Oregon Music News

It’s a rare moment when you hear something that literally stuns you — the kind of thing that stops you in your tracks and makes time momentarily come to a halt.

Listen to Gone In Love

If you met Kelli Schaefer on the street or in your neighborhood coffee house, you’d likely have no premonition that this quiet 24 year old was capable of delivering that experience.  But put a guitar in her hand and get her up on stage — or in the studio — and magic happens. Heads turn.  Mouths drop.  You get the undeniable feeling that you’re witnessing something special — something that you’ll later boast to your friends about witnessing before everyone else caught on.

Schaefer is possessed of a remarkable voice, a combination of soft velvet, steely resolve and wizened resignation. It’s an incredibly versatile instrument, capable of conveying an emotional depth that goes far beyond the artist’s tender years.

It’s not surprising that jazz, soul and gospel music figured strongly in her background.

“I sang in jazz choirs in high school,” she explains. “I became a little obsessed, with the help of my high school choir teacher, Darcy Schmit, with old soul and gospel music — Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams. These women didn’t hold anything back. This was the first music I heard like that. I didn’t know you could bare your soul in such an unhindered way. A friend of mine, Todd Fadel, calls it ‘stepping through the door.’ Once you’ve stepped through and given yourself wholly to an audience, anything less feels like nothing at all.

“My mother sings and also writes, so we had a piano in the house growing up that I would dink around on from time to time,” she laughs. “My mother has a beautiful voice and encouraged me to sing in the church choirs and whatnot. So I guess you could say that my first experience with music was singing hymns at church and then coming home and trying to learn them on piano. I started playing guitar a little later, like 15 or so. My mom had this old classical Yamaha guitar that she played when she was in her twenties, singing at weddings. So I inherited that guitar.”

That guitar can be heard on “City Morgue,” one of the songs on Schaefer’s debut single for local label Amigo/Amiga. Fittingly, the tune has a something-old-something-new feel; a woozy, eclectic vibe that centers around the warning that “I will let you down.”

“We seek and we just might find nothing,” she croons, but it feels as much an invitation as a warning.

Indeed, this former church chorus member seems set on a path of exploration, personally and musically.

“Spiritual content will always find a way out in my music because it’s in me,” she explains of her songwriting, which is rich in Biblical references. “Christianity was the avenue that chose me growing up, and when you’ve been fully engulfed by something like that, it takes a long time to process. I’ve been peeling layers off and examining those layers for the last two or three years, and I don’t see an end anytime soon.

“I never want to become bitter with my history,” she continues. “We have all had negative experiences with things in our past that tried to mold us into something we didn’t want to be. But here we are, still figuring it out, still trucking along.”

For Schaefer, figuring it out and trucking along have born substantial fruit, in the form of an extraordinarily varied and powerful arsenal of songs.  There are hints of Bjork, PJ Harvey and Billie Holiday at work — powerful, emotionally resonant creativity centered around a truly captivating and unique voice and vision.

Listen to the four songs that Schaefer has released via her first two singles on Amigo/Amiga and you’ll get a sense of her range. “Better Idea” and “Gone In Love” are quiet, tender and battered; “City Morgue” is a seductive ode to darkness and “Sister K” is all catharsis.

“I don’t worry about genres,” Schaefer says about her songwriting. “The reasons some songs might feel like a departure could be due to my creative process — when I get stuck, in order to get unstuck I just sit down and try to do something I’ve never done before. ‘Sister K’ was like that. ‘I want to yell!’ I said to myself.  So I found some lyrics that were worth shouting.

“I’m also a little stubborn in the fact that if I feel limited by something, then I’ve found my next challenge,” she continues.

“It doesn’t always work out,” she laughs. “I’ve written plenty of songs I wouldn’t even play for my cat.”

If the songs that Schaefer is currently releasing and performing are any indication, her cat can look forward to hours of quality entertainment — although discerning music lovers might be more appreciative than fickle felines. Schaefer has a steadily growing fanbase, and she’s on a mission.

“The point of all of this is to let people know they can do anything,” she says. “I want people to walk away from a show feeling inspired to do their thing, whatever that is. — if it’s writing a screenplay or baking the perfect pie. Be intentional and be loud about it.”