The Visionary Woman Podcast
The Visionary Woman Podcast
THE JOURNEY HOME Part 1 (with Special Guest Isaac Gill)
Ever wondered what it takes to create a captivating song that resonates deeply with listeners? Join me and my special guest, Isaac Gill, an amazing producer and songwriter, for this exciting episode of the Visionary Woman podcast. Prepare to be inspired as we immerse ourselves in a raw, acoustic performance of my latest single 'Home,' while also exploring the rich tapestry of our musical influences. Join us in a thrilling exploration of the power of music, the connection of artist communities, and the sensation of home.
This episode goes beyond the surface, as we explore my artistic journey, from my roots in and beginnings, to my current foray into musical expressions of justice. We dive into the impacts of marketability standards in the music industry and the potent role of music in advocating against injustice. Hear how the music-making process, and music as a medium, can reconcile with many complexities of our world.
Take a journey with us through the music creation process as we underscore the importance of authentic music that stems from personal experiences. We walk through our writing and recording experience and the transformation and evolution of the song Home. We end with a shared reflection on 'Home' and a hopeful look toward my musical and artistic future. So, ready your earphones and immerse yourself in our fascinating conversation as we take a journey Home together!
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Don't put your dreams to bed. You've done that enough. Now it's time to stir them up. This is your friend and host, Kirstie Fleur, with the Visionary Woman podcast, and I love resourcing the Visionary Woman, the creative, the artist, the business owner, the risk taker, and on this show, we will talk about what it means to get out of your own way and take your dreams to the next level. Join the conversation. Hi, this is Kirstie Fleur and welcome to the Visionary Woman podcast. I'm excited you're here with us today. I am going to be introducing my new single Home to you with a great friend of mine, Isaac Gill.
Isaac Gill:What's up everybody.
Kirstie Fleur :Isaac tell us a little bit about yourself.
Isaac Gill:I'm just here because Kirstie invited me. I just a look up to her, trying to be more like her every day. Oh my gosh. No, I'm really excited to be here with you. I'm friends with Kirstie but also a huge fan of you and your work, your music, and we've been co-writing together the last couple years, but also we did some recording last year, including the song Home. So we're really excited to be sharing that with you, and I think we're going to do a couple different things today with it.
Kirstie Fleur :We are, so stay tuned and get excited. So we're going to hop into the songs called Home. If you haven't picked it up yet on Spotify, itunes or wherever you listen to your music at, be sure to go and grab that, but we'll jump right in.
Isaac Gill:Cool. Yeah, we're going to do an acoustic version of the song, which is going to be interesting. It'll be fun because the song normally has drums, bass, organ keys and all that, but we're pairing it down a little bit and making it into not smooth jazz, but somewhere around there.
Kirstie Fleur :Yeah, somewhere around there. Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
Speaker 3:Coming back to home. Coming back to home, it's where we belong, it's where we belong. I remember dinners on the table, hearing all the children playing. We laughed unapologetically. We fuss, we fight, we make up, going home never felt so far away. I lost my way home. Where is home? Cause, no matter where I go, I'm always searching for you. Coming back to home, coming back to home, ayy, back to home. It's where we belong, it's where we belong. We built a table, but now it's time to make this place our own. I'm dreaming of forever, but I don't wanna do this thing alone. Come and help me make this house a home. I need a shelter, a place for my soul. Where do we go? Oh, oh, oh. Where do we go? Oh, oh oh. Protected, connected, known, protected, connected, known, protected, connected, known, protected, connected, known, protected, connected and known. A place where I feel like I'm home. It's been way too long. Where it's home, where it's home, where it's home, where it's home, where it's home. Let's go home.
Isaac Gill:Well, that was fun, yeah that was fun. I don't think we've actually done that before. We've played this song out live. We played it in Chicago. We've played it in Nashville. I've heard you play it with Mike Hicks right, doing like a little shout out to Mike Hicks, but that was fun doing that acoustic. We need to play that out more like that.
Kirstie Fleur :We do, we do. I completely forgot we did this in Chicago. We did.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, we tour.
Kirstie Fleur :It's not a big deal. You know a little bit.
Isaac Gill:So I know a little bit about Kirstie's musical history and her musical interests and I thought it'd be fun to jump on the podcast today.
