On July 3, a real jazz-funk party will take place in Riga Cathedral Garden, as the New York jazz club sensation – the band Kennedy Administration will perform at the Rīgas Ritmi Festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The band brings together four outstanding instrumentalists together with the owner of a convincing voice – Ms Kennedy.
We contacted Ms Kennedy in New York before her and her colleagues’ first visit to Latvia.
How has this year started for the Kennedy Administration? Some concerts or studio recordings?
A combination. We had shows in New York, top of the year. And then, from there, we went out to California, to Anaheim for NAMM and performed at the Nord booth. Nord just put out a new organ, the Organ 3, and our keyboard player Ondre J was a part of it’s development. So we performed out at NAMM. That was really great. And we've been carving out time to work on the third album. We're still working on that. It’s always so fine tuning some songs and figuring out some arrangements. Then we went to Jakarta, Indonesia. We did a show out there, performed in Souldout Records Experience event, and that was extraordinary. The musicians, they were excellent. And Jakarta, East Asia is such a beautiful place in the world! It was just nice to breathe in different air.
Those were local musicians from Indonesia?
Yeah. They were fire! The level of improvisation and the style in which they played were great. We've been able to travel the world, join in on jam sessions and whatnot. These guys are comparable to what we experience in New York. So we were like – holy smokes! So, it was a really good time. We came back from Jakarta, and we've just been working on this third album. I feel there's a lot of pressure. Just trying to make sure that we write something that is relatable to our audience.
Do you know the name of the album already?
We're still working on it. I don't know if I can give that out just yet.
It will not be Third Term, right?
No, no, no! We were thinking of other names. Like, The Campaign, but with the political spectacle of America right now, we won't be saying anything in relation to politics.
Understandable, but I love your ideas about the names. We will get to that. You mentioned keyboard player Ondre J. He's known as a member of jazz singer Gregory Porter's band as well. And has also played with hip hop legends, Wu-Tang Clan. Sounds like a broad profile specialist!
He's a phenomenal producer, writer, arranger. And so Ondre working with hip hop band or someone like Gregory Porter and then with someone like myself, it's just, I don't wanna say – natural, but it really is for him. It's not difficult for him to just step into a position and when it comes to the music, find those places within the music that connect people.
Well, your cycle has also been quite wide. To mention the performances with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lyne Carrington, Christian McBride… What is your most vivid memory from your stage life?
I've had so many amazing experiences on stage. I really got to perform with Terri Lyne Carrington. We were part of an all women's all-star band that performed in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. We did a tribute to Marvin Gaye. That was phenomenal performing with Felicia Collins, Bette Sussman. Just really top notch women musicians, which is rare that I get a chance to do that. With Dee Dee Bridgewater, I got to work with her coming out of the pandemic. It was at the Detroit Jazz Fest with the Dee Dee Bridgewater’s women's big band, and that was amazing as well. And just so much fun because there are women of all ages, and we just got to hang out and just really enjoy each other's company. And then with Christian McBride, I got to perform with him at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and it was a tribute to hip hop. So it was most black thoughts, Nikki Giovanni, which I got to meet before she transitioned, The Last Poets. It was a lot of history in the room. It was a lot of great people I got to meet. You just honestly wanna be around them. You wanna hang out with Dee Dee Bridgewater before and after the gig. Same with Terri Lyne Carrington and, of course, the Chris McBride. He is SUCH a professional. They make everything so easy for you as a vocalist or a performer.
There's this great woman power jazz band Artemis. So I believe it would be cool if they would have a singer like you. Would be a cool band!
Listen. If you know how to connect that, hook me up! I'll rock with them!
What is your main focus – fusion depths, a jazz-funk party?
