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Life & Work with Hope Newman Kemp of Burlington NC/East Nashville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hope Newman Kemp

Hi Hope Newman, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was raised immersed in the soul-sonic, Jesus-folk, 60’s South. My parent’s home was bursting with guitar-and-tambourine-wielding poets and psalmists, looking to nourish spiritual creative community. This unconventional religious upbringing springboarded me into singing and playing with a local traveling evangelistic band, whose mission was to share Gospel music for the hope of racial reconciliation. It was here that I began writing original songs, and learned the craft of studio recording by working in a jingle shop.

A few friends from my sphere (drummer Tommy Harden) later set out for music cities like Nashville, but as a young and insecure woman I did not have the guts to uproot from my rural NC town.

Then at 20 I met a cute, Italian, non-musician, future-Army-dentist and life changed in a heart beat.

These were the analogue days, so moving around with the military also meant leaving a music vocation behind. Children came straight away and required every ounce of creative collateral I could muster. Still, I endeavoured where I could–providing music for chapel services became the most organic fit for our family culture.

Eventually we moved back to my hometown and settled into domestic rhythm on my parent’s 100 acre property. It didn’t take long before I began feeling artistically restless.

During this time I self produced two albums of original songs, none of them great and some of them not even good, but the creative collaboration proved exhilarating. I also worked with Elon University Recording Arts Dept on a live Christmas album.

Meanwhile, our home was expanding into an international hub.

Then in 2018, as a desperate gasp for creative endeavor, I wrote and recorded “Hoping for Real; songs inspired by The Velveteen Rabbit”, and produced it into a musical reading show. During the lock down I collaborated with The Stephen Anderson Trio (UNC Chapel Hill Jazz studies professors) on a songbook standards album called, “Carolina Bluebird Jazz Project.” I also joined as a vocalist for The Alamance Jazz Band, a local swing big band.

What might look on paper like artistic progression often felt more like jumping up and down in one spot. I missed the ease and spark of writers and musicians from my youth, but those days were gone. Where I live there aren’t women who are writing and recording their own music, let alone women of my age and season of life.

Now I had a choice: throw creative energies into another direction entirely (where there was actual community), or forge ahead on this path alone.

Eventually I gave up and said, “you can figure this out when the kids are grown!”, but when that day arrived immediately discovered “No Room For Older Women” the prevailing banner over the new musical paths I persevered to enter.

I knew that if I was not wanting to spend this mature season of my life sitting on hands watching reruns of Gunsmoke, I was going to have to throw my hat over a new fence.

As good fortune would have it, this is when Jeremy Casella, Nashville producer and songwriter, reached out to see if I’d be interested in leveling up my music by traveling to Nashville to begin a new music making path. He had a gazillion ideas for how to synergize the decades of multi-genre songs onto a single project, starting with relying on the gorgeous acoustic grand at Watershed Recording Studios.

So I came to Nashville. Not to BE an artist (for I am one), but to give my Art a new life that otherwise it could not enjoy. The result is my new independent album, FACING EDEN, releasing September 1, and is the start of a brave new me.

Nashville takes care of Grammy winners and Grammies alike. I feel lucky every time I get to hop on I40 and head West.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
For a woman like me to record her own music she needs other people–the knobs and dials kind of people. Snatching a song from the stratosphere and converting it into something listenable is not obtainable on my own.

What’s more, the studio itself is most often filled with men; the engineer, the session players, the tech–almost always are men. I am confident in the studio space, but there is a certain kind of filter that a woman must suspend over herself in order for her work to remain authentic if that work also is also dependent upon fraternity.

Holding tension for these challenges + cultivating healthy family culture inside a narrow space for artistic endeavoring = the most lonely obstacle of my own artistic identity.

Nashville helped elevate from that confinement and make FACING EDEN. It is my most vulnerable and authentic album to date, and encompasses songs birthed from the contentions of the two dueling rails of my world as the only way I know how to marry them.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a piano driven songwriter and singer. I write songs as my primary way of processing life and entering spiritual presence. My style draws from my NC foothills soul Gospel and Jazz-infused roots (with a twist of thematic). Making music is the most natural expression of my personality.

I am also a matriarch and overseer of people and place, a role that is hard learned and cast—against type and not at all natural for me. I make musical passion projects so that I can be a happier, better person for this role.

I don’t think that any true artist believes that their best work is behind them, no matter the number of candles on the birthday cake.

As I’m looking forward into my senior season I am recognizing that there isn’t enough in my immediate surroundings to satisfy my deep need for creative collaboration, and so I travel to Nashville to fill it.

How do you define success?
One time I purchased a train ticket in Europe for what I thought would take me to my stop, but ended up passing that one to another further along the route. I stepped off and into the old part of the city–a part I didn’t know existed. Success is often like that; setting goals and trying to reach them is one part, but there actually might be designations better suited for us if only we’re willing to receive the unexpected gift of adventure. I’m at the age now where I can look in both directions, past and future, and be thankful for what has been–despite the decisions made and not made–for if we are given another day to wake up, breathe, love, then we are afforded the great gift to begin anew. So yes, goals might be important but I actively try not to live by someone else’s goals for me. I believe that where we can dream and build in order to dream and build again: that is the ultimate Success.

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