Carrington Kelso 00:04 If you know a person that's responsible for making 50% of me can abandon me like this, then what's stopping anybody else from doing it?

Dan Hall 00:19 Welcome to In the Key of Q, the podcast that explores the lives, music and experiences of queer musicians from around the world. I'm Dan Hall. Today, it's wonderful to welcome back to the show for the fourth episode Carrington Kelso, who is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, producer and entrepreneur who is carving out a powerful space in the music world with his unique blend of pop, R&B, soul and electronic sounds.

Dan Hall 00:46 He's an artist who not only eats, sleeps and bleeds music, but also pours his heart into creating narratives for black queer love, resilience and artistic freedom. He's also no stranger to this podcast because, as I said earlier, he's guested in his own episode once before and been the co-host on my two part Black Queer America specials. So it was wonderful to have him back on the show again.

Dan Hall 01:11 Since I last spoke to him, he's released the acclaimed album First We Fall, launched the beautiful Clara Rose Candle Co and embarked on a new creative chapter in San Diego, releasing new music that signals an exciting evolution. Before we chat, we want to know if you're a queer musician interested in being featured on the show, please drop me an email at inthekeyofq@gmail.com.

Dan Hall 01:36 And also support the podcast by recommending it this week to just one other person. And do let's grow our international community. So please grab a brew and settle in and get ready for another episode of In the Key of Q, the show that's always ready to amplify the artists who are composing their own futures. Carrington, it is with a genuine smile on my face.

Dan Hall 01:59 But it's lovely to have an excuse to chat to you again. Hello there.

Carrington Kelso 02:03 You honour me. What an intro! Thank you so much, Dan. It's a pleasure to be back.

Dan Hall 03:59 So tell me what has been happening since we last spoke. Because we must have recorded the Black Queer America specials two and a half years ago.

Carrington Kelso 04:07 Yeah, if not a little more. I don't know. Wait. I feel like I just spoke to you. That still feels so, so relevant. And like you said, so much has kind of happened since, because we talked about Eden, which appeared on First We Fall, which is, yeah, my last album.

Dan Hall 04:27 But I think this is where the geek in me comes out. I'm so geeky that I noticed the mix of Eden that is on the album is different from the mix that we had on the show.

Carrington Kelso 04:39 A little bit, a tiny, tiny bit.

Dan Hall 04:41 Honestly. Let it go. Finish the bloody mix and start on the next song.

Carrington Kelso 04:44 I can't, I can't, I can't. You know, I feel like an artist. Many of us struggle with perfectionism, and it's something that I am trying to release every single day. I just want the music to be excellent. It doesn't have to be perfect. But, you know, you hear something, you hear it again, you listen to it again and it's like, oh, we could just turn this knob, move this dial, and it'll feel that much better.

Carrington Kelso 05:09 So.

Dan Hall 05:10 Carrington, I hear you. I absolutely hear you. I always sign off the mixes of this podcast to myself by going for a walk, because I want to hear how the mixes sound in the real world. And I'm going around with version four five going, oh. Carrington's voice peaks a little bit too much here. Blow up. So I and then one falls down a rabbit hole, right.

Dan Hall 05:29 And suddenly it's Christmas and you've done one episode.

Carrington Kelso 05:34 Right. I am keenly aware of that feeling. And that's why, you know, since moving to San Diego, I've really been trying to finish the music or get to a place that I feel like it is good enough to share with the world. And then moving on to the next piece, because I still have so much to say.

Dan Hall 05:55 So can you tell me why you moved? Where did you move from? What did that place mean to you? And then why did you leave that place, and why did you choose where you went to?

Carrington Kelso 06:06 So, in the summer of 2023, or I guess just a bit before that, my partner and I were living in Buford, Georgia and Braselton, Georgia, respectively. It's like 30 minutes, 45 minutes north of Atlanta, Georgia. And I lived there most of my life. I've been raised there most of my life. And, you know, my family, my friends, high school, middle school, elementary school, was spent in that area.

Carrington Kelso 06:35 And after the pandemic and the world kind of opening back up, I was really craving something different. I felt like I couldn't evolve in the space that I was in. And so I was really itching to see more of the world.

