What should we know about that song? It's with such
Speaker 1: an interesting title.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you?
Speaker 3: Well, that was inspired by I was in Rome and
Speaker 3: two different friends said, Oh, you have to go see
Speaker 3: this sculpture in this little church and it's just magnificent,
Speaker 3: this culture of st It's called the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.
Speaker 2: Okay, and it has like this.
Speaker 3: Panel of gold above the sculpture and there's a window
Speaker 3: above it and when the sunlight hits the gold, it
Speaker 3: lights up the statue. It's just really incredible. And the
Speaker 3: song is about that, just being really moved by seeing that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, yeah, outstanding?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: And where's before we let you Go? Where's the best
Speaker 1: place for people to go online to keep up with
Speaker 1: everything that you're doing, all your music and everything.
Speaker 3: I post the most stuff on Instagram. Okay, so it's
Speaker 3: just Jes Jesse kill Gus on Instagram. And then the
Speaker 3: best place to check out my music is band camp,
Speaker 3: especially if people want to buy it, because band camp
Speaker 3: gives the artists the most money. Yeah, but in terms
Speaker 3: of staying up to do up to date on news,
Speaker 3: I would say Instagram.
Speaker 1: And I like to tell people too, I love band
Speaker 1: Camp and I like to tell people not only does
Speaker 1: band camp give the artists the most money, but you
Speaker 1: get you get a high quality file, you get a
Speaker 1: better sounding file than you do if you just you know,
Speaker 1: stream it on YouTube or whatever. So I really encourage
Speaker 1: people to use band camp as well.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely all right, Jesse kill Gus, thank you so much. Well,
Speaker 1: definitely when you've got some new stuff, when you got
Speaker 1: some new music, we'll definitely have you back.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: Absolutely love what you're doing. What we enjoyed speaking with
Speaker 1: you this morning. Wise. Absolutely we're going to hit this
Speaker 1: track Saint Teresa in Ecstasy. We'll let you go. Oh
Speaker 1: and and again, congratulations on the breath work and I
Speaker 1: got to learn more about that. I'm very curious about that,
Speaker 1: so we might have to kill breath. Oh very good.
Speaker 1: I'll check out the site and we we might. We
Speaker 1: might have to have you back to to talk about
Speaker 1: that too, so we might we might have you back.
Speaker 1: Really alright, all right, Jesse, thank you so much. Bye bye,
Speaker 1: all right, very cool. That was Jesse kill Gus from
Speaker 1: New York City. Check out her album. They have a
Speaker 1: Howard Johnson's there. It is available on band camp. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna play this track, uh, this is a Saint
Speaker 1: Teresa in Ecstasy, and then when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have Chris Evans from Audio Gust with us on
Speaker 1: Microsoft Teams. Hopefully we don't have any tech issues with teams.
Speaker 1: That was unusual what happened there with with WhatsApp. We
Speaker 1: don't usually have any trouble, but I'll clean it up
Speaker 1: on the on the podcast version. But here it is.
Speaker 1: This is Saint Teresa in Ecstasy by Jesse kill Gus
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