Kirstie Fleur :As a visionary woman that he is.
Isaac Gill:The visionary woman that I am. I'm trying to keep up, but I thought it'd be fun to jump on and interview you, because I know you interview people and then you also probably are talking about passion subjects, but it's probably not too many opportunities for someone to come in and talk to you about your music. I was talking to Tammie, who's a project manager with Freedom Fleur, and I was like I think it'd be really fun to collaborate on this. So we did a recording last fall with 318 Collective, 318 Collective Music specifically, and that's if you don't know what that is, that is Kirstie and Chauncy's one of their many passion projects, but it takes a role of connecting artists and people in the community together to not only talk about real and important issues but to make music and to engage not only the direct community but society as a whole on these issues and matters that are important to us, and with a faith-based lens, some of it, but also open to anybody.
Isaac Gill:So, we did a songwriting retreat last year and we set some boundaries, we set some stipulations of we are going to write songs and then record them all in the same couple days.
Kirstie Fleur :Because we're crazy. That's why we did that. We're crazy, but it turned out amazing.
Isaac Gill:Yeah. So I thought it'd be fun for a sister, like before we even get into the song Home, because that was a little backstory. But before we get into that, like, what are some of your musical influences and what did you listen to growing up or what have been playing in the household? I know that Kirstie is a big fan of Yeba, PJ Morgan, Adele, and you probably hopefully heard some of that in this but like, what were what was playing at home? Home, of course.
Kirstie Fleur :Okay, so of course I grew up in a super I guess you could say religious household, mom, a pastor, all the things. So what I was sneaking and listening to is completely different from what I was allowed to be listening to yes.
Isaac Gill:yes.
Kirstie Fleur :So what I was sneaking and listening to was Brandy and Monica and, oh my gosh, Aretha Franklin you had to sneak, or Aretha, everything, all the things. But we used to listen to some of this stuff. I don't know. That's a whole different topic. Right there, I think we went through a season where it was like, okay, we need to, we can't listen to this music at home. It's kind of where my mom was.
Isaac Gill:But and there's no shade on this, because I also grew up similarly like I was. I grew up in a religious household where I was sneaking into MTV and VH1.
Kirstie Fleur :Sorry, mom, have you watched this? Stop, stop. You weren't watching MTV like at midnight, were you?
Isaac Gill:No, because it was a whole different situation going on. Never. I never watched Daria or whatever. That was. Yeah, oh no, I definitely watched Daria.
Kirstie Fleur :Okay, she was so emotive and I was like I feel her, I get her, we're connected anyway. But yeah, so Aretha gosh, like off the top of my head. Marvin Gladys Knight and the Pips, like all of those soul genre songs and stuff like that is what I was listening to. But also we were listening to contemporary christian music, so my mom had all the slow worship music happening or whatever it was.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, drop some names there. Give us some names. I forgot all those you're listening to. CeCe Winans and all. CeCe Definitely CC CeCe. Cc is like the goat, is it Smokey, Norful?
Kirstie Fleur :Smokey gosh. Who else Take Six?
Isaac Gill:You remember? Yes, yes. What about Back to Eden? Did you ever get into them?
Kirstie Fleur :I don't remember them Back to Eden.
Isaac Gill:Tammie knows.
Kirstie Fleur :Back to Eden. Okay, help me think of a song Back to Eden.
Isaac Gill:On the spot I won't be able to think of it, but I'll think of it as soon as I get in my car later I bet if I had like a little taste of what the song was, I would know it.
Kirstie Fleur :But yeah, definitely those artists gosh. Who else I wasn't really into like rap. I was really just like into like slow, smooth R&B, jazz, Again, Music Soul child, yes, yeah, stuff like that. I'm trying to think of who else Gosh off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and I was listening to a lot of Calypso and stuff like that too. I don't know if you know what Calypso music is and reggae. So I was Marvin Gay and Calypso, all that stuff.
Isaac Gill:Cause you're not from Louisiana or anything like that. Right, you know.
Kirstie Fleur :Yeah, when you're from Louisiana, you gotta listen to it all, cause are you even real?
