Meet Kyle Krone

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Krone.

Kyle, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born December 30th, 1983, in Southern California and grew up in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente CA. San Juan is known for The Mission, a former Spanish mission in colonial Las Californias opened in 1776. San Juan Capistrano has the distinction of being home to the oldest building in California still in use, a chapel built in 1782. I moved to San Clemente when I was 6 or 7 years old. San Clemente is a famous surf town, and I like most kids took up surfing from that young age. Surfing was still a counter-culture at that time so along with surfing came exposure to underground music, a love, and appreciation for nature, creative expression, personal style, a DIY centric approach, and some anti-establishment sentiment. All these elements of my youth, coupled with skateboarding, made an impact on me and my perspectives in life. Music resonated with me from a young age, and I started to buy my own albums around that time. I was very interested in Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix to begin with and the culture I grew up in turned me on to countless bands and artists that were sort of left field from the mainstream. The Pixies, The Smiths, The Cure, The Clash, Velvet Underground, etc. Eventually, at 13, I took up the guitar, started a band with my two best friends and haven’t put it down since. Having found my main form of creative expression at a fairly young age has impacted my life in a multitude of meaningful ways. I wasn’t terribly interested in school though I always loved my art, photography, and English classes. I remember begging my parents to allow me to enroll in the independent study program so I could spend my time in what I felt was a more useful way. In my Junior year of High School, my parents indulged my desire for freedom and independence, and my grades improved to straight A’s, and I graduated early.

As a kid and a teenager, I sort of grew up in three different households, spending a great deal of time with the families of my two best friends as well as my own. This provided further exposure to different attitudes, beliefs, and approaches to life. My own home was a very loving working-class independent-minded household with a focus on carving your own path and thinking for yourself. The family of my dearest and oldest friend were big city JFK liberals with a focus on Social Justice, The Arts, Sports, and Education. The family of our mutual best friend was that of a successful immigrant Father from Venezuela who escaped the oppression of their Government to live out a better life in the “land of opportunity” and a hard-working but fun-loving, carefree approach to life. I feel now that the exposure to all the different ideas, beliefs, and attitudes helped shaped who I am. For all their differences, I loved them all and still do and really enjoyed all of these people and their friends and learned a great deal from each of them. You can draw a line from each person in my life to myself using any example and deconstruction the influences. At one house you’d hear Soul music from artists like Al Green and Curtis Mayfield at the other you’d hear Latin music in various forms, and at my own home, there was always a Neil Young record on or some other Classic Rock N’ Roll legend. We’d spend all day at the beach and walking and skateboarding around town left mostly free to our own devices. Surfing, skating, and playing music dominated most of my teens. I owe a great deal of appreciation to my parents, who made many selfless sacrifices and worked very hard to give us a childhood by the beach in a great community. It would have been a lot easier on them financially to rent a significantly cheaper home somewhere inland, but they knew the value of growing up in a positive environment and made it a priority. I’ve always thought that was cool, my parents weren’t surfers, but they bought me aboard when I was seven years old and took me to the beach and rooted me on as I taught myself to surf, they weren’t musicians though they encouraged me and bought my first couple guitars. They have always been supportive of everything I was interested in, and that helped cultivate in me a sense of gratitude and appreciation for my life. It, of course, wasn’t all sunshine and carefree times, there were many financial struggles and sacrifices to make ends meet. I can remember cleaning office buildings with my parents at a young age when they owned and operated their own Janitorial company. I can remember being evicted from a couple of houses.

We moved a fair amount, but my folks always managed to get some sandy charming old house close to the beach. If you drive down the streets I grew up on those houses are still there, and they are surrounded by much bigger newer expensive homes. By today’s standards, I started working from a young age and made my own money and enjoyed the freedom that came along with it. I did a lot of yard work, some construction, and worked at a coffee shop as a teen. From 13 on we took our band and music very seriously and after High School started playing a lot more in LA and eventually our new band sort of caught a fire and a real career in music took root when we signed to Sire Records when I was 21. The years that followed were transformational, highly educational, and enduringly fun. We made records in amazing studios, toured fairly extensively domestically and internationally and enjoyed a respectable amount of success for a young rock band. At the risk of sounding vaguely self-aggrandizing, I felt that songwriting always came sort of naturally to me, I always have had something to say and a point of view of sorts and a creative vision for how I wanted things to sound, look and feel. I think this has served me well of the years and I have worked very hard at my craft and still do, perhaps now more than ever. For seven years, life was a veritable feast of highlights, milestones, and challenges. I had signed a Publishing deal as a songwriter, and once the band had eventually dissolved in 2010, I continued on in music writing, producing and working on my own music and the music of other artists. I’ve really just stuck with it, it has not been without it’s highs and lows, it’s quite a commitment that replete with sacrifices to try to make a living off your art but for me, it’s never really seemed like much of an option. I don’t care to have a boss or work for a company, so I have fought to keep myself independent, and it doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by loving, encouraging supportive friends and family. It’s a dream you’re always in pursuit of, and if you’re genuine and honest with yourself, I feel you increase the likelihood of “lucky” breaks and good fortunes.

