On 'Still & Bright,' Grammy nominee Amythyst Kiah thrives under stardom's glare

At age 37, Johnson City-based Amythyst Kiah is five years into a wary, strange, still and bright journey, defining herself and her art under the gaze of thoroughly unexpected stardom.

The first two adjectives describe the Grammy nominee's star-cementing 2021 rock record. The last two describe the 2024 album she's discussing with The Tennessean in Nashville during Americanafest.

Famously, Kiah is also a queer Tennessee native, multi-instrumentalist, sobriety advocate, trauma survivor and a graduate of East Tennessee State University's Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program.

The latter led her to join Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell on 2019's Smithsonian Folkways "Songs of Our Native Daughters" project, where the quintet of Black women essentially reclaimed the banjo's roots via a musical re-casting of African American historical narratives.

Community develops through catharsis

"To not rely on catharsis alone to create art, I finally used what I learned from years of therapy and skill as a writer to create a community around me to create personal songs, but able to (more broadly) connect with others," Kiah says to The Tennessean.

Expanding what she describes as her "human, creative and professional relationships" has forced her to overcome many of the fears and anxieties that have, in her estimation impeded her comfort with growing acclaim.

The relationship between how "Still & Bright" connects to her desire to create new patterns and creative traditions requires context.

Kiah's parents were both musicians. However, her mother committed suicide when Kiah was 17. That funeral marked her third public performance.

Insofar as writing for "Songs of Our Native Daughters," all five creators on the album have spoken about how their intensely personal interpretations of historical words and observations about slavery inspired harrowing yet redemptive stories of what Time magazine referred to as "struggle, resistance and hope."

For "Still & Bright," Kiah's collaborators include veteran folk singer-songwriter Avi Kaplan and Sean McConnell, producer Butch Walker, frequent Joy Oladokun and Devon Gilfillian collaborator Jeremy Lutito, 400 Unit bandmember and Morgan Wade debut album producer Sadler Vaden, plus songs from Americana-beloved Kentuckian S.G. Goodman and the subgenre's 2023 Artist of the Year Billy Strings.

This album may dial back Kiah to reviving something of herself as a bookish 15-year-old discovering Arkansas-based and Memphis-recording Gothic metal act Evanescence. Their 2001 album "Fallen" inspired her as a vocalist and composer.

While "Still & Bright" isn't symphonic metal, the youthful energy apparent in her voice in songs like the album's lead single “Silk and Petals” feels conscious and more present than ever.

Navigating stardom's 'Wary & Strange' road

Kiah's latest album finds her at a place where she's an entire 18-month album cycle and reflection time removed from "Wary & Strange."

On a musical level, this means that she's had the time to do enough interviews, hear enough idle chatter, play enough shows and stand on enough red carpets to ascertain and feel confident in who she is and what she isn't.

Gone is the sonic bombast of the anthemic arena rock-style adaption of "Black Myself" from "Wary & Strange." Gone, too, is the rootsy rawness of her earlier work. Instead, fuzzed-out alt-rock guitars, industrial, post-techno beats and her studied love of banjos and pedal steel guitars are uniquely present.

Because of the timing of her releases, she was swept into the triumvirate of social movements swirling around increased representation in Americana and country music defined by gender, race and marginalization.

Kiah, creatively, is a reflective and nuanced artist who often feels overwhelmed by the pressure of success's potential. Thus, standing on business based around movements and not on her authentic self, Kiah wore expensive bespoke and rhinestone suits, attempting to reclaim many heritages for the better part of three consecutive years.

Financially and mentally, it was too far of a bridge to cross.

"Working with a stylist and wearing custom suits on tour is fun, but you also reach a point where you're in the spotlight, but you're also in debt, miserable and socially uncomfortable," says Kiah, frankly.

'Still & Bright'

Working smarter, not harder reveals an album that includes songs titled "Play God and Destroy the World," "Die Slowly Without Complaint” and "God’s Under the Mountain.”

The trio, as advertised, welcome a chapter of Kiah's career where she occupys the role of a soothsaying truthteller whose art is guided by bittersweet wisdom and knowing all too well that, as Winston Churchill once stated, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." She's also conscious that, as Shakespeare noted in "MacBeth," stories later told that are defined by such doom are "tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Grooves with meaning far beyond her time-tired existence are colored with lyrics portending buried gods whose souls occupy space under mountains that conjure volcanic fires, which cast sentient but looming and murderous shadows.

“I don’t know if there’s an answer / I don’t think I see a sign / If you think the world revolves around you / You’ll just get left behind,” she sings on "Never Alone."

On "Black Myself," Kiah referred to herself as no longer requiring to be society's trudged-upon "workhorse." She was "born brand new" with "work to do."

Now we know what that work is — and how overcoming her self-doubt has allowed her to accept seemingly the almost crushing weight of its doom if left incomplete.

'An awesome, otherworldly atmosphere'

The process of being an artist, releasing an album and touring found Kiah occupying a negative headspace, where interviews caused her to revive past traumas while discussing their accumulated impact on her life at that moment.

The emotional toll of that process found her wanting to aggressively clean the slate of the weight of that dual-pronged triggering on her spirit.

Thus, "Still & Bright" is an album intentionally guided by defiant observations. Finally, in her career's second decade, she is diving into unexplored creative themes not inspired explicitly by themes also governing the world addressing its social upheaval.

Also, attempting upbeat and uplifting compositions is familiar to her collegiate roots in America's foundational music. Thus, there's something profoundly connective in how she explores deeper topics with the heaviest of entertaining vibes.

Kiah's twist from her self-proclaimed "Southern Gothic" roots to a timelessly pop-aimed "alt-rockabilly" vibe on intense songs like the Billy Strings collaboration "I Will Not Go Down" (inspired by understanding the 13th century Crusades as not people serving God, but instead "doing the bidding of warmongers dressed in robes") that blend fuzzy rock guitars, virtuoso bluegrass stylings and heavy metal drums in an oxymoronic, yet truly unequal balance.

"It's a hard-rocking record with acoustic instruments that offers an awesome, otherworldly atmosphere," Kiah says, smiling pridefully.

'More of my heart and less of my head'

Reflecting on where her journey finds her as 2024 draws to a close, Kiah makes a statement highlighting her redefined focus moving forward:

"I'm a writer first and a musician second," she says. "That temperament allows me to remain focused and not overstimulated. Intentionally reversing that and finding a balance has allowed me to engage with others and develop a supportive community around me."

She continues with a point that highlights best where her strange yet bright journey in the music industry now finds her strongly aligned body, mind and soul.

"My value as an artist is greater than how the industry and its members define it. Having the confidence, self-esteem and sense of self to present a clear, honest vision of myself that reflects more of my heart and less of my head. I've reached a point where, because I'm comfortable with myself, I can cut through the noise and make important, interesting music that I'm undoubtedly supposed to be making."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee-based rocker Amythyst Kiah releases 'Still & Bright'