Interview: Kyle Motsinger: “Love On Each Other”

Music
Eileen Shapiro
Aug 20, 2019
0
11 minutes read

Singer/songwriter, musician and producer Kyle Motsinger is an aspiring, compelling and rising star amongst New York’s Nightlife and the music industry. His songs fit the genre “theatrical pop/ rock music”, making them unique and captivating.

His debut album was released in the summer of 2017 and entitled “Far Away.” He gained a cult following with his single, “Dark Shadows”, a song based upon the goth soap opera with the same name, very popular in the 1960’s.

His brand new, anthemic single, “Love On Each Other” will be on his next album set to release this winter. It is a song with an important and relevant message in our disparaging world climate. In his own words, “In dark times we need to “Love on Each Other” in order to get through. The concept of my new single isn’t new. It’s been echoed in many songs including a very famous one I happen to reference in mine. So why do we have to keep saying it? Why did I write yet another song about spreading love? Well, unfortunately there seems to be a lack of that in the world right now. Fear drives people to lash out at those who are different. Crowds are chanting against immigrants and transgender people are being murdered on the streets. Every day I alarmed at the injustices that are being committed. There is an in balance of hate over love.”

I spoke to Kyle regarding his newest single and his musical career thus far, his newest efforts, and his hopes and dreams….

I understand that you will be performing at “Giant Fest”, created by Will Sheridan, on August 30/31 at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn?

I am. I love Will, I have worked with him several times.

How often do you sing live?

As much as I can. I’m always open for the opportunity and if I see something happening I will jump on it.

You came to New York hoping to……?

I wanted to do musical theater and I also knew that I would be doing more singer-songwriter stuff here. But at that time I hadn’t really written much. I sort of toyed with a few things. I played the piano, but I wasn’t really writing at the time.

What inspired you to start writing?

It had to do with a couple things. First of all, I think a huge inspiration for me was Tori Amos. My ex introduced me to Tori’s music, as I had never really heard it before. It was so interesting and dark. She was always trying to journey inward and figure stuff out about herself and others around her. It was at a time in my life where I was ready to start being introspective about myself. Then actually just last week I went to a summer program in New Hampshire that my ex also got me involved in seven summers ago. That was a huge deal for me because the flood gates kind of opened up that summer. I was helping teens who were struggling with anxiety and parents that were alcoholics and it made me confront some of my own issues with anxiety, and things I hadn’t dealt with in my past. I started really thinking about myself and being introspective. Like I said, the flood gates were open and I started writing, writing, and writing. Before this I had trouble finishing a song, it was really a struggle. Then I wrote an entire album worth of songs within a year. Then in 2016 I did a show at The Duplex featuring my original music. I was on stage doing this show and even as it was happening and afterwards I thought, ” My Gosh, this is what I am supposed to be doing.” I just felt like a rock star on stage. It was me and the piano and I had a drummer and a guitar player and I did a full hour of all the new songs I had written. I never felt quite like that before.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

I hope to be able to support myself with my music. I want it to be my full-time career and I don’t want to be working survival jobs to pay the bills. Along with that I just want the music to reach the people that need to hear it. I think I write songs that mean something, and I talk about difficult subjects sometimes. I just want them to get to the people that need to hear them.

Your new single is a great subject.

It’s an important one. It’s a dark time right now. I think people need to be reminded that we should be loving each other and not constantly being afraid of people who are different. We keep having to write songs about this, but until people start actually doing it, I guess we have to keep writing songs about “Loving On Each Other.”

If you could have me ask you any question in the world what would that be?

I guess I want you to ask me about the sound of the music that I do and the very differences between the songs. I would love to talk about that.

Ok perfect, go right ahead.

I come from the theater world where you write songs based on what’s happening in the song. So the sound of this song is dictated by the emotion and the story of it. When I started writing my own music, I still kept doing that because that’s the music I know. I think it all gets filtered into a pop rock blend. For instance, I wrote a song called “Its Classic” on my first album. Because of the title I thought it would be fun to put a harpsichord in it and lots of strings and make it sound kind of classical along with the pop rock. My gay pride anthem is called, “I’m”, and it had a very Scissor Sisters and a little George Michael kind of feel to it, because I felt like that’s where it lived. I also wrote a song called, “Nothing Stays the Same” which was a quiet kind of folk song with just piano and some acoustic guitar. I write what I call theatrical pop rock. I’m not the only person that has said that about their music before, but I think for me it’s about the theatricality of making each song sonically sound like what it’s about. The first song on the album needed to be a big disco, 80s pop single, where as the next song that I’ll be coming out with in November is much more of rock ballad. Just depends on what the song is about to me. Then, this is a little bit of a spoiler, but I think the album is going to be called, “Anyway I Want It To”, and there is a song about that. In this song, my mission statement where I talk about how I can sound anyway I want to sound and it could be anything I want it to be, which is maybe a little defiant of me. But I like that, I guess that’s kind of rock to be defiant.

Listen to “Love On Each Other” on Spotify here: