Killdeer: Nick Flynn Thoughts on Album

KILLDEER ALBUM / 10 feb 2023 Nick Flynn / 21 nov 2022 Last spring, I was offered the chance to sit with a group of insanely talented musicians and transform a handful of my poems into something else, something new. The words came alive in ways that were unexpected, unsettling, moving. Some history: I’ve collaborated with Guy Barash since 2008—I call him my composer (I now encourage all my students to find their own composer). Together we have worked on half a dozen projects. We’ve worked with Kathleen Supové, who never fails to startle me with her intensity and nuance, on a few of these projects. For this project, I made my way to the Old Stone House in Brooklyn to perform with a group of musicians I’d rehearsed with for the first time just the day before. Guy and I had performed these poems in many venues since 2015 (Boston, Brooklyn, Queens Museum, upstate New York, Houston), often as just the two of us, sometimes with the band The Shaker (Simi Stone and Philip Marshall —which gave the poems a more punk/folk feel, with Guy adding undertones of Brian Eno). For the Stone House session, Guy assembled Supové, Maoz, and London. The night went well, so we decided to meet up in a studio a few days later and attempt to recreate what had happened. For the recording, we were each in our own room, connected by headphones, and listening deeply to what the others were making. This is the result of that.