Interview and performance: OKC singer-songwriter K.C. Clifford explores soulful new sound on new self-titled album

An abbreviated version of this story appears in Friday's Weekend Life section of The Oklahoman.

Changing to keys: OKC singer-songwriter K.C. Clifford turns to piano on long-awaited self-titled album

As she prepares to release her seventh album, Oklahoma City singer-songwriter K.C. Clifford feels that a reintroduction may be in order.

"There was a point in the studio where one of the players asked me, 'Do you have a title? What are you calling it, K.C.?' And I said, 'I think I'm gonna self-title it. Am I allowed to do that?' And it was funny because I felt like I had to ask permission, and my producer was like, 'Yeah, you can do whatever you want.' Which is so indicative of kind of where I am as a person in the process. ... So, within months, I was like, 'Yes! I can do that. I can self-title. I can have it be my name.' It feels like an evolution. It feels like a big piece of me is on this record, so it felt right," she said.

"I think that it's OK to evolve across a 20-year career, to say, 'OK, we're gonna do it different now and we're gonna test out this little space of myself and see what this feels like.' Creativity is experimentation at its core."

Due out Feb. 7, "K.C. Clifford" presents a much different musical side than the three-time Woody Guthrie Award winner has shown on her previous albums.

"Most of my previous records were primarily based on guitar. ... It was very guitar-driven, very strummy, red dirt, Americana, folkish. This record is entirely written on piano," she said. "You change your foundation, you build a different house. But I think I just stopped trying to put on the confines of genre. I stopped trying to kind of like meet an expectation of what little box of the music world that I fit in, and I just wrote songs that spoke to me, that came from a place that felt more authentic than anything I'd ever done. I was a musical theater kid and an opera singer, so being the solo vocalist on the stage and just unleashing a voice, that's something that's always been in me. 

"I think in songwriting and melody - and in life - I have until the past few years been hesitant to allow myself to take up space. So, there's kind of a parallel in the feeling of these songs; I allowed myself to just kind of be who I was and ... realizing I was enough and not too much, that translated to the songwriting process as well."

Life changes

Although she released a live album, "Coming Bare," in fall 2017, "K.C. Clifford" is the singer-songwriter's first studio album since 2012's "The Tag Hollow Sessions." 

The OKC native, 45, has gone through significant life changes in the past eight years, most notably becoming the mom of two children: Beatrice, 7, and Hollis, 4.

"I took a season of stepping back and realizing my dream of motherhood and being present with my kids. And I'm so excited to be out in the world making music again," Clifford said in an interview last week at The Oklahoman studios where she performed her heartfelt new song "Salt," with her husband, fellow musician David Broyles, accompanying her on guitar.

She penned eight of the 12 songs on her new album with keyboardist Daniel Walker, a fellow Oklahoma native now based in Seattle, in between his touring gigs with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Heart.

"When Dan and I write together, there's just kind of a sound that happens that kind of calls on some of our influences. I love the piano-pop of the '70s and I'm a huge Carole King fan. David introduced me to Warren Zevon and Elton John ... and a lot of it is just kind of these influences from my childhood. My father's a musician, he would play me these records, and I got exposed to this amazing bed of music. When we approached the songs and we started to really see that we were making a whole album, we began to think about, Gosh, how do these all kind of fit together? They all kind of sound like this soulful thing," she said.

Soulful sounds

A lifelong vocalist, Clifford spent her childhood steeped in a variety of music, thanks to her father, Hal Clifford, a bluegrass musician with the band Mountain Smoke, and his vast vinyl collection, which includes a 45 for every hit from the years 1955 to 1965. Her new songs are not only built on piano but they also frame her soaring vocals with lush strings, bluesy organ and a gospel choir.

"The gospel choir was a blast. ... We recorded this record live in-studio. So, it was very much a throwback to how the vintage records were made. So, everybody's in a room together ... and you have this kind of musical conversation," she said. "It was so fun to make, just because from the first downbeat, your record kind of comes out of the speakers, as opposed to like seven days of drums, of hearing someone hit a snare and wondering what it was gonna sound like in the end."

Much of the recording was done at Castle Row Studios in Del City, and Clifford reunited with longtime producer Will Hunt for the long-awaited project.

Although Hunt usually does double duty as drummer on her albums, this time Michael Walker, who was shot and killed last year by his mentally ill teenage son, did the drumming. The singer-songwriter said Walker was a huge part of making her new album what it is.

She said the first single, "Salt," reflects the ethos she has tried to adopt as a parent and person, one of looking past the differences we have with other people and developing connections, kindness and empathy.

"I didn't really set out to write a record that had messages in it, but that's definitely what happened. As I wrote them and as we worked into recording it, I think I became more comfortable with the idea that I was allowed to have a message. I didn't have to ask permission to say the things that I was really passionate about, which is kind of how my own emotional work paralleled the work of the record itself," she said.

"We are all right now in factions and in sides and we're very divided as a culture ... I feel like a lot of the songs just are asking us to kind of take a look at ourselves - me included - to figure out how we can better versions of ourselves in a world that really needs us to all kind of live up into the better parts of our nature right now."

She will celebrate her new album with a hometown album release show Saturday night at the Tower Theatre.

"We'll be there pulling out all the stops: We have the gospel choir, we have strings, we have Dan Walker on keys. John Fullbright is sitting in on Hammond organ," she said. "It's 'An Evening With,' so there's no opener. We're just gonna bring it."

IN CONCERT

"An Evening with K.C. Clifford"

When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Doors. at 7 p.m.

Where: Tower Theatre, 425 NW 28.

Tickets and information: www.towertheatreokc.com.

-BAM