This is a test.
And not just for you — the reader — but for anyone you are curious about and want to inquire about the type of person they are.
Maybe it’s a first date. Maybe it’s a politician. Or just maybe, it is you.
This is about empathy and what a voice can evoke in people.
You can watch and listen to Kelly Pardekooper in our new podcast.
What is it about a voice that grabs us into the music and doesn’t let go? I’ve thought long about this while listening to Kelly Pardekooper. His voice is like that — a warm blanket when you’re lonely, or the hug of a loved one who understands your pain.
Kelly Pardekooper has the ability to elicit empathy from those who listen to his music. His songs seem so personal that we can all relate to them. Something as common as a breakup. But again, it is his voice that grabs our heart strings.
History has plenty of examples of country singers with this ability. Johnny Cash had it. George Jones had it. So did Merle Haggard. Today I see that Colter Wall has it and Sam Barber has it. But their voices — and their pain — seem very different when compared to Kelly and his music. No, he doesn’t have the twang or accent you find in classic or pop country music singers. But his lyrics are powerful. I feel as if I am there in the same room with his pain.
It’s about empathy. We feel what he’s feeling.
It is also about sympathy, because we have all been there and we know what he is going through. These are universal feelings. The sadness of a breakup and the loneliness that comes with it. Oh … the loneliness.
Watch “Wears Me Out” to hear about someone trying to figure out his lover. Or maybe he’s singing about a loved one with emotional problems. I got the impression it was about an extremely introverted person.
This is what music does. When it happens, we know it, and we can’t let go. Maybe it’s foot-stomping and getting up on the dance floor. The best singers can bring us into their world. Kelly Pardekooper does it with his voice: smooth and sad — tugging at our sense of home and family, love and loss.
Kelly Pardekooper’s song “Doing Fine” evokes a longing for a place. Home? A long time past? What clued me in to the meaning was the sound of his voice. Evoking country music, but not quite. His music is so very personal that I find it difficult to plug it into the typical sound of modern country. It takes me back to what country music used to be — the singer and the song. But it’s something else as well. It also has a sense of folk music. But I find that doesn’t work for me either. There is definitely the blues just below the surface. (He was once produced by Bo Ramsey — a minimal style of blues where you focus on the space between the notes.) The sound of someone who has travelled and taken part in life. Someone who is old enough to reflect on his life and share it with us.
Being from the Midwest (Iowa City) seems to have a greatly influenced his music. Some incredible singers of recent times are from the Midwest. Sam Barber is from Missouri. Colter Wall is from Saskatchewan, Canada. Together with Kelly, they have been part of a resurgence of country/folk/whatever-you-want-to-call-it type of music.
With Kelly’s most recent album, “Three Slices,” it’s not just his unique sound but also his animated music videos that draw us into his songs. New to the world of the AI-animated music video, Kelly is doing what so many other musicians are doing these days. That is, everything.
We first heard Kelly when his video to “Whisker Brain” popped into our daily video queue. Here was a simple animation that struck me because of the music. The slide guitar helped set the tone and the animation filled in the rest — precisely what a music video is supposed to do.
His music leaves me with a sense of place. In this video I travelled to a bayou. And his voice still brings me to someplace new.
“She says I don’t pray no more,
she don’t like what I’m looking for,
she says that I’m going straight to hell.”
His voice slides with the guitars right into our heads, along with his simple video; the two inextricably linked.
Kelly’s influences are wide. It’s easy to see that blues has had a big influence on his music, especially with his cover of the song “Shit Out Of Luck,” written by his friend Greg Brown. Sitting in a bar and drinking is how the blues began.
Calling himself a child of the 80s and raised on MTV, he listened to R.E.M. and grunge. He started writing songs. While in college, he started working at the local public access station (do those still exist) in order to get his music played.
Around 2000, he got an agent and then went on a life-changing trip to the Netherlands, where he toured with the band Cracker. Returning to the states, he ended up in Nashville. Living there helped him continue his education on how to make the music business work for him. But today, he listens to modern artists … and Elliot Smith.
It’s his affinity with Elliot Smith that seems to have stuck with him. Smith, another Midwest native , had a tragic life story that influenced some of the best music to come out of the 1990s. Kelly’s love of Smith’s music does not mean he mimicked his lifestyle. Indeed, he made some decisions that took some unique directions. One was getting married and following his wife and her career. This helped him to make the decision to get off the road and concentrate on his song writing. A decision that has led to his current popularity.
Getting off the road gave Kelly the opportunity to be more creative. With his “Three Slices” EP, he has showcased that creativity. Two months ago, he decided to give AI animation a try, and he is now producing videos to accompany his music. We talked about the popularity of the music video, and I asked him if he had any idea why industry consultants keep telling musicians they should give up on them. He didn’t know why and said that people long for a visual element with their music. This is true. They always have. Otherwise, why bother to go see a show.
Kelly equates learning AI animation to relearning the video editing he did on 3/4” videotape. “You need to keep tweaking and learning before getting what you want,” he says. “Vision is important.” He adds, “Making these videos is like using another type of paintbrush, and it’s like being in kindergarten.”
He says he is just learning and taking baby steps — experimenting with prompts. Part of learning has been giving up some control and letting the program run with his ideas. This, in turn, gives him ideas he would never have come up with on his own. For the musician and songwriter stuck in a room trying to do everything required to market his music, it’s like having an assistant to bounce ideas off of.
The learning process is not always smooth sailing, he says. The Mr. Middle video was difficult because he couldn’t get the vibe of the song to match the feeling he wanted, especially for her hair — he had so many misses and had to keep reediting. He also admits that his writing process has changed, saying, “The writing process is different and I’m a lot more hesitant to explain where certain images come from.” He understands that when people hear his music, it becomes theirs, and he doesn’t want to take any of that experience away from them.
Realizing that people and their attention spans are so much shorter than just a few years ago (we can thank social media for that), he kept the videos and songs from “Three Slices” shorter. Continuous scrolling means the artists have only a few seconds to engage the viewer, and Kelly thinks it can be asking a lot of someone to watch his videos.
I feel he doesn’t have anything to worry about. With his YouTube viewer numbers skyrocketing, enough people are watching. His experimenting with shorter songs and black and white video has found a sweet spot with music-video consumers. He experimented with adding lyrics to the videos, but felt that it was distracting. He is happy with the outcome. The videos keep getting better, and he’s finding new ways to be creative.
One of Kelly's earlier videos before he started learning how to use AI tools.
There’s a good chance you have already heard his music, which has appeared in more than 100 TV episodes. From soaps to popular TV shows such as “Justified,” “Chicago Fire,” and “Longmire,” he’s the singer you always knew but didn’t know about.
As we concluded the interview, I asked Kelly for the correct pronunciation of his last name “Pardekooper.” He said it’s pronounced like “Party-Pooper.” It’s Dutch and means “horse buyer.”
Perfect time to conclude the interview.