Dan Hall 06:51 I'd say I really gotta hand it to you guys there in America. This is such a common narrative. You know, I would not get in a car and move to the next borough unless I had all the safety checks in place, and I knew that my life was secure and unexciting for the next five years. And you just went ahead and did it?

Carrington Kelso 07:13 Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was definitely very scary. It was definitely a bit of a leap of faith. But I have really been told and shown time and time again, that when you make those kind of leaps, it might not be instantaneous, but your, your parachute always opens for you.

Dan Hall 07:33 Now, I'd ask listeners who haven't listened to Carrington's original episode. I would, of course, put a link to it in the show notes, and it really is worth a listen. You know, if only you can spend 40 minutes listening to his speaking and singing voice. But Carrington, for those people who can't be bothered to click that link, can you just give us a wee round up of what we've missed so far.

Dan Hall 07:53 Tell us what happened in season one. Sure.

Carrington Kelso 07:55 So, I guess elevator pitch. Born and raised. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Raised in Buford, Georgia. I have done music all my life, you know, sang in all the choirs. I did show choir in college, taught myself guitar in college, and, you know, really knew that music was for me, probably nine years old.

Carrington Kelso 08:19 My first CD that I ever bought myself was Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love. And from that point forward, I knew that this is something that I had to do.

Dan Hall 08:28 That was quite a kind of high bar for your first. Like, my first ever seven. This shows the difference in our ages. My first seven-inch single I bought was Blondie's Call Me when I was five. Okay. And even now, I just think, what? What a start. Yeah, yeah. That is you pretty much had a good start as well.

Carrington Kelso 08:46 Yeah. No, she set the bar astronomically high. I am a huge fan to this day, and I really aspire to bring that kind of storytelling. Not only to the music and the visuals, but also to the stage.

Carrington Kelso 09:25 I give a huge nod again to Beyoncé, but also to artists like Janet Jackson. I think that growing up there were not many, if any, masculine figures that talked about sex in such a poetic way. And I grew up with a lot of shame around sex because of the shame that I was feeling around my sexuality.

Carrington Kelso 09:47 I think that it wasn't necessarily coming internally, but something that was kind of put upon me by the society that I was being raised around the Bible Belt. You know, growing up in a Christian household, there was a lot of lore around what it meant to be a gay man. And so when I stepped into my sexuality, say, college maybe a little bit before, I really wanted to be able to articulate how I was feeling, but in a tasteful way.

Dan Hall 10:17 When one is within 2 or 3 years of losing one's virginity, one kind of thinks sex is really serious, and it's not until you start to really enjoy it and become confident with it that you realise it should be enjoyable. And sometimes it's enjoyable because it's serious, sometimes it's enjoyable because it's joyful and silly. Right.

Dan Hall 10:38 It's allowed to be both of those spaces. Right.

Carrington Kelso 10:41 I couldn't agree more. I think that even after, you know, losing my virginity, putting my business out there, there was still a bit of shame because of the type of people that I was dealing with, people who were themselves, you know, still in the closet or ashamed of who they were and attempting to put that shame onto me.

Carrington Kelso 11:03 And it wasn't really until after college, I would feel like, you know, around 25, 26 where I was just like, no, I'm proud to be a sexual being. I know that's how all of us got here. And I know that it's a beautiful thing. Like you said, it can be fun. It can be serious. And I really wanted to incorporate that in my music because it brings me so much freedom.

Dan Hall 11:28 So where do you feel that your move to a new area has changed your music that you're making?

Carrington Kelso 11:34 So, San Diego is very interesting so far. The music scene that I've explored has been very DJ and like electronic heavy, like, where do I fit in? Where does my music, where does my sound belong? And that has really encouraged me to explore what I'm trying to say in this new music. I think that when I came here, I had an idea of the project that I wanted to release.

Carrington Kelso 12:04 I released a couple of singles and the album that those singles were going to belong to wasn't ready to be written yet. And so I kind of tabled that project and started this completely new project that really centres acknowledging and sitting with the grief that I was feeling towards kind of giving up the life that I always thought I had.

Carrington Kelso 12:29 I thought that Georgia was the end all be all. I would travel and just come back to that home and those friends and my god-kids and, you know, people that I love there and, you know, you move to a new place and it's uncharted territory. You haven't met all the people that are going to love you yet.