We just wanna be the soundtrack to your life. To connect those moments within the scope of life and just make them feel good, make them sound good. When we start talking about genres and what's this and what's that, I think we miss out a lot of times on the power of the music. I grew up listening to all kinds of music and same for everybody in the band. There are just things, elements of music that just feel good regardless if you like funk or if you like rock. And I'm inspired by a lot of things. I grew up in the Midwest. In a very churchy household. I grew up Pentecostal, so I heard everything from The Clark Sisters to black spirituals. So there's a certain grit or a certain sound that comes within the gospel experience. And then I also heard a lot of alternative rock because I was in the Midwest, and heard the different rock bands there. I'm inspired by that too. So, we're leaning more towards soul and funk, and r’n’b, but we like the rock stuff too. We like the ballads as well. Things that just moves you.
You are a union of five really powerful musicians with a desire to constantly look beyond the boundaries. How did you got together?
Me and Ondre, we just met on a gig basically. In New York you end up working with a lot of people that you don't know. They're just on the gig with you. I think we met outside of a venue, but there was nothing really said. Then the opportunity came to perform at the Groove and he was the only keyboard player available on Wednesdays. And that's how he got the gig. And from there it was very organic in the sense of the energy between us. That built through the course of life and we were just performing with each other every Wednesday for years. We kind of were able to early on connect on a synergy that we had between us musically. And I could say the whole band was like that. But everybody really comes from very different background. We're all pretty broad as far as what we enjoy and what we listen to.
How did you came up with such a stylish name?
My last name is Kennedy, but I just go by Kennedy. Father was born in August of 1962, and that's when John F Kennedy was in office. And my grandmother like a lot of people and a lot of black people, was just obsessed with the Kennedies. She was speaking to her sister, and she was like, what am I gonna name this child if it's a boy? And her sister was like, well, you love the Kennedies so much. Why don't you name him John Fitzgerald? And that's what my grandmother did. The hospital reached out to president Kennedy and told him a black woman in Michigan had named her son after him. And president Kennedy wrote my grandmother congratulating her, and he sent my dad a flag, a silver spoon, and the invitation to Martha's Vineyard for the Farmers Union event but my grandmother never took him up on it, unfortunately. Me and my family have all been always been just called the Kennedies. And so when I think about the legacy of the Kennedies and the Kennedy administration, it's just very powerful, and it reminds people of a time when in America people were dreaming. They felt with the Kennedy administration and also with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration that those dreams were becoming a reality. I felt that maybe I can carry that legacy a little bit. It was just kind of a natural thing. Kinda I was like Kennedy administration, and it just locked.
Such a cool story! Your debut album, which was also called Kennedy Administration, was released in 2017. What were your expectations for the future then and what were they later?
Well, that's a good question. First of all, I was just happy. I was writing music and recording music. Oftentimes as a musician you have all these great expectations and then reality hits, and you're like, oh, okay. So the fact that we were writing and recording was beyond what I had even gotten a chance to dream. And then to tour with that album and hear the response and see people singing the words was just mind-blowing. Second album, I can't really say that it came in with expectations. My thing is I'm always just trying to figure out what am I gonna write about? How is this relatable? How are people gonna feel after they've listened to this album? Though it's my voice and me helping with the production and writing and all these things, I try to mute myself and just come in with the human connection, the human experience. So, I guess expectations are – you hope people will like it! But you really don't know. And with the second one we were a little more contemporary, as far as a sound. The first album was heavier on the funk and r’n’b side. But we didn't have any expectations because I had nothing else to compare it to.
You released your second album with the equally stylish title Second Term in 2022. There's this saying that second album is always the hardest one for the band, for the artist. Was it like that with your band as well?
