Jessie Kilguss | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: It's a great track. I love that. That is Fool's Fight by Jesse Kilgus and we're going to be talking to Jesse in just a moment. Welcome everybody. We have entered our number three of Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of w m n H ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire. Today is Saturday, December thirteenth, twenty twenty five. Genius here at the news table book and let's see joining us, joining us via WhatsApp. Jesse Kilgus is here. Jesse can you hear us?

0:30 Speaker 2: Yes, I ken, can you hear me?

0:32 Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yes, you sound great. Welcome to the show.

0:35 Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much.

0:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that song. It's it's one of those things you just kind of sway to, you know when you hear it. That's really really good. Thank you also, so we we love your sound. Also excited to talk to you because we were playing actually I played at the end of the last hour Win by Charlie neland because I was very as I was reading about you, I was quite pleased to see that that you've worked with Charlie because he was actually on the show with us recently and we had a fascinating conversation. He's an amazing guy.

1:05 Speaker 1: Oh great, but he's he's your producer? Is that correct?

1:09 Speaker 3: Well, he produced this record.

1:11 Speaker 1: Yeah.

1:11 Speaker 3: I've worked with multiple different people on all the different records I've made, but Charlie and I have been working on and off for almost twenty years.

1:19 Speaker 1: Oh no, kidding, wow, yeah, Oh that's amazing.

1:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, he produced this one.

1:25 Speaker 1: What is it about? What is it about working with Charlie that brings out because the record is great? They have a Howard Johnson's there. I love it. What is it about? What is it about working with Charlie that brings out out this great music in you?

1:38 Speaker 3: Well, Charlie's just multi talented, plays a bunch of different instruments and is a great engineer and producer. Yeah. But yeah, but I'm a wonderful person too, So he's just very easy to work with.

1:52 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. And tell us about the title, by the way of the album. I love the title. There's a how they have a Howard Johnson's there.

2:02 Speaker 3: So that's a line from my song Howard Johnson's and I wrote that song. I took a poetry writing workshop with the performance artist Karen Finley, and the theme of the workshop was Dog Day Afternoon and oh, we had to watch the movie and then we had this poetry workshop inspired by that and this. I took this workshop about a month after my father died. And his name was Howard. And there's a line in the movie where al Pacino says something like I'm going to Algeria they have.

2:31 Speaker 2: A Howard Johnson's or something.

2:33 Speaker 3: I just really stood out to me because my dad's name was Howard, and it was just so ridiculous too, the line, Yeah, yeah, I wrote a song kind of based around that.

2:41 Speaker 1: Oh that's cool. That's funny too. That's such a great film. But I haven't watched it in so long, and I didn't I didn't even remember that line until you said it.

2:49 Speaker 2: It holds up. It's such a good movie.

2:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does. It does absolutely, absolutely, And what can you tell us about Fools Fight? That's a great track. I really like that, As I mentioned, thank you, Yeah.

3:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you know.

3:02 Speaker 3: That was kind of inspired a little bit by some books I was reading by Ellena Ferrante, but it's also inspired by my own life and experiences. But I have a songwriting club with my friend Rembert Block, who sings back up on that song. Okay, she's a great singer, songwriter, multi instrumentalist. She and I have a club of two people. We meet every month and have to share a new song. Okay, So that song came out of that process, which is really useful to have, you know, a deadline every month. Yeah.

3:33 Speaker 1: I'm curious about that because that's such an interesting concept to me, because is it like, because obviously everybody writes differently. Some people like to Some people need to feel a little bit of pressure, you know, to really get then writing. Some some people can't stop writing, and they actually write more music than they could ever or books or whatever it is, than they could ever actually use. Like, do you find that useful to have that little bit of pressure, like to have that deadline.

3:59 Speaker 3: I do. We've been Remembert and I have had this club for over two years now.

4:03 Speaker 2: It's really useful. Just sometimes I feel.

4:07 Speaker 3: More productive with writing and like I have more ideas. But sometimes it's just useful to flex the muscle, even if I don't like the song.

4:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes out of it.

4:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it kind of forced well, obviously, and you know it's a successful partnership. Clearly. Are any of the other songs on the album did they also come out of that?

4:27 Speaker 3: Yes, Saint Teresa in Ecstasy came from that process.

4:33 Speaker 2: Hm, what else is on there? Yeah?

