Daily Discovery: Kyle Adem, “Good Morning, August”

Kyle Adem writes about the questions in a pensive Americana style. His songs will both comfort you and challenge you. You can find out more about him at his website.

ARTIST:  Kyle Adem

SONG: Good Morning, August

BIRTHDATE: 11/21/1988

HOMETOWN: Charlotte, North Carolina

CURRENT LOCATION: Knoxville, TN

AMBITIONS: Reaching nirvana.

TURN-OFFS: Perfect teeth, dogmatic ideologies

TURN-ONS: Whiskey, poems, cooking out

DREAM GIG: Opening for the Mountain Goats anywhere in the world.

FAVORITE LYRIC: Every time she sneezes, I believe it’s love.

CRAZIEST PERSON I KNOW: This seems like an odd question- in what sense of crazy? Like jump in a pool with your clothes on crazy? Or like eat all of the chalk and when confronted say someone who isn’t real did it crazy? I mean either way it’s Chris.

SONG I WISH I WROTE: Every song by the mountain goats.

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Are these real life living people? Betty White, John Darnielle, His holiness the Dali Llama, Rosanne Cash, my wife. Any people ever? Historical Jesus, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Viktor Frankl, Fred Rogers, my wife.

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: Definitely Neutral Milk Hotel. It was a religious experience.

I WROTE THIS SONG: Good Morning August? This song was really a sort of therapy for me. I had been confronted with some ghosts of former lives that were still lingering in the space between my wife and I and began processing externally through that with this song. It is an allusion to a love song that I wrote a number of years ago called “Goodnight, July” and closes the chapter on this naïve, immature romance while also opening the door to this new thing. It’s the end credits to a previous film rolling at the beginning of the next dispensation. It speaks to the delicate space between these seasons and approaches love with the same sense of magic and wonderment but now further away from it- more maturely. The second verse is about sitting in the living room with my wife’s parents and grandparents for the first time and thinking about how deeply I loved her. My life was intrinsically hers and I knew that the beauty of this thing would consume me.