Kaia Chesney

Kaia Chesney makes delicately gorgeous indie pop.
She's got a gentle, feather-light voice, and, at 20 years old, she is just getting started.
Still, she's feeling a little constrained by Tucson's music scene.
Since her first public performance at age 17, Chesney has played at all-ages spots such as The Living Room, Dry River Collective and Solar Culture. And although she enjoys those places, she doesn't feel there are enough venues in town that support the type of music she makes.
"People would much rather watch a girl band onstage when they have silver wigs on and a tap-dancing percussionist than to watch a girl sit there with a guitar," she said.
Chesney, whose tattooed arms are as colorful as her opinions, has been in Tucson since she was 10. Originally from Maryland, she moved here from Kansas in 2000 to be with her mom.
She attended Sabino High School but not "successfully," and spent some time teaching in Africa before returning to Tucson. The Midtown resident now works as a nanny for two children.
Both solo and with her group, Kaia and the Nazarenes, Chesney writes all the music and lyrics. She recently signed to 1912 Records — a local label founded by 20-year-old Rob Easter of Tucson.
"I just love her music," said Easter, who started his label in January. "What sets her apart is she's an individual."
Chesney's soft singing voice is similar to the dreamy, atmospheric vocals of Victoria Legrand of Beach House.
She said she's tried being in bands and creating music in a more collaborative way, but it didn't really work out.
"I'm not flexible when it comes to writing music with other people," she said. "I'm kind of a pain that way."
It's a trait that has its ups and downs: rewarding when she hears the finished product, but there's less motivation for bandmates to play music that's all hers.
Most of her tunes are love songs with exaggerated scenarios to help people relate, she said, often with themes of nature in the lyrics.
Chesney points to two of her favorite artists, Rocky Votolato and Pedro the Lion's David Bazan, for their vivid lyrical illustrations as inspiration.
She said women have a difficult time being considered really great lyricists.
"In Westernized thinking, it's much more impressive for a man to be so emotionally illustrative and vulnerable as opposed to a woman doing it, because it comes as something people would expect in our culture," she said.
"If a woman sings about her heart being broken and wanting to drown in tears, it's not as impressive as if a man sings it."
- Arizona Daily Star

Folk-rock singer-songwriters in Tucson have always been a dime a dozen, God bless 'em. It's encouraging, of course, to know that so many bedroom musicians want to share their talents and innermost thoughts with the rest of us—and sometimes, they rise above the pack, as does this promising 23-year-old with the gorgeous honeyed alto.

Chesney's album also arrives well-equipped with a bunch of songs for which the age-old pop-song structure works to their advantage, rather than simply being the default mode. Although she has been compared to Feist, Laura Veirs and Dolores O'Riordan, Chesney's voice recalls a sweeter Chrissie Hynde. She and engineer J. Fen Ikner, who played many of the instruments, create arrangements that hint at the restrained modern twang and darker underbelly of the Cowboy Junkies.

She and Ikner make the most of her songs, turning "Without You" into a jangly rocker, and weaving vibes into "Thirsty" to give it a retro-cocktail lounge feel. There's a bittersweet melancholy on "Matthew," and the title track is almost a swinging lullaby.

The most beautiful song on the record is "Only One," which boasts a hauntingly gorgeous melody and a dramatic booming sound mix to complement its expansive pastoral mood. It sounds like Joan Baez fronting Fleet Foxes. And the lyrics are moving in their frank plainness: "I have seen what it is to love / and when it's gone, how it hurts."
- Tucson Weekly