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Kristen Ford and Her Pinto |
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When we sat down to chat with singer, songwriter and musician Kristen
Ford it was only a few days after she appeared on The Kelly Clarkson
Show.
“I had it (The Kelly Clarkson Show) confirmed less than forty-eight
hours before we filmed it and it came from an opportunity in 2021. In
this industry even the best of us gets so confused and broken down and
It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Enjoy the wins when they show up. Never
be too impatient, because things happen sometimes slowly and then all at
once. They flew me out of Sacramento to New York.
It was the first time I worked with a producer. I think I kind of got
tunnel vision and though oh my god this is actually happening. Don’t
mess up. (On the show) there were The Temptations and Zöe Zaldaña. I
just try to be low key around famous people.”
It seems almost prophetic when she says, “This year is the year of the
horse and I don’t know if you follow the Chinese zodiac. We go from the
year of the snake into the year of the horse and the fact Pinto
(her current album) is that horse spirit and then a surprise like Kelly
came out of nowhere.”
When you read about the first half of Kristen Ford’s life it sounds a
bit like a troubadour, as she lived in six states by the time she was
nineteen.
“I grew up mostly in western Massachusetts, but I had moved across the
country a few different times from an early age. After I finished high
school, everybody left. It taught me to be super adaptable and also
music, and guitar and writing songs have been my anchors and stability.
Maybe I hit that number by nineteen, but I have continued at a frenetic
pace with living in different cities. I have moved forty times. I could
do an inventory, but I think it would be traumatizing.
“I would like to think that I am just a very curious person in terms of
having new experiences and trying different things out. I am always
looking for the whimsy in it. I am always looking for the inner child in
it. I think sometimes that little kid who doesn’t have any inhibitions
and is just going for it, whatever they had to adapt to, so they could
survive in this world. sometimes you lose the essence. If you are able
to find it that is where the good stuff is, the weird, unexplored,
unfiltered joyful part, finding that,” she says thoughtfully, measuring
her words.
At this point in our
conversation, Snoop, to whom she jokingly refers as her guard dog joins
us for the interview. Well honestly, Snoop don’t quit your day job, you
seem to this writer like a big cuddly teddy bear in a dog’s body, as you
snuggle up with your blanket.
Although, her fans know Kristen Ford as being a guitarist, that was not
her first instrument. Picture if you will a ten-year-old carrying around
a snare drum case.
“I was a little wiry kid. I was in the fourth grade and we could either
do the pledge of allegiance and all of this brainwashing for the young
ones or you could go to band.
I have always watched the drummers. Anytime there was live music, like a
band or a church thing or big band concerts, I was not looking at what
the violins or trumpets are doing, I was always watching the drummer,”
she says.
Next came the guitar.
“I think the guitar was my natural evolution as my listening evolved. As
a young kid I liked super Pop like Mariah Carey. I was born in the late
eighties, so all of that nineties music was produced lushly.
I went from Pop to harder Pop and Punk and blink-182 and those bands had
so many guitars front and center. Picking up the guitar at fourteen was
great. The guitar has been an accessory of myself ever since then.
Whenever I would go to a party, I would bring a guitar. If I was in
between classes, I was at an arts school, so I could sit in a field and
play the guitar. Again, that is my best friend, the guitar.
Guitars are quieter than drums and sometimes in the middle of the night
I just needed to get something out and you can adjust the volume. I feel
bad for piano players. It is such a great instrument, but good luck
taking that to the beach!
It is funny when you first start playing (guitar) you play as loud as
you can, because somehow edgier feels better and then you get to the
point when you are working with professionals and they don’t (her
eyes have that look like she is confiding in you). They just don’t,”
she says.
Kristen was there a point or a moment in time when you thought, I would
like music to be my life and career?
“It really was at one moment in time at the Ani Difranco show. I was
fifteen and I was in the front row. She had a broken foot and she was
sitting on a stool in the center of the stage at the Avalon in Boston.
The command that she had on everyone I said that’s it, that is what I
want to do. I have never felt such clarity. It is wild, because I went
on tour with her many years later. She still has that control. It is
almost like group hypnosis. A really amazing band or artist just have
that affect on you. They take the crowd from one state and move them to
a different place. It is always so cool to be that vortex of energy.
For The Kelly Clarkson Show producers would say, we would like
you to say this. They encouraged me to say on NBC that I am biracial and
queer and it was not like that when Ani was at her height singing about
queer love. I have seen some really old MTV interviews that she did. It
was unbelievable. Even before Suzi Quatro and Ani Difranco we had June
Millington who taught me to play guitar at an early age. The stuff that
she went through in the late sixties and early seventies in an
all-female Rock band was just horrible.
They had to fight for everything, women to get anything, and you still
see it, right now with the Grammys coming up. It was such an honor Ani
Difranco and I were on the ballot for best producers of the year, but we
were not nominated and no women were nominated. No women who have ever
been nominated have won a Producer of the Year Grammy Award. I think
more doors have been opened every day. Maybe there is a window and we
can break in somewhere. Come on Joe let’s go around the back. (she
chuckles)
We segue into talking about her album Pinto. We know that pinto
is a kind of horse and many years ago it was a car that you did not want
to be in during an accident.
