The Kinleys
BY:Michael A. Capozzoli JR.
Jennifer Kinley(JK)- We really do know each other very well. It’s to the point were I can’t read her mind but Heather gets upset when I don’t(they both laugh).
Heather Kinley(HK)- What she’s saying there is true. I do all kinds of different melodies when we’re singing together and she follows right behind me. It’s so natural that I take that for granted. Sometimes I’ll tell her,”You’re really amazing,because you can feel what I’m going to sing next in a song.’ It’s amazing.
(HK)- I think all the years we spent in Nashville slaving away at odd jobs has given us a respect for other people. By doing what we had to do in order to survive, and working all those odd jobs while trying to get a label deal,that was an experience that really helped us and I feel everyone should have that. Still today, we’ll be out having dinner and someone at our table will say at the end of the meal,’I’m not going to give the waiter a tip because the service was bad.’ And I’ll say,’What! No, he may hate this job and it doesn’t matter if he was bad or good, he deserves to get a fair wage!’ I’m tough on that.
(JK)- Not only that. We’ve played some gigs here in Nashville to survive for two maybe three years and what we’ve learned is those gigs were invaluable. I mean Heather’s guitar playing has become so much better from playing all those nights. That time was actually the rehearsal time for our career. You don’t realize that’s so important until you’re at the other end of this and you look back and can see how much you’ve grown as a performer. When I get on-stage now and perform, I’m thinking of things unconsciously that I did back when I was playing those shows. I feel that working through me all the time.
(JK)- I think when people say that the stars don’t change in Nashville the people around them do, that’s really true. Because people who never would have bothered to have anything to do with us, or wouldn’t have ever given me a call, are now calling wanting to talk to me. I mean I’m hearing from people I haven’t talked to since I was ten or eleven years old. Which is so neat, I love that. But, since we’ve been signed to the record company and our album is doing well, people are treating us different. It’s a different time in our lives right now and the way people are treating us reflects that. Sometimes I feel a little funny about it and other times I appreciate it. Like when I get mail, I got a card in the mail from our World Cultures teacher and she said they’re hanging our pictures up in Arch Bishop Wood, our school back in Philadelphia. That was great! Other times when people make a point of coming up to me and saying hello, when before all of this happned, they wouldn’t have even said anything to us and would have passed us by, well that makes me a little aggravated. I’ll have to admit to that.
(HK)- We both feed off of each other a lot when we’re songwriting. It depends on the mood of the song and what we both are thinking at that moment. I never want to write something that sounds like everything else on country radio. That would drive me crazy. So when I pick up the guitar,I try to come up with some lick that no one else is using and I’ll write the song from there. Then there are other times when we’ll work with someone who is scheduled to write with us and that won’t work. For the most part when something hits me, like an idea for a song, I’ll stop what I’m doing and say,’Woah! That’s good! Let me put that idea down on tape.’ That’s when the ideas come out the best for me.
(JK)- For me it’s better when I have an actual designated time that I can devote to songwriting. That way I can concentrate on the song and the structure of how it’s created.
(HK)- Our uncle gave us a tape of The Everly Brothers when we were about 12 years old and we just feel in love with them. We really studied the harmony and we would sing their songs over and over. So they got us interested in country music. We heard the Judds and fell in love with them and learned a lot from them. There was a country station in Philadelphia and we listened to it constantly.
(JK)- A lot of times when we write. I feel we’re writing songs for the women, because we’re women. Women in country music now are really taking chances and doing things that are different and I think that’s why women are making such great strides in country music right now. The song “Talk To me” we think relates predominantly to women. But I want our music to appeal to everybody.
(HK)- We were billed as The Kinley Twins back when we were in our teens and we’d play anywhere that we could. TV shows, high schools and colleges,talent shows and school plays. Just about anywhere they’d have us we played.
(JK)- We started saving our money when we were both in our early teens to move to Nashville. Since we were serious about our careers when we were 19, we had someone in Nashville tell us that they wanted to manage us and get our career started so we moved to Nashville. We hopped in the car and our parents came down with us and stayed us for a little while then they went back home and we stayed. We’re 27 years old now.
(HK)- The better part of our lives have been spent working for this goal of our career singing. Sometimes that makes things a little bit scary. I’ve learned to get my mind off of anything that causes anxiety.
(JK)- We’re looking forward to touring next year(1998). We’re also working on songwriting on our songwriting for our next album. We have dedicated all of January and part of February to writing new material. I mean we’re starting to panic, you have you whole life to write songs for your first album and then the second album comes up a lot quicker. So we’re trying to write just as much new material as we can in January and February.