Isaac Gill:So I'm curious, with all that musical influence, like how did your voice evolve? Like, when did you discover the voice that you, that we just heard today, that we hear on the song Home, like, was there a moment where you Like this is my voice, this is where I've landed, or was there? Was it a long evolution of how that developed?
Kirstie Fleur :Yeah, absolutely.
Kirstie Fleur :That is a great question because there definitely was like what I always call like a tipping point or a breaking moment when there was a shift in my sound and me going back to home internally, like you know what are my influences, what do I connect with on a soul level, and so that that changed me deeply.
Kirstie Fleur :I say that probably happened starting around like 2016, okay, and I just started feeling like a new type or style of song start emerging when I was songwriting and stuff. But before that it was all me pushed into like this little box and trying to sing Like the CeCe's no shade or anything like that but trying to sing like you know what CCM has taught us to sing, like you know when you're like in the, in a certain Christian space or whatever. So, as I got older and then I would do worship music or be on you know teams being you know a worship leader I would be asked like, hey, could you sing with no vibrato? Could you keep it as straight as possible? And honestly, I think the reason why is because that is what was marketable like that is what everybody wants.
Kirstie Fleur :I think people get somebody who works like they step out and they're like this is my brand of artistry, this is what I do, and then after that they kind of set the tone like this is what the the measuring stick is now and so then the industry comes in and they're like everybody needs to sound like this, because this is what the crazy is and this is what everybody is doing.
Kirstie Fleur :And so of course, churches and community groups and stuff I'm a part of the like sing like this, sing very straight, do this song like this, or you don't really get to lead or sing and so, as an artist, you want to lead, you want to sing, you know you want to express your gift, you know, naturally.
Kirstie Fleur :So that's what I did for a long time and you can actually hear the evolution of my music if you go back and listen to the music our release in 2016. It's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's very peaceful, it's very you know, it's. This is very straight kind of it.
Isaac Gill:Was it like Prayer room, like worship music?
Kirstie Fleur :Absolutely. I mean, some of those songs are like eight minutes long.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, yeah, for context for people who aren't familiar with, like specifically because you're like prayer room, I can kind of picture like a small room where people pray, but prayer room music would be a kind of in this vein of like long extended sets of music where people are worshiping and they might be praying Intermittently and so the music is very actually freeform and free flow and ends it being very chill.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, so that probably fit into your already very chill background, but at a certain point you kind of like revolving even into getting into more like singer-songwriter type stuff too, and yeah, maybe not eight and twelve minute songs, but yeah, yeah, absolutely, because I start.
Kirstie Fleur :You know, once you learn a little bit about the industry, you're like okay, people stop listening, get about this point three minutes and thirty three. You know, maybe seven minutes.
Isaac Gill:Well, there's a place for it. There is a place for it.
Kirstie Fleur :So there's totally a place for that. It's needed, right. I mean, even if you look now, people are like what are they playing? Like lo-fi, or they're playing instrumental music or whatever, to just, you know, get that piece or that sense of calm, that sense of serenity. So there is place for it. Yeah, so there was this moment, this distinct moment, probably around like 2018 or 2019, where these songs were coming up about justice that I was writing. Silence was one of those songs. You can go back and listen to that song.
Isaac Gill:It's a good song.
Kirstie Fleur :But even in that song you can hear me wrestling with like should I be saying these things? Should I be talking about these hard topics? Should I be saying religious pundits? Should I? Be, calling out the church. Should I be, you know?
Isaac Gill:Where that? Where did that hesitation? And you come from where you felt like you religion yeah from my background, from religion.
Kirstie Fleur :Honestly, it came from like people saying don't say this, don't do this, you need to protect the church, you protect the organizations, all this stuff, and but internally I felt like what doesn't matter if the organization or whatever it is, doesn't matter if it is treating people this way or people are being abused or used, I don't care who they are, church or not. They need to be called out and they need to be held accountable for the things that they're doing wrong. And there's no, I feel like there's no way that you can you know hope for reconciliation or hope for a better world if you don't take ownership for the things that you're doing wrong. So a lot of times, because I am an artist and everything else that I do is under guarded by undergirded by the arts, I feel like I'm able to use music and artistic activism to be able to like speak into, like hard issues, because music touches people in a way that yeah you know many things doesn't, so don't.