Kristen Ford explains, “Pinto is a horse that is more than one color and
that feels like my identity. I like the idea of independence and also
community. Horses are really special animals. I also think it is funny,
the Pinto (car) exploded onto the scene and I am a Ford who is about to
explode onto the scene. Did you hear about the Pinto that would explode.
It was released in 1970 and if you got hit from behind it would burst
into flames. They had to recall the Ford Pinto and it was a whole
scandal. I just thought Kristen Ford Pinto would be a cool album.
It was recorded (the album, not the car bursting into flames!)
over a period of time in 2023 and then we pretty well finished it up,
just before it came out in August of 2025. We recorded it in Nashville,
Atlanta and in New Orleans. It was so cool to use the talents of so many
folks on this project. I worked with Matty Alger in Nashville at The
Cabin, in Atlanta at Brighter Shade Studios with John
Driskell Hopkins and New Orleans at Righteous Babe Studios with
Ani DiFranco, who also co-produced. (Mastered by Randy Merrill at
Sterling Sound in Edgewater, New Jersey).”
Let’s talk about the songs, “Here’s To You Kid,” is when you actually
celebrate the wins and celebrate having a good time. I talk about
feeling blah and trying to transform that. I think when you hear a great
song like “Hey Ya!” by Outkast or “Billie Jean,” from Michael Jackson,
try not to get up and feel good, while this is going on. I am a big fan
of Prince. He was the next level human artist, superhero and super
sexual. I love Prince. Ani DiFranco worked with him, so the fact that
Ani is featured on this song is one degree of separation. I think we try
to really lean into the Talking Heads and Prince, “Everybody let’s
shout, let’s dance.” You just want to get up, because you feel the
rhythm,” she says.
With “Birds Of
Steel,” we aren’t sure if we are more excited about the song or about
the
accompanying video,
because both are excellent and excellently produced.
“My songwriting process is I usually have a verse and a chorus and most
of it tumbles out. With “Birds of Steel,” I had made a jam of two chords
and then I added sounds. It was based more on a feel and then I made up
words. We never played it the same two ways in the studio. We waited
until the end of the day and we were just messing around. Ani wrote the
song. It was really cool to work with her and editing this music video.
I was staying at a really old house in the Midwest. It is right out of a
time capsule in the late sixties. (The house looks like that).
I got the idea for the video and made a couple of frantic trips to the
thrift store and then there were a few family heirlooms. I wore my
wife’s grandmother’s World War II nurse outfit. It was really fun. My
dear friend Mariel Parish was the videographer. We had a good time
running around the house in different costumes. (In response to us
saying it looks like a scene from an early 1960s television show she
says), I love that. I am sure that was part of Ani’s direction. I’m sure
it is a blast from the past.
(The song) is about not letting circumstances or randoms bring you down.
Things are always looking out for me. Finding moments of reverence or
awe or surrender or peace and then just clouds. It could also be a song
about smoking weed and drinking on an airplane. (she laughs) It is kind
of up to you. Hopefully, everyone can find something in it,” she says.
At first, she startles us with her response to our question about how
she would describe her music to us, if we met on a plane.
“If I am honest, I would not want to have that conversation with you on
a plane (said with a mischievous smile), because I don’t want to
talk to the people, I am next to. I am in my own little world. I’m good
I don’t need to be your best friend, just stay away from my arm rest.
I’m a singer songwriter who makes political songs personal, because I
want to make a change. That is my elevator pitch on who I am and what I
do. Either you are intrigued or you are moving on. Either way it is not
my worry.”
As for two songs that seem like bookends, “Girl In The Mirror,” and
“White Lighter,” Kristen Ford says, “Girl In The Mirror,” is a lot of
fun and an exploration of dating a lot of girls. You keep having the
same experiences over and over again, new faces, new places and same
shit until you look at your own stuff. “White Lighter,” has a little bit
of medicine in that song, because I was having a tough time and a low
moment. I was able to express a lot of that in the song and it has
actually yielded some improvements in very important, personal
relationships. You never know how the muse is going to do its thing.”
When asking about the acting part of her career she has a 150-watt
lightbulb smile, “I am. As a kid I loved reading books and I would
always act out all of the different parts in my mind and I would imagine
performing them. I did want to be an actor, but I was five foot eight
inches by the time I was twelve and I have an alto or tenor range, so it
wasn’t looking too good for me in the musical theater world as I was
just getting started. Luckily, I could lean into guitar and write songs.
In 2020 I did a couple of songs for this movie soundtrack for
Valentine Crush. That was really cool I had a script and I got
together with a buddy that I like to co-write a couple of songs with my
friend Joseph Jared. (The songs are “Skating In Circles,” and “Roll
On,” directed by Jamie Wede. Kristen played a roller derby character
known as “Sneak Easy.”)
The movie was made in 2020 and I thought it is time for me to take this
more seriously. Also, living in Nashville,
I (appeared) in the background in seasons five and six of
Nashville. In 2020 I started taking acting classes and that is
partly why I moved out to LA. I have written a couple of screenplays and
there is one that I am circling in on getting it made or at least a
proof of concept.”
Please visit the
Kristen Ford
website
and you can follow her on
Instagram.
Second Photo from the top by rebecca Lesesne protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved
#KristenFord #KristenFordInterview #KristenFordMusic #RivetingRiffs #RivetingRiffsMagazine #MusicaEntrevista
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We
wondered how much living in all of those places may have influenced or
imprinted upon Kristen Ford’s songwriting.