Hampton Street Stage – 2:15
“We’re like a metal band if it was 1927,” says singer, songwriter, guitarist and washboard player Megan Jean about Megan Jean And The KFB, a duo project with her husband, banjo player and bassist Byrne Klay.
Their latest CD, The Devil Herself, is a moody, infectious record about power struggles and the victories of “glorious weirdos” over the expectations of society. Megan Jean says the album “represents naming oneself to take the power away from something. If you’ve been told you’re no good your whole life and you just say, ‘You’re right, I’m no good,’ then all of a sudden it doesn’t have any power over you anymore.”
They tackle tough issues, from suicide in the LGBT youth community (“Skeletons”) to mental illness (“Martians”). “We’re trying to make people feel something,” says Megan Jean. “We write songs that have meaning.” They make listeners dance, too. Megan Jean says “people can expect to see something they haven’t seen before and to hear something they haven’t heard before. And they can expect us to give it our all.”
The band is working on new material constantly. The Devil Herself came out early in 2013 and they’re already looking ahead to their next album, which they hope to release in the fall of 2014.
“It’ll be 10 new songs,” said Megan Jean. “We’re writing them on the road. We don’t believe that a song is done until you’ve played it about 200 times. We’re in the process of writing it now, and when we release it it’ll sound totally different than what it sounds like now.”
Byrne said people often comment on how he and Megan Jean are following their dream. “There’s no dream at this point,” he said. “We’re just following our reality. We’re in it, we made a commitment to each other to do this. For whatever reason, the two of us just have this need to make this music, to send out a message of our view on the world, for what it’s worth. We’re fortunate that people respond to it.”