Isaac Gill:Totally so, like, music is obviously an avenue for talking about these things, did you? Was it also like? Was it first just kind of an outlet for you to get out those emotions? We're like I don't know how to reconcile my faith with what I'm being told, with what I see in the news or what's happening to me in these spaces. Was music like ever, just like something that a place read event? Or was it immediately like now I'm gonna take it to the streets and like this is a protest song that I'm gonna know, yes, crazy, as I never looked at some of these songs that I've written like silence and reform.
Kirstie Fleur :I've never looked at them like a protest songs. Honestly, both of them started as well. One of them, for sure, a silent started as a poem and after I went to this big concert thing I just lay down in the bed and I pinned it, you know, just in one Sitting like that, and then I showed it to my husband. He's like what the heck? This is a song. And I'm like okay but I never.
Isaac Gill:John C Horton, shout out to John C, we love you.
Kirstie Fleur :But I never pinned it. Like you know, I don't think I was self-aware enough to understand that. You know what my soul was saying is like hey, speak into issues that are happening right now.
Kirstie Fleur :So, honestly, it's been a journey and like self-awareness to. I'm like, okay, these songs are coming up, you know, and I say that a lot, oh, something is coming up, you know. Well, what's coming up is clearly what I'm experiencing externally, you know, and the soul inside of me is like something needs to be done or something needs to be said about it. And then the avenue with which I do it is gonna be through music, because that is, you know, my creative outlet, you know, the one I'm most skilled in. I would say so, you know, as an artist, I'm gonna lean towards music, or I'm gonna lean towards fashion, design or something like that, because I use it, you know, as a form of justice as well, for women and all those things. So, yeah, I didn't necessarily in the beginning look at it as protest, but then when it came out, I was like, okay, this is, these are protest songs, all right.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, and I mean it's not necessarily like it. It's like a marching protest on like. Maybe some people hear that and they think of that is like a specific context for like the civil rights movement. But it's, they are protest and that they are counter culture disruptive yeah, they're disruptive and and in a good way you know and but Having an insider glimpse, like I remember, when we were working on the song reform.
Isaac Gill:It came up because Kirstie sent me a like, just a voice memo. That was just the like, just, just your voice. Yeah, no instruments. I don't know if you were in a bathroom, but yeah, I was in Chattanooga.
Kirstie Fleur :I remember it to this day. I was in Chattanooga at the Reed House Hotel and then I walked into the the our hotel room as we just checked in, and then I heard said you got a reform, reform. And I was like, hmm, I'll be right back. Chauncy and Knox, I'm just gonna run to the bathroom and record this in my phone real quick. And yes, I just made a little voice note record myself singing and I'm like, hmm, I wonder where that's coming from. But and then I sent it to Isaac. I'm like, hey, I want to do something with this.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, and then we got together with Maddie Thompson and then we we hashed it out and gave it like more music and some more elements to it. But that song is like yeah, it's very visceral, like it punches you in the gut in a good way you know I get it like a good protest song does, but what I heard because in our co-writing sessions it was like you also processing.
Isaac Gill:Like you know, religious community hurts that you and Chauncey had walked through and and your journey with 318 collective and hearing All of that in that song like. To me it's like a I don't know textbook example of how a Good song often times that always sometimes it's you know commercial songs come from. You know, just like that's right, a song that sounds great. But I think the songs that really move the needle and like move people's hearts it's because it hits the writer first, like and it came from a real place. For you it wasn't just like I want to be edgy or I want to be trendy or I want
Kirstie Fleur :to like yeah.
Isaac Gill:It was like now, this is something I really walked through, something that really hurt, something that we really survived and and learn to, or learning to overcome. Yeah, you know and so that's cool thing about songwriting. I think yeah.
Kirstie Fleur :I think that's a, you know, that's a really good point to make right there. Like for me. I was talking to a friend a couple days ago and I was like you know, I really have a hard time writing songs that aren't authentic, that don't come from a place. It's not that they're fake, because I can pull from anywhere. Like if we sit down and say, hey, we're gonna write a song about love and heartbreak and being cheated on, well, great, I have some of those experiences from past relationships so I can pull from that. It's kind of like we. I have a friend here who was saying you know, as an actor, you're not pretending when you pull these emotions up, you're pulling from somewhere. So I can write a song about anything, but it has to come from a felt or an authentic place, you know yeah that's important to me.