4:36 Speaker 3: I think all of them except for Howard Johnson's.

4:38 Speaker 1: Oh no kidding? Okay, Yeah, excellent, excellent? And what about your approach? You know, I was I was reading something about, you know, a nostalgia clever layered nostalgia online. I mean, is that is that something that that you might have said or I forget exactly where I saw that As I was researching you, I thought you had said something about that somewhere.

5:01 Speaker 2: That doesn't ring a bell?

5:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, but.

5:05 Speaker 3: I think that, you know, some of my songs are can be pretty nostalgic.

5:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah.

5:12 Speaker 1: Well it's funny though, because there's almost a timelessness to it in a way, like you listen to a song like Fool's Fight and that could that could have been any time? Really, you know, that's obviously it's it's a current song, but it could have been you know, it could have been ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and it would fit in any era. If that makes sense, and which which I think is cool when you have something that it could it could have come out anytime and it would have sounded relevant to that period.

5:39 Speaker 2: Oh cool, that's a that's a really nice compliment. Thank you.

5:43 Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no, like I said, I mean, and the whole thing is it sounds like that to me. It kind of reminds me a little bit of you know, it's funny. I remember when I was a kid and the MTV had a show called one hundred and twenty Minutes on Sunday nights, and it was two hours of It was two hours of music that you wouldn't necessarily hear on mainstream radio at that time. And uh and a lot of the music, you know, the alternative music from that period. I remember it. It had that sort of sort of that timeless thing about it where it was like, Okay, this is this is something happening now that's not in the mainstream, but this could have this could have happened ten years ago and it would have sounded you know, or maybe it would happen in the future and it would sound good.

6:21 Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm also really curious to ask about your acting career. Uh yeah, sure, that's that's interesting to me. And and and I'm very interested too in how that informs your approach to music or or whether you kind of compartmentalize all that as some people do, or or or you know, or do the two kind of influence each other.

6:42 Speaker 3: Well, I don't act anymore. It used to be my prime, primary art forum. I haven't acted in about twenty years. I all wound out on it, Okay, but I did I did, you know, go to college and graduate school for it. And I did work professionally on the stage in England, and I did one movie The Crew with Daniel da Lewis and went on a writer and yeah, but I had this amazing experience working on it. I was part of a Tom Waits musical that the star was Mary and Faithful and the other star was Mary Margaret O'Hara, who's another amazing songwriter, singer, songwriter Canadian.

7:18 Speaker 3: If you don't know her, she's worth looking up. And the band of that show was incredible. The music was by Tom Waits, and the band was all these musicians who had worked with all of my favorite musicians, and Mary and Faithful was one of my favorite singers at the time, and It was an incredible experience, and it made me think that I wanted to maybe not act anymore real kind of yeah, and that's when I started to think about focusing on music more because I have always been a singer. But yeah, and in terms of how my acting life background performed informs my writing.

8:00 Speaker 3: I think creativity is just seamless and you can direct it towards any art form. So it's the same energy I use for same energy I would have used for acting. Just I funnel into music, okay, and.

8:16 Speaker 2: I perform live all the time.

8:18 Speaker 3: I still really love performing as a singer, so so that kind of informs my performance style.

8:29 Speaker 2: When background in acting.

8:31 Speaker 1: When you were really heavy with the acting career, when when that was your primary focus, was it always kind of in the back of your mind that maybe you might sort of switch to a different modality with your creativity or.

8:44 Speaker 3: Or you know, or yeah, I've always been interested in creative writing, and I've always been a singer, so it's and I never really liked musical theater. I mean, a Tom Waits musical is different than a regular musical theater. But so it was always in the back of my mind what to do about music how to incorporate it into my life.

9:07 Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, okay, okay, very good, very good. So then it was so that it was working on that musical that made you think, Okay, that's the that that kind of gave you a push more into that direction. Yeah.

9:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I and after that musical, I actually had to move back to the States from England, Okay, And because I would get a visa for every acting job I got there, but I couldn't get an overriding visa to just like get a job while I wasn't acting, and so so that was tricky, and I decided to move back to the States. And the acting world in the States is very different from in Europe, and so I just kind of fell out of love with that and started experimenting with music.

9:48 Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Yeah.

9:50 Speaker 1: When when you say the acting world is very different in the United States, what do you mean? I mean, you don't have to you don't have to get too far into the weeds. But I'm just I'm just curious.

