But don’t think for a minute that things came easy for Kice. Pre-dating the “Muzik Mafia”, things had been hard for her. As the sunbegan to set outside her window, she confided, “I think I was coming out of a pretty big depression before I moved to Nashville, to be perfectly honest with you. I just had a lot of things happen to me, in my life, at once. I had my baby when I was 18, (Whitney, now 9) and I had her just before I was supposed to go to school at Berklee (School of Music in Boston). So I went there a little while, and came back, and I just didn’t know what to do. I felt the things I wanted to learn, I don’t think I knew where to look for them. I didn’t know what to do and I ended up doing a lot of acting and TV work that was good for me to do, but not necessarily what I wanted to do. And I was in a relationship there too, and I think I just spiraled down for a while. I didn’t eat very well, and I got sick, and I had a lot of things happen at that time when I was in Kansas.”
But with the help of a trusted professor, Pat Pattison from Berklee, (he calls himself ‘my owner,’ she says), she made the move to Nashville, and the rest, as they say, is history. Kice now paints and performs, and on May 26th, she’ll be painting and singing at the same time, for the very first time, during a show at the Nashville club 3rd & Lindsley.
Patiently, she tries to explain the experience she has while performing. “Mostly, I focus on getting things out of my head so I can just feel what’s going on with the music. I usually just get into the rhythm first, and as I’m painting, just looking for shapes or colors. I look on the stage, sometimes up and around and try to just grab different things or if I get a feeling to turn around, I turn around to see what’s going on or whatever it may be and I start getting it organized. As the show gets going, the energy starts in one place and it builds and it’s usually really pretty complete, and I usually finish pretty much at the same time as the music.”
What if I want to join the “Muzik Mafia,” I ask her? Does she have any advice for the wanna-be’s out there? Kice replies, “How do you get into “Muzik Mafia”? My answer is- buy a painting (laughs). But that still won’t get you into “Muzik Mafia”. I’d bring you with me or something, I don’t know how. To get into the “Muzik Mafia”, I never tried to get into the music mafia and I think that’s the point. Pretty much it’s all happened real naturally.”
She concludes, “It’s like it’s wide open and it’s closed up in a way, you know what I mean? It’s like an intimate relationship really, but amongst a bunch of people. I think the thing that fuels it is love I think that’s the word that everybody’s got in their mind and that’s the thing that everybody is seeking in their lives, as far as I can see and as far as I know. With the group, we may even encounter a conflict, but we’re still looking for that. We’re looking for the point where everyone is respected and everyone is allowed to express themselves as well.”
So what’s next for the talented Ms. Kice? “I have the urge right now to work some things out creatively that I want to perform. That’s pretty much what I’ve got the urge to do. I have kind of a song commentary that’s more on the dramatic edge than the funny edge and then I pour milk on myself at the end of it and then I just go on painting. So we have some things like that that going on.
She adds, “I did a lot of work with milk, and it continues to be something I want to work with, and that’s what I’m working out. I might bring my milk. I think Big Kenny would probably like it if I brought my milk song to the stage some night. I have to sing a little bit while I do the milk thing, but it’s a good surprise though, a good surprise.
”I bet there’ll come a time when someone says, ‘Hey, we want you to do something weird here, to bring something new to the table. When the right time to do some something crazy comes, I’m available.”
