March 22, 2009
Naperville Sun
Article by Hilary Decent
Friendly piano teacher by day, ethereal composer and performer by night and dark Gothic novelist in the twilight zone. Will the real Kimberly Steele please stand up?
Kim is like Wonder Woman. She spins round to reveal a totally different character each time. One spin and she’s a music teacher. Another and she’s someone else. Don’t be concerned–she doesn’t suffer from multiple personality disorder–she’s just the average Naperville woman, only with an edge. Kim has just opened her first music studio at 500 E. Ogden in Naperville, where students can learn piano and guitar. Previously she taught at the Naperville Cultural Center. ”I try to inject a sense of humor in to my lessons,” she said. “I’m the freak of the National Association of Music Teachers. My belief is no written music theory homework. I require jazz and popular music in my classes, which makes me a huge black sheep. There is a bit of a classical tradition here in Naperville, which I am trying to change.”
Kim, 35, says she is rebelling from the way she was taught.
“I had the typical, mean ex-nun music teacher who stuck to a method book and made us take part in five hourlong recitals,” she shuddered. Kim has devised her own system, which she hopes is fun, and definitely more progressive. Students learn to play both by reading musc and by ear. ”Some teachers treat popular music like chocolate, students can only play it as a treat,” she said. “My mom always said she didn’t care if I read comic books, because at least I was reading. It’s the same philosophy.”
If teaching music is Kim’s bread and butter, writing is a glass of red wine at the end of the day. “Creativity is my alternative to slashing my wrists and going jogging,” she laughs. She is the author of a fantasy novel, “Forever Fifteen,” which she has recorded as an audiobook on the Internet. ”It may sound like a children’s book, but it’s not at all,” she warns me from beneath her glossy black hair. “It’s very dark. It’s about a female vampire. People get killed. Definitely not something for children to read. Kim gets her ideas from dreams. ”As a child I always lived in a fantasy world in my head,” she continued. “It’s very cathartic for me to get it all out than be depressed.” Depressed? Kim always seems such a jolly little soul. At least she did when I thought she was simply a piano teacher. ”I have suffered periods of depression,” she said. “For me, creating is an antidote. I’m the world’s most functional depressive. When I feel down, being creative makes me happy.”
Kim remembers all her dreams and nightmares. Even when awake she frequently daydreams, and it is these thoughts that turned into “Forever Fifteen.” A quick spin around and she’s her third alter ego, Queenie.
“I recorded my first music CD in my closet,” she says. “I publish music for anyone to hear on the Internet. I’m not sure it really works for the radio stations around here. It’s quite ethereal, a little like Enya, but I do have a growing audience, both for my music and “Forever Fifteen.”
Someone so multifaceted needs a Web site for each persona, so you can visit Kim the music teacher at www.kimberlysteelemusic.com; Kimberly Steele the author at www.foreverfifteen.com; and Queenie the composer and performer at www.queeniemusic.com.
Interview with Helen Trevillion
Helen Trevillion / Faefly Records
April 2008
1. I realise questions like this can be a little vague and difficult to answer, but how many years, approximately, have you been making and producing your own music?
I have been interested in music for as long as I can remember. At about age four I started playing the piano. I started formal lessons at age six. Being a part of the community children’s choir taught me how to harmonize. I often chose to be an alto instead of a soprano (my true range) just so I could sing the harmonies that ran along the melodic lines to figure them out. Harmony fascinated me back then and still does today. I picked up the guitar at about age fifteen, but I had been writing songs since age twelve.
I became a producer by default by producing my first CD, QUEENIE, out of my bedroom closet. I truly knew nothing besides Record and Play at that point, so my methods were primitive and unfortunate. My opinion of the CD remains that the songwriting is quality but QUEENIE’s audio just plain sucks. Nevertheless, people gravitated so much to particular songs on the album that it became a number one hit on many of the big online music distributors at the time. I’ve made a great deal of money from that album and still continue to do so. I have been very fortunate.
2. Did you have a goal in mind for establishing yourself as an independent artist when you first started out, or were you just, as many musicians would say, making music because making music was a part of you?