It was hard because we started the recording of the album right at the top of January of 2020. So it was right in the middle of the pandemic, and it was just shattering for multiple reasons. My health took a hit. Ondre was back in The Czech Republic. I didn't even know if our band was gonna survive the pandemic, if I'm being honest. Didn't know if we're gonna have an audience when we’ll come back. In the middle of writing Second Term, my father was sick and he end up passing, so he didn't get a chance to hear the album. And my father was the first musician I played with. He was a bass player. So, yeah, a lot of things had changed. We had the residency at the Groove for six years prior to COVID. There were moments on stage at the Groove that we would turn into songs. That was over. We were writing in a way that we hadn't before. I never thought I would write something like that. For example, a song Runway, Gate, Taxi is about the experience of being a musician. The reason why I love you, the way that I do, is because I have this passion that allows me to be this person, and I can't be here, but know that I love you and my life at this moment keeps me away from you, but it won't keep me away from you... Those kinds of experiences. I haven't necessarily experienced that, but being able to write about that based on the fact that I did get to go on tour. I can relate to someone who's maybe experienced real life on the road, going to many airports, traveling on tour, seeing those interactions, those exchanges between different people. I had a little more life experience on Second Term, and probably a little more freedom in my writing ability based on the fact that I got to step away from the music during COVID. I had a deeper or, I guess, a more progressive way to sit down with myself and realize, what it is I want, how do I wanna move if life will ever come back from COVID. A lot of reflection happened.
The albums are cool, but I heard that your greatest strength is your concerts. You will start your European tour with a performance at the Rīgas Ritmi Festival.
We've been to Europe a few times. We already have a great rapport with our European audience, and I really enjoy the culture. Maybe I enjoy the food too much and the beers. I love the live experience. I just live for it. It's something about the adrenaline of hitting the stage, the response in people's faces, and being able to tap into that energy with the band and just being able to go full throttle. I love it.
Michael League from the band Snarky Puppy said about your band once: “It brings me back to my years living in New York, watching the band set fire to stages in the West Village and going home inspired.” What is he referring to exactly?
I think he got to see us at the Groove. And that was literally, like, 9 to 12:30. You might have a break in between maybe for twenty minutes, but you're going all night long. And Mike got to come by and check us out. Him and Cory Henry were hanging out together.
You mentioned the club The Groove a few times already. Maybe you can tell a little bit more about this improtant place for your band.
When you first got to New York a few years ago, before renovation and stuff it was kind of a hole in a wall. There were tons of different brands. There was a different band every night. You'd go through, you'd peek through, check out when you’d get the opportunity to perform, because there were slots taken. And then slot was available at Wednesday nights, and I really wanted to do that. I just WANTED it. And, thankfully, it happened. It was one of those places where the legends performed before. I've heard of Prince jumping up on stage or Chaka Khan. We performed with Roy Hargrove there. He had a residency at the Blue Note and it’s on the other end of the block, so suddenly we saw this kinda disheveled man coming with a jacket covered up, and he made his way to the stage, pulled out his flugelhorn and just played with us. So Groove was one of those places where you just never know what's gonna happen. And for us it was a place where to really hone in on our sound. It forced us because, if you didn’t keep the fire going, people were gonna leave. If you wanted to stay in a full room you were gotta make them dance. So that's what we did. That was the best school in life.
Are there still such clubs and jam sessions, especially for jazz and funk, in New York or the scene is changing?
It's changed a lot since COVID. A lot of places that you would go to or just support, they're no longer there. I believe the stronghold that New York had within the music world is lost a bit just because a lot of people left during COVID. The venues have changed, or now they have a DJ booth. So I think the appreciation for live music has dwindled significantly in the city. So, I'm just grateful that we got to get it. But I think it will never die because people will always love the live music. You just need that experience.
For sure. What can we expect from this experience in Riga?
It's gonna be a great show! I’m really excited about it, because it's gonna be our first time in Latvia. It's gonna be a combination of Kennedy Administration, the first album, and Second Term. And then I believe by then we'll have had the chance to probably head to the studio and record some new stuff as well. So we'll have some new material that we'll try out and see if the audience likes it. We're a bit more confident, obviously, with our writing ability and our musical choices now. But we're not straying too far away from the core or the musical identity of Kennedy Administration. It's gonna be a good time. And I don't know what the tour schedule is yet, but I'm hoping we’ll get some time to hang out as well. I've heard the great things about the region, and I love being able to travel and kinda experience these places that we're performing in, and not just the in and out.
Music journalist Kaspars Zaviļeiskis