Dan Hall 12:49 But there's an interesting conflict there, isn't there? Because it's a grief of your choosing. And how do you have a relationship with that?

Carrington Kelso 13:00 It has been to me kind of like a plant shedding its leaves for another cycle to bloom. It feels almost like a death in a way. And I don't take it lightly. I don't take grief lightly. I've never kind of dealt with it in a traditional sense where I've lost somebody very close to me.

Carrington Kelso 13:29 But it took me some months to realise that this is what I'm feeling is grieving. And although it is of my own making, it doesn't make it any less real. And so I've really had to find ways to live through the grief, to find joy in the grief, to find, you know, solace.

Carrington Kelso 14:11 I think it is such an honour to me to kind of be this beacon, vessel for something. I think that is so much bigger than me. Yes. These are my stories. But I really just kind of go into this place when I'm writing, when I'm creating, the best music is almost like autopilot.

Carrington Kelso 14:39 Like I'm watching from above as my body is just creating these things. And it would feel like such a waste of a gift to not kind of pour myself out as much as I can to not cut myself in half because I know how much I needed it when I was, you know, seven, eight, nine, realising that I was different than everybody else and I didn't have art or the vocabulary to express it then.

Carrington Kelso 15:08 So I kind of owe it to myself now and to every other little queer kid that needs that.

Dan Hall 15:18 I know, but it's one thing to say that, and it's another thing to actually do it. You know, I know that I've done interviews on this podcast where I have opened my heart about something in order to get the guest to open their heart. And then when it's in the edit I've taken my bit out.

Dan Hall 15:38 You know, and so I've got a lot of respect for you, for you and all the artists I feature doing that because you say that like it's easy. You go, well, it's, you know, it is the right thing to do because people need to hear it, man. You're putting yourself out there.

Carrington Kelso 15:53 Yeah, yeah. It's scary. It's scary. It is heavy. But it's so healing. There isn't like a better feeling than to get a song out of you that has been begging to be written. And to know that this is my truth. This is the truth of how I feel. This is the truth of what I think.

Carrington Kelso 16:21 And even if it doesn't go out to the world, I'm just proud to have created this. And then when it does go out into the world knowing that it doesn't quite belong to you anymore, it belongs to the listeners and to have people come up to me and say, like, you know, I wept to this song, or you were singing about me or these lyrics are my life.

Carrington Kelso 16:41 Like, how did you know I was going through this? Is really what makes it all worth it.

Dan Hall 17:45 Something you'd said in a previous conversation that we'd had that really stuck with me. Genuinely. Was you talked about how we should stop trying to appease people so they'll invite us to the table and just make our own tables. Can you just repeat to people listening to this for the first time what you meant by that?

Dan Hall 18:07 And how you are going about making that happen?

Carrington Kelso 18:12 Sure. I think that oftentimes, just us as people, we think that the only way to make it, whatever that means to you, whatever success means to you, is to network vertically. We always look for a ladder to climb. We're trying to get to somebody we believe is bigger or better than us. We want a seat at their table.

Carrington Kelso 18:36 And the thing about that is, even if you're invited to those tables, you don't own them. And the people who invite you can always uninvite you to those tables. And so over the years, I've really learned the importance of networking side to side, networking horizontally, networking with people that are on your level, that want to build as bad as you want to build, because if you build something of your own, if you build your own table, then when that table rises, you rise together and you get to decide who is invited and who isn't invited.

Carrington Kelso 19:09 It takes a lot more work. It takes a lot more time. It takes a lot more resources. But it's worth it in the end, because nobody can take it from you there. I think there are a lot of different reasons why we don't support our own communities. But what I will say, shout out to Ty, shout out to Theism, because of podcasts like this, I have made lifelong friends.

Carrington Kelso 19:34 I've made community. And that wouldn't have happened without your interjection. And so when we.

Dan Hall 19:43 That's really lovely to hear you guys are all still in touch.

Carrington Kelso 19:45 Yes, absolutely. We, me and Ty check in on Instagram via text message all the time. I try to check in on Theism as much as I can. Shout out on Instagram and things of that nature, but all of those came from your interjection, came from you bringing us together. And no, it wasn't, you know, 100,000 independent queer artists, but it was three of us.

