Kendal Conrad loves a lot of things, but maybe nothing quite so much at this moment as the Keith Urban black electric guitar she carries into our interview. It’s the first thing I notice about her, other than her blinged-out boots, infectious smile and bouncing brunette curls. Maybe it’s because I got to witness Conrad confidently tearing up the stage with Urban last summer at Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA that I’m not surprised the guitar came with her today; Urban gifted it, personalized it, and complimented her on the performance, which is just one of many accolades she’s received for the hard work she’s put in to get herself noticed. Whether it be through performing country music at a gig or on TV, songwriting, theatre, modeling, or an in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time cameo walking by Bradley Cooper in a movie scene, Conrad has kept herself busy enough that many people in the area of Pottstown, PA should know her name by now.
To be known only locally, however, isn’t at the top of Conrad’s list of goals. Like most of us, Conrad is a dreamer. The self-described “romantic at heart” 23-year-old has performed at the White House three times (2009-2011) and has sung the National Anthem in front of Bruce Springsteen, but what gets her bright-eyed now is talking about recording her debut four-song EP last summer in the studio of her country idol, Reba McEntire. The EP is currently being pitched to Nashville labels with the goal of getting Conrad signed to one, so that a whole new audience outside of Pennsylvania will be introduced to her.
“I sent a bunch of my acoustic demos to Robert De La Garza, who is Reba’s former VP of StarStruck Studios and Broadcast. He’s kind of like my partner in all this. My mom actually found him and said I should contact him and see if he wants to work with me, and so I did,” explains Conrad. “We wanted the EP to be strong, and so I sent him all of the songs I had written, and he picked which ones he liked and then we narrowed it down to what we both liked.”
At the moment, female artists getting signed to record labels in Music City may seem like a tall order. In spending time with Conrad, however, you get the sense there is a deep understanding of the industry and a mighty, music-loving brain beneath her animated exterior. Case in point? We talk about the struggle for females to get played on radio for the past several years, from Reba to Martina to Trisha, until our conversation trails to Maddie & Tae’s recent number one record, “Girl In A Country Song.”
“A part of me believes that if a woman puts out a really great song, and is a really great act, then the song has got to do well,” says Conrad. “When I first heard that song, I said to myself that it was a hit song. That if that song doesn’t go number one, then who else has a chance?"
Indeed, there is a personal side to the creativity that Conrad injects into both her songwriting and her performances, and so it’s perfectly understandable that she’d want listeners to appreciate what her lyrics are telling them. Her EP was supposed to contain just three songs, but thanks to a brainstorming session with De La Garza, it ended up being four and including a cut that Conrad describes as her favorite on the album and also the most personal of what she’s written. Following in the footsteps of Taylor Swift, who is just one of her many inspirations, Conrad has leaned heavily on personal stories and intutition to craft her music while still being sensitive to the tastes of her potential listening audience.
“When I sit down to write, I always have a hook first. I know other people say the process is different every time, but I always have a hook and then I work around it. I try to write a song that I would want to listen to as a country music fan,” explains Conrad. “My songs also come from a place of ‘I need to talk about this. I can’t talk about this with anyone else.’ If I’m being honest, if I need to talk about something and I can’t do it with someone, I’m going to sit down and write a song about it. A lot of my songs are things I didn’t say to someone, or fantasy songs about situations that I wish had happened, but they never took place. A good song has to relate to other people but it can’t be these vague lyrics that everyone has said a million times.”
You can sense in this conversation that performing is not so much of a profession for Conrad as it is a calling. As her mother, Sharen – who is along for the interview – points out, this may be how Conrad makes a living, but it’s also a learning curve for her. For every ‘yes’ she has received, there are a long list of ‘nos’ and people telling her ‘thanks, but no thanks’. As Conrad wisely points out, however, many of her biggest opportunities have come from other missed opportunities. It’s why she continues to work hard at pushing herself, seeking out gigs, and networking. She supplements her performance opportunities with theatre roles (she’ll soon be playing Holly Golightly in the country’s only stage production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s this year) makes the rounds at local indie and talk radio stations (promoting her first EP release, “Country Queen”), and also wisely spends time interacting with her social media followers – a count that grew exponentially after her concert performance with Urban.
It’s about 3:00 in the afternoon, and the winery where we’ve held the interview is playing Conrad’s EP over its sound system as she leans down and unzips the case that her Urban guitar has been carefully stored in. She proudly holds it across her lap as we talk about just who Kendal Conrad is. If she had 60 seconds to tell a virtual stranger or a new fan about her, what would she say? She points out that country music female artists tend to have one of three identities – badass country girl, girl next door, or glamor girl – and we discuss how Brandy Clark’s standout performance at this year’s Grammys showcased that there may be more room in the genre for women who refuse to conform to just one identity.
“It’s hard to answer without sounding cliché,” Conrad muses. “I would say I’m an idealistic realist. I would say that I’m an optimist, but I’m not. On the surface, I’m my Twitter bio, which says ‘Bluestocking’ (an intellectual woman). My friends all say I’m the girl next door, but at the end of the day, it’s not about the image or the style. It’s about the music.”
