I Meant To Paint The Sky: An Interview with Jayla Kai
In the most exciting zoom call, I've ever had, I got the chance to speak with 18-year-old musician Jayla Kai. She is truly talented in many ways and her music expresses herself in the most beautiful fashion. Jayla’s music is the type that you could listen to on any occasion, her music makes me want to draw, write, build, or do anything creative.
The interview felt as though I was speaking with an old friend. Her (online) presence felt very nostalgic in a way that I couldn’t describe. Through this interview, I ended up making a super cool friend that I can brag to my imaginary friends I made in quarantine with. I advise you all to listen to her single I Can't Lie, a song that everyone can enjoy.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you introduce yourself?
[JAYLA]: I'm Jayla Kai, and I'm coming to you from my porch in upstate New York.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who are some of your favorite artists and how do they inspire you?
[JAYLA]: The people I'm most interested in come from a pretty wide variety of genres – they're people who transcend the genre boundaries most. I'm a big fan of Andrew Bird, known for his violin playing and whistling. He plays folk music, alternative rock music, he's been in great jazzy bands, he explores a lot of different areas. Laura Marling is another artist who goes off on these explorations of many different genres. I like those artists so much is because I want to be like that, I love going off into all those different things. There are so many artists in the realm of melodic rap that I'm getting into. I've been a big fan of Noname for a couple of years now. She is such a great lyricist, and I find a lot of inspiration in that even though my music is pretty grounded in singing as opposed to rapping or speaking. She's super present, she's plugged in, and so are Laura Marling and Andrew Bird. I perceive them as super intellectual and really well-rounded people who are studying other things and bring that into their music. Sylvan Esso also comes to mind, they're a duo. Nick handles the electronic side of things. He uses technology as a live instrument to accompany the other member, Emilia. She sings great pop-style vocals. Really lyrically driven, really unique, I enjoy what they create.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Tell us about how your family contributed to your musical career.
[JAYLA]: Growing up, I was homeschooled, which immediately puts me out of most of the things that people spend their time doing. My whole learning experience was really different because it was driven by being in the world, by working with different mentors around us in this area. I live near Woodstock, there's a lot of artists and musicians, and really vibrant opportunities. I live in nature and live in the woods, you might be able to hear the bird sounds in the background a little. My parents gave me the opportunity to experience all this. I live here with my little brother, he's six years younger, goes to school. He's a really different person than me, I've always been pretty internal and creatively focused and he's very social, kinetic, and out in the world. They all just support me in a really ongoing way. My parents are both artists so they come in with ideas — my mom came over earlier to take a look at the painting I’m making for the next album cover right now. I feel really fortunate to be home right now. I've been taking a year off of college, I've been home with everybody and I'm so supported by my family. The older I get, the more I see what it means to have that support behind me wherever I am in the world – whatever I'm doing, having it is really huge. That's the biggest thing they give me more than any one action, it's just their presence. They're psyched for what's going on for me right now, but if it wasn't happening, there would be no pressure from them. I've always been able to drive what I’m doing, and be the one who expresses interest, and then as soon as I'm ready for something, they're there to support it. There's never been anything that I thought I had to be, and that's been such a huge privilege to experience.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How has the pandemic hurt and benefited your creativity?
[JAYLA]: I'm sure all of us artists said we're gonna make like three albums, we're gonna remote collaborate with so many people. Then your tasks expand to fill the time that you have. I’ve been working a little bit and making music, working on projects, but boy, all that expands to fill the time. When you have a lot of time, you know, it ends up getting filled. I think it's hurt my creativity by not having the same kind of downtime because it's been all downtime.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you remember what initially inspired your first single, “I Can’t Lie”?
[JAYLA]: I do. Sometimes you meet somebody who really captures your attention, not just in the real world, but in the creative world. I met this girl and she just translated so well to songwriting, she's just such a character. She wasn't even the “right” person, but that almost made it even better to write about, because I was so compelled about it, and I felt so left alone with my feelings. When you are still caught up on somebody, you're not even in the same place as them anymore and whatever time you're going to intersect has ended, but you're still thinking about it. You know the other person isn’t – that stays with you and it leaves you on your own so what do you do with it? Well, if you're someone who writes, you're probably gonna write about it, and boy, I wrote a lot about it. That's what “I Can't Lie” came out of. We were at this writing camp of all places, and I met her, she interviewed me. It was the most romantic interview I ever had. It was the most charged interview experience I ever had! I wrote what ended up being the chorus for the song in a poetry exercise. “I'm sorry, I swear I meant to paint the sky but your face fit so much better there.” I realized it's a haiku. It's 5, 7, 5! And I was like, wow, you know, we are so surrounded by writing that it's just coming out of me naturally.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What advice do you have for those looking to find their own style in the creative industry?
