Hello The Kunins! How did the idea of forming a father-daughter duo come about?
Lily Maia: One day it just clicked. We didn’t spend years planning it; it just suddenly became a no-brainer. We originally talked about just creating a record together (our self-titled album), but once we got started it became clear that this was going to last a lot longer than one album. We were both songwriters, and once I was old enough and out of high school it just seemed like the natural choice.
What was it like discovering how well your voices and songwriting abilities blended in 2022?
Ken: It was one of those eureka moments. I was playing a song I literally wrote 25 years ago, and Lily Maia just instinctively knew where and how to sing harmony for the song. Hearing that family DNA come together was unreal. I have sung a lot of harmonies in my life with lots of talented singers and I never heard something click so effortlessly. Yes, I knew how well Lily Maia could write, sing, and play, but soon I discovered that our songs for whatever reason translated together beautifully.
Can you share a memory of a breakthrough moment when you knew this collaboration was truly special?
Lily Maia: There’s a song that dad wrote called ‘I’m Sorry Momma,’ it’s the second song on this album and is about the passing of my grandparents (dad’s parents). It’s one of his that he wrote years ago, but one day in January this year I heard him playing it on guitar in another room. Without really thinking much of it, I started to play along on piano. Soon enough, we had these magical harmonies. It struck me how easy it was to transform a song one of us wrote into a song that felt like we both had an important part in.
Ken, how has your previous experience in the music industry shaped your approach to this project?
Ken: If I’m honest, today’s industry and complexity is vastly different than today and I must be very humble and feel that regardless of decades of experience, I still have plenty to learn in application to 2024’s music industry. All that said, producing albums is still very much the same. The big thing is I now have a second songwriter in this outfit which happens to be my daughter, so I need to respect that and give her plenty of space to create and soar. The other thing is I’m very protective of all the vultures out there even more so because it’s my daughter!
Lily Maia, how has growing up with a father so immersed in music impacted your musical journey?
Lily Maia: I think a lot of people who have never been around songwriters view songwriting as this mythical, impossible thing. The thing with both my dad and I is that we write like it’s breathing. So when I started coming up with lyrics and melodies from a super young age, it always felt natural; I never felt like it was this crazy thing. But that’s just who I am, I don’t think it’s something I had to learn from my dad. I was drawn to classical music and musical theatre in school, which aren’t areas of music my dad explored with me. I’ve always had a very individual music taste.
Do you feel your music bridges generational gaps for your audience? How do listeners of different ages respond to your work?
Ken: Absolutely! One of the coolest parts of this project is that when you look out into our crowds, you might see anyone from a late teenager to someone in their 70’s. To me, that is unique and magical, especially when you seem them interacting together! I like to think that the bottom line is that people appreciate good songs, harmonies, and acoustic stripped-down music.
How do you decide on themes and stories for your songs? Do you work collaboratively on lyrics, or do you each bring your own ideas?
Lily Maia: Each song on the album is individually written. Our process is that we write in a personal manner, and collaboratively work on the presentation and arrangement of the songs. We naturally gravitate towards darker topics, which is probably not typical of a family band. We just love the angst.
What inspired the title of your album “Waiting For Lily”?
Ken: The first thing was when Michael Kearey (The lead guitarist of Ken Kunin & the Crooked Sky) watched his first The Kunins show and just flat out said, “Well the album has to be called Waiting for Lily because it sounds like you have been waiting for her forever. When I thought about it deeper, it dawned on me that I felt I was always one band member short of the ideal band, and low and behold it just happened to be a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter that happened to be my daughter. How cool is that!
How did you approach creating the stripped-back sound of this album?
Lily Maia: We formed this acoustic, 4-layered sound over the first half of this year. We just started rehearsing in this stripped-back form and developed it and developed it until we were using every possible sound of an acoustic guitar, keyboard, and voices, to create a rich and dynamic sound. We took this exact format into Lush Recording Studios in Clontarf Queensland and tried to capture it in the highest quality we could, working with engineer James Griffiths.
Can you walk us through the creative process of one of the album’s standout tracks?
Ken: For me, one of the album standouts is Birdwatcher which Lily wrote. Funny enough, we both presented songs that had birds in the title in the space of a couple of hours which was a little weird. With Birdwatcher, Lily just sat at the piano and blew me away. I made her play it three times because I wanted to think about exactly what I could play on guitar to compliment the piano without overpowering anything and likewise, what I could sing to just lift it in a few sections. When you are this stripped down, less is more. We then played it live a few times and knew by the crowd’s response that we were on to something. If I live to be a hundred, I will never ever forget the look on the engineer’s face in the studio when she sang it and how every single hair on my arms stood up. It was otherworldly.
Your live performances have earned high praise—what’s your secret to creating such a powerful connection with audiences?
Lily Maia: We never want to feel like we’re playing at the audience. We almost want it to feel like we’re inviting them on stage with us, and into the song. The beauty of such a stripped back arrangement is that you can really hear the lyrics and our harmonies. This helps the listener feel like they’re fully in the story, and not just observing it.
What does the future hold for The Kunins? Are there plans for a third album or collaborations with other artists?
Ken: I am confident that there will be a third, as many songs have already been written since the second and are finding there way into the set list. As far as other artists, I wouldn’t mind going to Nashville or say Muscle Shoals and have some of their in-house musicians accompany our songs. There is something about that dark swampy sound that I believe would compliment our sound. That said, we are focused on getting on the road and touring Waiting for Lily and try to win one fan and one room over at a time.
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