9:58 Speaker 3: I feel like it's more of a inspected art form. In the UK, especially, there's a real tradition of you know, going to drama school and studying the craft, which I loved and.

10:12 Speaker 2: Here it's very commercial.

10:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense, that makes sense.

10:18 Speaker 2: Yeah.

10:18 Speaker 1: What was it like working with Tom Waits? He seems like he's probably an intense guy, but I don't know.

10:23 Speaker 3: Well, he actually wasn't part of our production. He advised from Afar because this was in London and it was a remount of The Black Writer, which I think was first done in the nineties. Oh. The director was Robert Wilson, who just passed away, and it was written by Tom Waits and William Burrows gotch Yeah, but Tom Waits wasn't part of the rehearsal process.

10:46 Speaker 1: Oh okay, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So then so then when you came back to the United States, I mean, was that was it right away that you that you got out of acting or did you kind of work your way out slowly or.

11:00 Speaker 2: It was gradual I would say, within a year or so.

11:03 Speaker 3: Yeah.

11:04 Speaker 1: Wow.

11:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I stopped liking it. Yeah, And I feel like it's such a tricky profession that if I figured if I wasn't enjoying it, then it wasn't worth putting my energy into anymore.

11:16 Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, I mean everything always looks so glamorous from the outside, right, but when you're actually doing it, you know, people don't see what really goes into it. Yeah, and it's it's yeah, I can imagine it's you know, it's enormously challenging when you so, when you made that switch, you know, and then you're doing music, did you ever or maybe even today, like, do you ever think back and do you ever feel like getting back into acting or is that definitely completely behind you?

11:47 Speaker 2: It's definitely completely behind me. Yeah.

11:49 Speaker 3: I just burnt out on it, and the whole idea of that makes me feel uncomfortable. Yeah yeah, yeah, so no, I mean if somebody offered me a million dollars to be in a movie, I would do it.

12:01 Speaker 1: Well, of course, yeah yeah. Somebody offered you a role in a superhero franchise or something, you know, you'd have to say yes to that.

12:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but but yeah, I've I put that to rest a while ago, and I haven't looked back.

12:16 Speaker 2: Yeah.

12:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, Well you're on a great path now. Like I said, I love, I love what you're doing. Have do you do you write any song? Like have you written any specific songs about your experience in acting?

12:30 Speaker 2: I have not?

12:31 Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, no, I haven't, but you know what I am doing now also in addition to music, is I just trained to be a breastwork practitioner.

12:41 Speaker 2: I saw that you're a hypnotherapist.

12:43 Speaker 1: I am, yes, yes, yeah, oh good for you.

12:46 Speaker 3: So you're doing I mean that's kind of yeah, and I would say that that's maybe influencing the way I write or the way I sing even.

12:53 Speaker 1: Oh that makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, Breathing is such an important part of how you're saying. I've been looking in a bread work myself actually because I use it, well, I use a little bit of it in my sessions, you know when I tell this the client to you know, focus on your breathing and focus on the rhythm of your breathing and all of that. But but I've been thinking about really learning, you know, really getting into it and learning more about breath work because I think it would be helpful and and everything else I do, or or even you know, even doing the radio show, just not running out of air when I'm you know, talking and you know sometimes if you're talking a lot, you know.

13:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, but no, that's that's really cool that you're doing that, And yeah, I would imagine that would be very helpful with your singing.

13:33 Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, it's actually it's not any sort of like gentle meditation that I'm doing. It's yeah, it's this three part proniama all through the mouth, and you oxygenate your brain so much that your brain shuts off and just all your feelings come out. Yea, So people people don't find it gentle. It's often kind of like, uh, people often cry oh wow, but it's really intense but powerful and useful.

13:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I got to learn more about that. That's very very interesting. That's very interesting to me. Oh that's wild. That's wild. Yeah. And as far as your your music, are you do you play out? Do you play these songs out? Yeah?

14:11 Speaker 2: Excellent all the time. I just had a record release.

14:13 Speaker 3: Actually, Charlie and I shared a bill for both of our record releases at this.

14:17 Speaker 2: Club in New York that's called Berlin, Okay.

14:21 Speaker 3: And I sing regularly with this band called the Loser's Lounge at Joe's Pub, and I sing with a couple other bands too. But yeah, I perform almost once a week these days.