[JAYLA]: I'm still working on it myself, I'm learning how to do that. I worked with Manuel Quintana in his studio and he's a fantastic producer and fantastic musician, he never changed what I was putting out. He added to it and helped me extend it, amplify it, and put it on all these different instruments, but every second he’s working with me, and we’re working totally equally. He was involved in the project because he was interested in what I was creating. He's someone who came with such respect that what we could create felt like it had a lot of integrity, and was representative of me and what I create naturally. Being with people who respect, preserve, and give weight to your own artistic expression is such a big deal. And then what I'm working on is like, just having faith in my own ideas and being able to work with them and develop them, to the point where everything can feel authentic. Whatever I do, I want to have the right balance between going for it and stepping out of what I'm used to, while also being comfortable and authentic. You can ask a million people and they'll tell you: no one will be better at being Beyoncé, no one will be better at what someone’s doing than that person is. You can only try to be the most yourself, and that's a path to success, you can't be anything else.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you make the video for the single?
[JAYLA]: I made it in two weeks. I did it while working on some other projects too so it was crazy. I definitely put in close to 100 hours on this project because of it being stop motion. It took place on my desk, all of it. A couple of times I was like, “I have no idea what I'm going to do for the next section”. You wait for the inspiration to come, and then you get as much done as you can. Then you review and then you try it again. I worked my butt off on that but I feel so good about it. I love that feeling. I love working through those projects. I love visual art. I love creating stuff, that kind of work is the most fulfilling work to me. I can't imagine having done anything else, even for this next video we're gonna work with a director but I'm gonna be right in there, coming up with ideas.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When was that moment when you realized that something you love doing could be your career?
[JAYLA]: I haven't realized that yet! I know that I will always play music, and I've been saying that for, for, at least ten years now. I know I'll always make time for it. I used to say that I'll get another career to enable me to play music – to support the music. I think I'll be saying that until the music starts supporting the other career or the other career just becomes a hobby and music becomes it. As much as I want to just be a musician full time, I am not incredibly identified with that as the defining quality that will make me the real deal or not. I've tried to let go of that a little bit so I can focus on just what's unfolding right now and how exciting it is. I'm okay with following this thread, and I am looking forward to seeing where it takes me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How can being a young musician compared to others in the industry benefit you in the long run?
[JAYLA]: One big thing is social media. I'm growing up in a media-comfortable generation. I was talking to a local musician who's really lovely, and she explained it to me as having to convince a computer to think you're popular. I was thinking about it more and more, and I'm thinking, yeah, because tons of people might listen to your music, and people might love you and come to your shows and everything, but in order to make it on Instagram or something you're just convincing a robot to be like “oh she's successful, I'll keep showing her in the algorithm.” Being young means I'm growing up with that. I think that's one advantage. Another is that things are changing really fast and I think I'm a little bit less taken off guard by the changes because they've been during my lifetime. I think some adult musicians are kind of taken off guard by the changes happening. I feel bad that artists who didn’t grow up in this have to deal with it now.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are your goals for this year? What do you want to accomplish as a musician?
[JAYLA]: I want to work with people, I want to collaborate. Not only as a musician, but I also want to make more friends, in addition to musician friends. I want to get back out into the world, I want to play tons of shows, I want to really practice in a serious way and give practice as much weight as school or work. I'd really love to tour next summer, that's a goal. I'll be releasing another single and then a third single and EP, and I'd love to finish the album because there's so much music I've made that doesn't sound anything like the songs I’m releasing. I want to write for orchestra more and get back into scoring. I've gotten a little bit out of practice but that's a big goal for me. Everything's been so fun and exciting, I joke that I want to be famous in the UK so I can live a regular life here, and when I go to the UK, I’ll have the experience of fame. I saw this young kid lip-synching to my song on TikTok, and when you see that, I just don't know what to do. I just feel really honored. I love listening to music, I love learning about artists, I love hearing about their processes, and I'm always studying their lyrics. Receiving that feels like something I haven't necessarily deserved in some huge way, but at the same time I think the only thing I can do from here is just be really appreciative, and enjoy that it feels really good. I'm excited for the opportunities to amplify others as I have more and more resources and connections.