Isaac Gill:It's awesome, so fast-forwarding to today. We have this song home. Obviously, we just did like an acoustic version of it, right, but I think it'd be fun for people to hear the actual like recording. If you haven't heard it yet, of course it's on all streaming platforms. It's everywhere home 318, collective music or QC floor. Looking up her name, you'll find it. Um, but before we listen to it, tell us just a little bit about you know, we talked about how we wrote that song. You and Michael and another songwriter wrote that song in one session and then we recorded it like the next day. But tell them a little bit more about like what went into it, because I think you like pulled an all nighter like working on it.
Kirstie Fleur :Absolutely so well when we first started. We, of course the room is set up like there's three writers. Was it three writers in your room too?
Kirstie Fleur :Yeah, I think so so three writers in each room or whatever, and it was me, a guy named Michael and a guy named Darniel. So we're in the room and we're like okay, so what are we writing? Where are we going? And I immediately said I cannot write a song that is not authentic. I gotta come from what is a lived experience, what is currently happening or what's going on, what are you guys feeling? What are you walking through? So I'm like what actually say? Like what wants to be written? What's the song that needs to be written right now? Not like let's just do something cool and creative, like you said, which that's one too but what song right now could move society? For what song could move us? For what needs to be written?
Kirstie Fleur :And so, as we started talking, I was like man, there's this sense of like home, like what was your home life like? So pull out the computer and we started talking. And then we realized that all of our home lives were completely different. For them, for one of the writers, their home life was like it's a picture perfect scene. It's like what you wanna see your family life be like. They were close, they had dinners together and watching football together. As a family, I did not relate to with anything they were saying. I was like, wow, that is magical, it sounds like Disney and it was great. And I was like, how do we merge these together? Cause my story was one of like, okay for me, home.
Kirstie Fleur :When I think about home, I have two different sentiments. I have fragmentation of a broken family, broken home, broken black community and all of these things that need to be repaired from, like generations before that. I feel like me now in the present, my family now in the present, is breaking these things and leaning into something new so that my family can have something different. And then the other side of me, that's like here's the bits and pieces of what was that was beautiful, like dinners at the table, these different things that I'm trying to pull together.
Kirstie Fleur :So, anyway, we're sitting there, we write all these things out and I think we just had, like the beginning, Like I remember dinners on the table, like that little piece and a few other, like random scratch notes or whatever at the bottom we're trying to put a verse and a chorus together. And then our time ended and we're like, okay, okay, what now? And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna finish this song, cause at that point I felt like you know I'm committed to it. Now I'm in this song and I've got to finish it. So, yeah, I pulled in all nighter. I was up to probably I forgot what time the camp ended, but I was probably up to like three or four o'clock in the morning until I felt like it was. I had some solid bones for a song.
Isaac Gill:And we were like back together like at eight am, yeah exactly we were back together.
Kirstie Fleur :I'm exhausted, but I sent the little scratch of what I was working on to the other writers in the room and I'm like, let's do it, let's just, let's massage this and put it together. And so this is what we, what we ended up with from that.
Isaac Gill:Yeah, that's super cool, and Michael Walter is on the keys on this and he is phenomenal.
Kirstie Fleur :Always.
Isaac Gill:I can't hold a candle with my little guitar pick. You do what he's doing with on the keys there, but you'll get to hear that we brought in a really great bassist, Neil, and Brandon on drums and I got to play a guitar and Michael joined you on some BGVs.
Isaac Gill:We did another session where we did some overdubs and, but what you will hear is pretty much like all maybe one or two takes. We did the song recorded live all together at the same time in the studio, so let's give it a listen, yeah, and do a little reaction. Afterwards talk about it.
Kirstie Fleur :Thanks for listening and joining the conversation today here on the Visionary Women Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to join our growing community, the FF Social Club, please comment, like and subscribe so that you can be updated on our upcoming episodes and more happening over at freedomfleur. com. To catch the latest from me and to access amazing resources for visionaries just like yourself, please visit me on the web at www. kirstiefleur. com. Thanks again for hanging out with me and I'll see you next time. Until then, don't forget to be visionary and bye for now.