interview: Kevin Krauter

words: Sarah Ross

Sarah sat down with Kevin Krauter on his fall 2019 tour with Hovvdy and Caroline Says to talk about his new music, his religious upbringing, and navigating a sense of self that rings true. His new album, Full Hand, is out on 2/28 through Bayonet Records.

photo: Hana Mendel

The Grey Estates: Can you start off by telling us about your new album and how it relates to your sense of self?

Kevin: Whatever sense of self I can recognize and formulate in my own head is what I’m writing out on the album. It is my sense of self in a way, which sounds really grandiose and really intense, but my sense of self is not that huge. As with anything I write, it’s just a practice in me getting to know myself, digging deeper and processing. Everything just relates to me getting to know myself better and overcoming weird inconsistencies. 

How do you think your sense of self was shaped by your upbringing, specifically being raised very Christian?

I was raised Christian, not super fundamental[ist], but in an isolated enough way where I was homeschooled before I went to public school freshman year of high school. But, I have six siblings, and we all did musical theatre and choir and whatever performing arts we could at an early age, and we were all pretty naturally outgoing. I was always hopping around different friend groups growing up. I had my neighborhood friends, church friends, swim team friends, etc., so I kind of trained myself to be very agreeable and appeasing to all sorts of people and to be as friendly as I could. 

That’s something I’ve been really processing a lot over the past couple years and what that looks like to me now, knowing I can look back and be like, well, I *do* have people close to me that I can rely on; I don’t feel like I need to keep jumping group to group and keep striving towards having a sense of belonging. And, it takes actual work to stop and recognize where I find my sense of belonging, in whom I find it, and really understanding that truthfully. I think a lot of lyrics on my album reflect that, or at least that process of finding that sense of confidence and grounding, either in other people or within myself, however I can.

What were some of the Christian artists that you were into growing up? 

As any young Christian person, I grew up listening to Relient K and all that type of music, and my older brother got Limewire and started downloading music, searched Relient K songs and then found other non-Christian bands that sounded like Relient K. My mom didn’t let us listen to secular music for a good part of my childhood, so when my brother started downloading music, the floodgates opened up and it was like, “We can listen to all this music? Nothing can stop us!” 

Before that, I would be riding in my friend’s mom’s minivan, we’d be listening to regular radio music, I’d be like, “You get to listen to this? This is crazy!” I think having that sort of limitation on me definitely built up a sort of curiosity to art and all music in general. 

My older brother learned how to play guitar early on and we would just watch a bunch of music videos together, so at that young age it was planted in my head that being in a band is the coolest thing I could do, that playing music was like, peak of self.

Did you play music in the church at all?

I played in church band over the years. I played drums in a church band all four years of high school to a click track with an in-ear system, so I was playing to a metronome for four years straight every week, which is the best training I’ve ever had musically, in any respect. The main thing that kept me in church was being able to play music, because I was so stoked in getting behind the drum set, playing so much guitar or whatever. I also did choir for most of my life and musical theatre, so I’ve been singing since I was very young.

I also grew up pretty naturally pushed into “Okay, you’re doing church band now!”, from seventh grade, and it’s kind of a wild experience because at some point, for me at least, it was like, “Do I actually love what I’m singing or do I just love music?”

It’s so easy, and for the longest time there was no difference in my head. You’re like, “Oh, well I must love God a lot because I’m having a great fucking time. I’m having a fucking blast. Everyone’s looking at me, first of all, (laughs) I’m up here leading this shit.” It’s a massive ego boost but it’s like I'm doing the right thing, so there’s no guilt involved, and it’s great. It’s better than any drug.

It sounds like your older brother opened your eyes to a lot of things and you were like, “Oh this is cool we can actually do this.” But what was a big turning point from being so involved in church and surrounded by all this theology all the time to saying, “No, I’m out”?

I was always sort of inquisitive, especially when I got to high school and started being on the internet a lot more, and you know, being on Reddit for the first time. Just the simplest left-leaning or secular, atheist, whatever, I’d read stuff and be like, “Oh that actually makes a lot of sense, interesting, never thought about that before.” For the first time actually engaging in my skepticism rather than just being like no, that’s not what the Bible says. When I got into college, I was still pretty Christian, still pretty involved in this campus ministry, leading worship and part of a Bible study, dating this person and we almost got married. Yeah it was weird; I started smoking weed in college and stopped— (laughs) slowly started realizing more and more— Well, I never smoked weed or drank in high school, and mostly into college as well, and I started smoking weed and was like oh man this is interesting this is, for the first time, shifting my perspective and opening my eyes a bit and gradually moving away from my college campus ministry responsibilities. 

I had a weird identity crisis, moved out of that, and actually my partner Demi and I have been together for almost four years now and got to know each other at that time. She didn’t grow up religious at all; both of her parents are deaf, so she comes from a completely different background than I do. We started to get to know each other really well around that time that I was like alright, I don’t think I’m a Christian anymore, I don’t know what to do about it, I don’t really know how to feel, Just having someone I could reflect with, a totally different perspective that I could look back on my upbringing and my personhood and i don’t know, that was really huge.

Prior to that I was writing songs and college was when I really started writing some music that I cared about. I wrote some shit in high school but it was all crap. But around that time I started writing, practicing writing stuff that I put more thought into, and that experience is still a source of inspiration for lyrics and something that I’m still working through, still processing, still growing from and still learning to define myself in my own way outside of a faith context or a real grandiose cosmic framework.

What are your thoughts on music as a religious, or maybe pseudo-religious experience?

They might really hate me for this but being on tour with Hovvdy is like really great because their music, just stylistically, sounds very similar to Christian music that I listened to in church, some like old early 2000s Hillsong. I can hear some of that in them. Because around that time, all worship music was just ripping off all rock, ripping off the radio, but coincidentally, I grew up listening to the Christian music rip-off of all that alt-rock. So hearing Hovvdy and watching them play live even its like they have this really sweet, communal, really heartfelt, really wholesome- there’s no gimmick, there’s no ironic detachment, there’s no cynical performance. It’s very much a performance as anything is, but it’s very sweet to watch and listen to and sing along to every night.

And I think the act in and of itself, outside of any religious context, is just one of the most human things possible. When you go to a dance party and you’re around a group of people dancing together, making a fool of themselves together— engaging in mutual vulnerability in that sense is really what any sort of worship service comes down to in my mind. You can chalk it up to the Spirit moving but from a very humanistic point of view it’s like, group celebration takes so many forms and is such a transcendent experience, such a deeply human thing that happens in so many contexts that it’s hard to pin down and define. 

What are you looking forward to? In life, or just today, or anything?

I look forward to going home after tour and chilling out with my girlfriend Demi. I don’t know. I’d like to keep touring and playing music and releasing music and eventually have that be the only thing I do so I can really devote the time towards it that I could be. Not that I’m always busy all the time, I definitely have a good amount of free time on my hands, but I don’t know. I’d like to know my partner more, I’d love to get closer with my friends and make new friends and that’s really the only goals I have: I’d like to keep doing music and support myself on it and just chill. (laughs) I could say I want to travel and see the world. Maybe I’ll go back to school at some point in my life, maybe I’ll do something else, but at the moment I’m recording more, gonna release more music and just keep touring.