I badly wanted to be signed when I was young. I truly thought that a big label had all the answers, that they would help me create a better sound, and were truly interested in promoting good music. It was not until I was older that I realized that a traditional label deal would have meant the certain destruction of my music. A handful of my contemporaries at the time were signed–Michelle Branch became successful, but others had their music altered and shoved aside for the top acts and became bitter and depressed has-beens as a result. Frighteningly, I flirted with signing to a major shortly before I released QUEENIE on my own.
3. You have been compared to Enya, and the comparison seems apt, although clearly you have developed a style that is very much your own - who/what would you say have been your biggest influences and inspirations so far in your projects?
Happy Rhodes has a huge influence–she’s 100 percent talent and her voice is incredible. My musical training influences me: I went to music University, so I find elements of Classicism creeping in all the time. I was actually very frustrated by the Lord of the Rings soundtracks, for me they were too Wagnerian/Romantic in style and not Celtic enough. So I tend to overanalyze music and much of it displeases me because I think too much about it.
4. Your music seems multi-layered and multi-sensory in many ways. Is there a particular vision that you want to convey with your music?
I seek to possess the music that plays in my dreams. I hear a great deal of music when I dream, so each dream, no matter how ridiculous, tends to be “scored” with its own accompaniment. Thanks to my training, I’ve occasionally been able to snatch a tune from my dream if I wake up right in the middle of it. Several songs have come to me this way, such as Dream of Flight, The Sad Letter, and Voice In My Head.
5. What made you decide to take the 100% independent approach to making and selling your music? Was it a concrete choice or, again, did it just sort of happen that way?
I did choose to become 100% independent after the weird runaway success of QUEENIE. CD Baby was doing a ton to improve their service at the time and snagged a deal with iTunes. I knew a good thing when I saw it and knew then that I would never sign a traditional label deal. In the future, the success of a musician will depend on how great and lasting individual songs are, not upon the temporary success of an album. This is due to iTunes and 99 cent downloads taking over the market–to have success in the future, you will have to be able to write and produce a great song. Getting signed is out of the question: the labels are dying and they just want to eat you alive anyway. My instinct is the more good songs one has, the better.
6. What would you say have been the main difficulties/barriers in the independent/DIY music route for you?
My problem is overcoming the urge to do every single thing myself, from programming my website to producing my music. One of the best things I have learned is to ask others for help. Even if one has to pay for it, it makes sense for me to hire outside instrumentalists, producers, and designers because I am finally admitting I should not do it all.
7. Do you feel that the artistic freedom outweighs any difficulties you may have come up against?
I would be miserable without my freedom to create. In my teens and early 20s, I had real trouble expressing my creativity and as a result became severely depressed. As an adult, I am a thousand times happier because I create all the time for no reason at all. For me, I must either express myself through art forms or wither away. Our society is so obsessed with productivity that the artist is forced to feel he must make money by generating a “product”. Sometimes music is just music, it is a nice way of expressing yourself and there is no benefit besides that short moment of empathy or joy someone had listening to it.
8. What have you found to be the most successful ways to promote your music?
Live shows have never been great successes for me, so I rarely play out. My website, QUEENIEMUSIC.COM, has been my number one way of promoting myself and selling music. I suggest to every indie artist that he/she gets a website with a unique domain name. You simply have to have a website nowadays. I have tried to make it ridiculously easy to buy my CD from the site in various forms, but now my challenge is to make an MP3 download store that can compete with the heavy-hitters. One pitfall of many artist sites is that they don’t make it very clear how to buy or download the CDs.
9. Did you have a target audience in mind from the start, or have you been surprised in some ways by the niche groups that your music has attracted?
I’m most surprised that people in countries all over the world listen to my music. The Middle East, South America, China–it’s nuts. My listener base is 65-70 percent older males, that surprises me. As for whom I appeal to, I do what I like and let the chips fall where they may. I tend to be popular among people who like RPGs, anime and manga, and Gothic culture. Thank goodness for the Goths, they are my favorite segment of people in this old World and the only segment of society where I’ve ever felt I fit in or wanted to, for that matter. The Internet Age has helped me achieve more than I had ever dreamed was possible with very little money; I am lucky to have fans almost everywhere in the world.
