MH: OK, so after four years or so with Urchin, you joined Marco Benevento’s trio?
KR: Yeah, joining Marco’s band changed everything. It was a pivotal moment. I was such a fan of Marco’s music, and the gig was a big deal for me. It happened because Dave Dreiwitz couldn’t continue touring with Marco when Ween came back in 2016. Dave insisted to Marco that I should be the one to fill in for him, and the rest is history!
Playing with Marco is the most positive environment that exists, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve toured with him for nine years now, and there’s nobody who makes it as fun or as incredible as he does. I really stand by that. Marco is an incredible human, and it’s an incredible gig because he very much wants me to be myself on the instrument. From the start, he has always emboldened me to be myself on stage. I don’t have to pretend to be coy or anything I’m not. I want to take what I’ve learned from Marco’s tour, ethos, and vibe, and bring it to my band, which will disseminate to the audience. Marco’s vibe transcends time and space in the joy department, just making people feel good and happy to be there.
Without guys like Dave and Marco, I would probably be working in the music business rather than being creative with my music. At age 22, it just fell into my lap, and they put me in the driver’s seat. I worked tirelessly to learn all the music and not let Dave down. Relationships and people believing in you are huge.
MH: You mentioned learning from Marco how to create a vibe; like his shows, yours are so joyful. How do you cultivate that sense of joy and connection with the audience?
KR: I feel like I communicate with my fans a lot online and at the merch table after every single show. I do not skip that; I hold that super dear. People feel like they know me even when they don’t. At this level, it’s beyond cool. Having this sort of open relationship with the community is awesome. People say, “Hey, you’re going to play this tonight?” and I say, “Oh, is that what you want to hear? Awesome!” and try to figure it out. It’s really a nice thing. That jam and jam-adjacent community has this relationship with its favorite bands that is both entitled and also fucking awesome. I feel very emboldened by the fan base, which is super special. They make me feel like I can do anything on that level, and they’re here for it.
MH: OK, so you’re playing with Marco and studying at NYU in parallel. When did you start your own trio, and how did it develop?
KR: I knew Adam [November – guitar] and Chris [Corsico – drums] from NYU, and we started jamming and then played out with completely improvised music. And I love that that’s where we started. For years, we didn’t play a single song, and all we did was improvise together. I think it gives us this unique communication background with each other. We listen to each other. We’re all very chaotic, but we’re all very good listeners at the same time. That foundation makes it easier to communicate, especially in the writing process or figuring out how things convey themselves live. We talk to each other through the notes and the beats.
Our first real gig was for the Freaks Action Network benefit in December 2017. It was all improv, and people seemed to really like it. Even in 2018, with not a song to our names, we co-headlined Brooklyn Bowl with Fruition and played sold-out Phish and JRAD after-parties. It was insane.
MH: How did you gain such traction playing festivals and selling out shows before having much recorded music out? How did you navigate building a reputation primarily as a live act first?
KR: It’s crazy. Literally, we got booked to open for Khruangbin at the Capitol Theatre before I had a single song out in 2019. I just feel like I had a reputation of being a live instrumentalist that people wanted to see from playing with Marco. The name brand recognition was already there before I had recorded music, which is crazy: it worked in reverse. We played moe.down, our first festival, in 2019. We played Hulaween that year, opened for Guster, headlined Brooklyn Bowl in the fall of 2019…I was booking everything myself – no manager, no agent. These were just my friends I jammed with. It was just pushing forward and seeing what happened.
Then as the pandemic lockdown started to ease, we wound up booking private gigs, between our reputation as a live band and my engaging so much with my fans online. It felt like my band was at the perfect level, and me being approachable, people were reaching out saying, “Hey, how much would it take for you guys to come set up on my back porch and play?” We probably played close to 20 private gigs the summer of 2020 in the Northeast, just fans reaching out. It was sort of the right moment for that. It was sick and kept us playing. It strengthened our bond as a trio, just being able to play in those intimate settings, and it definitely deepened the connection with those fans who hosted us or attended. And our set at Peachfest 2021 was a major inflection point.
MH: What was it like to transition into writing songs?
KR: I love it: it’s so important to me. “Plants” was my first single, and it’s an instrumental vibe. Then came “Elevator,” my first song with lyrics, where I leaned into an indie pop direction. It’s sort of an intoxicating feeling to have songs, and people sing them back to you. I had released six or so tunes when I reconnected with Trey Anastasio, who’d been keeping track of my work cheering me on from the sidelines. Long story short, he wound up co-producing and playing on my first LP, Joyride, which was absolutely surreal.
MH: And what’s it been like to balance songwriting, playing songs, and straight up improvisation?
KR: I’m obsessed with songs, but I’m also obsessed with improvisation. My ears are almost too wide. There’s a nice split now: you come to the Karina show, you’re going to see songs, and a lot of stretching out. Those moments where there’s no roadmap, where the safety net is chopped from under you and you have to sink or swim, are super important to me. We create something larger than the sum of our parts in those moments, and then you go back to hopefully a massive hook that everybody sings along to. It’s incredible to have both.
MH: What’s it like getting tunes together for album 2?
KR: Now we have something to compare it to – Joyride – and it’s an incredible thing. I already know I’m wildly proud of album two, and it’s not even done yet! I’m deep in the sauce right now, working so hard to get the strongest 9-10 tunes together. I have maybe five to six definites at this point. Some are more shoegazy and almost heavy, some are super anthemic poppy tunes, and there’s an undercurrent of psychedelia throughout. I want to make a product that seems like one work of art, and the tea leaves are revealing themselves.
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