Most of my immediate friends are creative, independent types who live similar lifestyles so for me it feels normal though I know it’s generally uncommon. The years that followed my time with the band saw me helping raise my three young nephews while my sister pursued a Law Degree, and I continued to make music. In 2014 I began traveling to Costa Rica on a regular basis and fell in love with a small beach town down there and have lived there on again and off again for varying amounts of time doing stints in the Tropics dividing my time between California and Costa Rica. I’ve always been attracted to living and spending time in different countries. I enjoy the way of life there, it’s more natural, simpler, less distractions. You can hear the truth a lot clearer when you turn down all the external noise that our worlds so often produce. Nature speaks to you if you listen and get amongst it. The dual lifestyle has been very valuable to me, feels like an advantage to have this refuge and gain all this energy and inspiration and come back to California, and these periods prolonged creative output. It would be fair to say there’s a Peter Pan element to my life where I’ve never really grown up. I think the exuberance of youth has just never left me, and I’ve certainly grown just not grown old or complacent. I only grow more fond of what I do as I continue to develop a deeper appreciation and love for music and living life on my own terms.

Has it been a smooth road?
I feel like the struggles and challenges in life are always present in one form or another no matter what you do and generally thats a good thing as far as I am concerned as it implores one to grow and develop and perhaps apprehend newer more evolved meaningful ways of seeing things. Perspective and attitude toward these perceived challenges is the real deciding factor on how these things affect you, either positively or negatively or neutrally. Things happen, and then we give them meaning. My personal challenges have mostly had to do with the sacrifices you make for your art; you learn more and more that you have to completely give yourself over to it to get in return what you really desire out of it. Trying to maintain some semblance of balance while meeting the demands of an unbalanced world can be a tricky proposition. I’ve slept on a lot of couches, had an overdrawn bank account more times than I’d like to remember and sacrificed peace and personal space countless time in devotion to my music. There is a quote about musicians from LA Times writer David Ackert that sums up the struggle pretty accurately, and any artist or creative type can relate to the sentiments in that quote.

“Musicians are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every note, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life – the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because musicians are willing to give their entire lives to a moment – to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Musicians are beings who had tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.”

Tell us more about the business.
I write songs for my own albums and other artists and various Film & TV Projects; I produce my own music and the music of other artists, I play a variety of instruments (mainly the guitar) proficiently enough to achieve my creative visions. I have my own small recording studio that I work out of. I also help other artists with a variety of creative things related to music, like artwork, photography, videos, etc. I also very much enjoy helping people. I sort of have this personal motto thats really simple and thats to “just be awesome for everyone in your life and around you” just serve to be a positive, helpful, encouraging individual to others. I think the greatest gift you can give people is the freedom to be themselves wherever they’re at and to perhaps help give them a voice of their own and empower them; I enjoy that very much.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Change is almost certain. I haven’t given this subject a great deal of thought as I spend most of my time and creative energy involved in making music, though my good friend John Storhm (my former lawyer) has many insightful views on the matter and I regularly keep up with reading and listening to his take on the direction of the industry. It is obviously my hope that we continue to move in positive directions that benefit the artists and the arts, and the path to making a living as an artist becomes more and more achievable. I am an eternal optimist; I feel like you must be, even in the face of impossible odds you must be; otherwise, the darkness and bad vibes become overwhelming and simply begets bad results, and I am not interested in that. I am going to do what I do in almost any circumstance and try to contribute the best creative output I can, and I believe there is much reason to be optimistic and enthusiastic about the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kylekrone.info
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylekrone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kronekyle/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KyleKrone
• Other: https://www.sabcomusic.com/

Image Credit:
Photographer: Brit Cherry (Art Without Meaning)
Photographer: Maddox Abouzaki

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