13 Questions with Kimberly Steele
Sapphire Neal for Horror Addicts
July 8, 2010
Hello again and let’s welcome back Kimberly Steele. Though this is her first time to be on 13 Questions, this isn’t Kimberly’s first time to be on Horror Addicts. Kim said that, “I feel that my pathetic, obsessive lurking around Emerian’s fabulous site and community becomes slightly more legitimized because I’ve been asked to interview twice.”
For Horror Addicts episode 28, Steele wrote a short story titled the Butterfly Collector. “I wrote Butterfly Collector in a weird, feverish, and angry haze over the period of two days. I am half-Japanese and adopted (raised by white people) and from time to time I have agonized over the acute otherness of being exoticized; usually by accidental perpetrators. One facet of Butterfly Collector is my seemingly inexhaustible anger about the fetishization of women in general, utilizing the classic Asian woman “Madame Butterfly” stereotype for poignancy. Steve, the chauvinist vampire character, doesn’t see females as human. They’re beguiling, sexy, and silly, but in the end he views them in much the same way a natural carnivore views a juicy steak. When he falls in love with one of his victims, he’s forced to confront his suddenly authentic feelings for her–the butterfly is the Ancient Egyptian metaphor for the soul–and he finds himself delaying his urgent plans to rip out her throat and dump her in a ditch somewhere.”
Speaking about Horror Addicts, you may have heard the rumors going around that Emerian and Kimberly hate each other. After you read what Steele had to say about the rumors you’ll see what’s going on. “She’s my sister by a different mister, I love that chica. Emerian and I share Criss Angel. We get at each other, but it’s really Criss is to blame. He’s a slut.”
“[She] started writing during a terrible period of my life when [her] husband and [her] bought a house in the country and he remodeled it.” Kimberly said, “I’m not handy, so there I was sitting in an empty room with nothing to do. I began writing to avoid going crazy with depression. I wrote Forever Fifteen, my first novel, mostly by hand into a red 3-ring binder. It was Forever Fifteen that made me decide I wanted to write for the rest of my life. Even though the home remodel was a disaster that didn’t end well for us, I feel like it was kismet. I’m not sure if I ever would have started writing had it not been for the period of isolation in that awful house.”
You may have heard of Steele’s novel Forever Fifteen. Kim revealed to me that, “…the number one question I get every week is, “When are you going to finish the sequel to Forever Fifteen?” I do plan on finishing it–there is no intention to pull a Margaret Mitchell and not write a sequel–but I need a great groundswell of fans to demand that Forever Fifteen be brought to film. The fans of this book are so sweet. One fan, Ashley, actually asked me if there was anything she could do to help me write a sequel! Forever Fifteen has a wonderful filmmaker behind it right now, but it needs a producer. Once that is attained, I’ll write the sequels fast and furious, I promise. The primary issue is that right now there isn’t time to write the sequels because I’m consumed with owning a music teaching business. There isn’t enough movie interest to justify writing a sequel, but it’s building. I’m convinced that massive exposure of Forever Fifteen will be what it takes to get it to film. Word of mouth is integral–if you love that book, I implore you to spread the word to any friends you think would like FF. I think the fans will cause the tipping point with FF someday but it will only be because of the extreme power of word-of-mouth recommendations from sources like Horror Addicts.”
With that information, I just had to ask how the popularity of FF has affected her. “The popularity of Forever Fifteen never fails to astonish me. I wrote it six or seven years ago and I still get fanmail about it every week, all of which I save. It is Forever Fifteen that gave me the much-needed confidence that I was a “good” writer and could continue with other stories and eventually novels.”
Not only does Steele love writing but she also loves music; like many other Horror Addicts I’ve interviewed this season. She even has an alter-ego named Queenie. “Queenie used to be a name I used as a singer-songwriter. As I stopped performing live, I began to see Queenie as a ghost. She’s my doppelganger who was once a nineteenth century courtesan. She gave up her posh life as a courtesan for true love.”