14:33 Speaker 1: Oh wonderful, good good. Yeah, you're in New York.

14:36 Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I am in New York, Brooklyn.

14:39 Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. Oh the other thing I wanted to ask you to getting back to uh they aa Howard Johnson's there the artwork. I really like the cover.

14:47 Speaker 3: Oh thanks, Yeah, that was my friend Scott MX Turner did that.

14:51 Speaker 2: I love it too.

14:52 Speaker 3: It's very retro.

14:55 Speaker 1: And it is it is maybe maybe that's where I got the idea about the mist Alga, but yeah, it is very retro. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, that is excellent. That is excellent. And then what about what do you have in the future, what's kind of your trajectory? I mean, obviously you know this album hasn't been out that long, right right, Well.

15:19 Speaker 3: You know, I did an artist residency this summer in Iceland. I was in East Iceland for a month, oh wow, and I was writing all new songs there and they gave me this beautiful space, this recording studio and all the instruments. But I brought these tiny synths that I was playing. So I've written a whole bunch of new songs on these tiny synths. Found nothing like like the current record that I'm really excited about this new stuff. So I'm going to be recording that with my friend John Kengla, who plays guitar in my band.

15:48 Speaker 3: We're going to be recording that sometime this year and hoping to put that out. I don't know when, but that's what I'm into right now. Okay, synth music.

15:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, very good, very good.

16:00 Speaker 2: Yeah.

16:00 Speaker 1: Well, Jesse, it's been wonderful speaking with you. We're going to you know, in a moment, we're going to play this other track after we Let you Go. We're gonna play Saint Teresa and Ecstasy.

16:10 Speaker 2: Oh cool.

16:10 Speaker 1: What should we know about that song? It's with such an interesting title.

16:14 Speaker 2: Oh thank you?

16:15 Speaker 3: Well, that was inspired by I was in Rome and two different friends said, Oh, you have to go see this sculpture in this little church and it's just magnificent, this culture of st It's called the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.

16:30 Speaker 2: Okay, and it has like this.

16:31 Speaker 3: Panel of gold above the sculpture and there's a window above it and when the sunlight hits the gold, it lights up the statue. It's just really incredible. And the song is about that, just being really moved by seeing that.

16:46 Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, yeah, outstanding?

16:49 Speaker 2: Thank you?

16:50 Speaker 1: And where's before we let you Go? Where's the best place for people to go online to keep up with everything that you're doing, all your music and everything.

16:57 Speaker 3: I post the most stuff on Instagram. Okay, so it's just Jes Jesse kill Gus on Instagram. And then the best place to check out my music is band camp, especially if people want to buy it, because band camp gives the artists the most money. Yeah, but in terms of staying up to do up to date on news, I would say Instagram.

17:16 Speaker 1: And I like to tell people too, I love band Camp and I like to tell people not only does band camp give the artists the most money, but you get you get a high quality file, you get a better sounding file than you do if you just you know, stream it on YouTube or whatever. So I really encourage people to use band camp as well.

17:32 Speaker 2: Nice.

17:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely all right, Jesse kill Gus, thank you so much. Well, definitely when you've got some new stuff, when you got some new music, we'll definitely have you back.

17:42 Speaker 3: Great.

17:43 Speaker 1: Absolutely love what you're doing. What we enjoyed speaking with you this morning. Wise. Absolutely we're going to hit this track Saint Teresa in Ecstasy. We'll let you go. Oh and and again, congratulations on the breath work and I got to learn more about that. I'm very curious about that, so we might have to kill breath. Oh very good. I'll check out the site and we we might. We might have to have you back to to talk about that too, so we might we might have you back. Really alright, all right, Jesse, thank you so much.

18:13 Speaker 1: Bye bye, all right, very cool. That was Jesse kill Gus from New York City. Check out her album. They have a Howard Johnson's there. It is available on band camp. And we're gonna play this track, uh, this is a Saint Teresa in Ecstasy, and then when we come back, we're gonna have Chris Evans from Audio Gust with us on Microsoft Teams. Hopefully we don't have any tech issues with teams. That was unusual what happened there with with WhatsApp. We don't usually have any trouble, but I'll clean it up on the on the podcast version.

18:41 Speaker 1: But here it is. This is Saint Teresa in Ecstasy by Jesse kill Gus