“I love writing music and yet it is writing fiction that I love more, at least for now. The goal of both my music and fiction is the same: to bring you into my twisted, morose, and occasionally disgusting version of reality. Fiction is an easier medium to work with than music because there are less steps. I write it and you consume it. All I have to do to distribute new fiction is to throw it up on a blog somewhere. Done. The trouble with music is is there are more steps. In music, there’s the composing, the lyric-writing, the practicing, the playing, the high-resolution multitrack recording, the mastering, and finally the music arrives to you in convenient MP3 form. If any one of those steps is not well and expertly executed, the music will suck. Writing is more talent-only. It’s either there or it’s not.”
A little story about Steele, that she shared with me after I asked about any embarassing moments she may have had. “I wear thong underwear. Not all the time, but I’ll wear one if the pants or skirt is formfitting because I’m of the generation that considers visible panty lines the epitome of personal tackiness. Before we bought a washing machine, I used to have to go to the laundromat every week. My black thong underwear fell on the front porch on the welcome mat of the house. I was teaching lessons out of the house at that time. The whole day, students and their parents tramped in and out of my house with my black thong underwear laying on the mat. If you were a student and/or parent who had to wade through my underwear that day, I apologize to you now. My husband found the underwear on the mat at the end of the evening and asked, “Are these yours?” It’s not the first time I’ve dropped my underwear out of the laundry basket in a public place. For some reason when I lose underwear, it makes its way to a public arena (which is quite often). Said underwear will eternally be a racy black lace thong, never the innocuous white bikini briefs.”
With everything that’s going on in her life, I wondered what it was like in a day in the life of Kim. And she gave me a little sneak-peek into her life. “I am a music teacher blessed with my own private Studio. Piano and guitar lessons are my full time job. My day is weird: I start and end late. I never wake before 10am if I can help it. I feed Kiki [her cat] the moment I get up if I don’t want to be assaulted. I drink Earl Grey tea in the morning, no sugar. I’m not a breakfast fan so I usually skip it. I do email things before noon and try to write before I go to work. I make myself a big lunch around 1:00 and go to work around 2:00. My work is very pleasant: I spend my day bringing happiness to people and I am somewhat of a goofball when I teach. Nevertheless, it is hard work and I usually don’t get home until after 9.”
Being such an important part of Steele’s life, I just had to know more about Kiki. “[She] is a shelter kitty. She’s about a year and a half old–we got her at about three months. She was very skinny and sickly because she had an infected spay scar, so she had to wear an Elizabethan collar (seriously, that’s what the vet called it) for several weeks. You should have seen the joy when we finally took that thing off. I believe that Kiki enjoys being a spoiled momma’s girl–she gets a great deal of attention from me with my frustrated maternal instincts. When you are over thirty and you don’t have kids, your cat will end up in a sun dress.”
Kimberly has a blog titled “Two Black Haired Girls.” Which features information and pictures of herself and Kiki. “2BHG was just a weird and ridiculous blog I made on WordPress to post pictures of Kiki and chronicle the annoying beast that is my hair. I have giant hair. Other than that, Kiki is a natural model. She’s always striking new and bizarre poses when she isn’t napping on my shoulder. I post very infrequently. There’s only so much information about my oversized hair and Kiki’s vogueing one can take. The surreal thing about 2BHG is that people actually read it, usually 100 or more views per day, sometimes up to 300.”
“Beside Forever Fifteen it’s only short stories right now. I’m halfway through a new vampire novel called River’s Heart. It’s about a Native American girl named Ann who is turned into a vampire at age thirteen. How horrific would that be? was my exact thought. River’s Heart is just a little bit reaction to the cringeworthy depiction of Native Americans as werewolves in Twilight. Not wholly, but I’d be lying if I denied that I wasn’t retaliating to Stephenie Meyer’s superficiality in dealing with that chapter in American history. As for my alter-ego, Queenie, she’s got a fourteen song album coming out this month called the Dream of Flight.”
For more information on Kimberly Steele check out any of these many websites:
http://www.facebook.com/kimberlysteele
http://kimberlysteele.wordpress.com/