Carrington Kelso 20:10 It was four of us. And I'm hoping that that ripple effect continues to grow and we can look back on this and be like, remember when it was just three of us? And now, look, it's hundreds of us.

Dan Hall 21:17 So you come across Carrington very much in all the episodes that we've recorded together as being this sorted, highly intelligent and confident person. But, of course, I think the version of ourselves that we present to the world is not always the version that looks in the mirror first thing in the morning. And I believe you've spoken about your sense of high-functioning anxiety you feel due to systemic racism and homophobia.

Dan Hall 21:52 Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Carrington Kelso 21:55 I think, and this kind of is touched on in the album, the upcoming album as well. This kind of stemmed from my father leaving at a very young age, and then not being in my life for, you know, any of it really. And so that kind of abandonment, that fear of rejection, if you know a person that's responsible for

Carrington Kelso 22:25 making 50% of me can abandon me like this, then what's stopping anybody else from doing it? And so from a very young age, I really internalised this idea that if I was perfect, then I could avoid being abandoned. And so I got the grades and I did the homework and I cleaned the house and I, you know, was the best big brother and the best friend and really over-committed, over-gave of myself.

Carrington Kelso 23:05 When you show up at 100% or 90% or 80% or 50%, you are thinking your mind tells you that you are not worthy because you are not being of service to them at the level that you think they require. And so that breeds anxiety. How could you not be anxious? Compound that with, like you said, systemic racism.

Carrington Kelso 23:31 You know, homophobia. Now I'm in the workforce, you know, working nine to fives and feeling like I have to consistently code switch as this, you know, six foot, six foot one, 225 pound black man to make sure that my white counterparts at work don't feel threatened or they don't feel that I'm being aggressive or angry, or is my hair cut in a certain way that is presentable?

Carrington Kelso 23:59 It's very performative. It's very masking and it becomes exhausting. And that.

Dan Hall 24:06 Exhaustion. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt you, Carrington, just to step in there. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had only heard the term code switching because I heard it on an NPR show. And that was only four years ago. Clearly for other people who are just as blissfully ignorant as I am, can you just describe what code switching is?

Dan Hall 24:35 And even the idea of the hair and the sense of the constant checking.

Carrington Kelso 24:39 Sure. So code switching often happens in, I mean, really can happen in any space, but I felt it most in school and in the workplace, where if you are not or if you are in a body that is perceived to be somehow less than oftentimes it is black bodies, but it can be brown bodies as well.

Carrington Kelso 25:06 There's this idea that if you can speak the vernacular, really of the white tongue, if you can sound intelligent, if you can look intelligent, if you can really kind of make yourself the exception to the bias, that, you know, in my example, you know, black men are loud and ghetto. You know, their hair is nappy or this and the other.

Carrington Kelso 25:33 If you can exceed that expectation, then you are given grace, you are given opportunity. You are promoted over your other black counterparts because you speak so well for a black person. You talk so eloquently.

Dan Hall 25:50 You people say that.

Carrington Kelso 25:51 Oh, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. I got called an Oreo all of my life growing up, from elementary school to high school. And what that means is, you know, you're black on the outside, but you don't act black. You talk white on the inside. And so kids would call me, you know, an Oreo. I've been complimented on the way that I speak my entire life, but not because, you know, I'm just an elegant orator, but because you're not used to hearing black boys talk like that.

Carrington Kelso 26:28 So I must be an exception. I must be above my black counterparts because of how well I speak.

Dan Hall 26:36 And how does that make you feel when you're sort of weaponised against other black men in that way?

Carrington Kelso 26:46 I mean, for me, it is infuriating. Because that can also build resentment with other black men, with other black people. When we are pitted against each other in a way that I have no control over, this isn't me trying to talk this way to separate myself from my blackness, because I'm very proud of that.

Carrington Kelso 27:10 This is just how I speak. And so if I am trying to survive in an environment just like everybody else, and I'm promoted because of it, it can build resentment, animosity between the group. And so I really try my best to keep the door open. If I am elevated in any kind of instance, I'm making sure there's a way for other people that look like me, that sound like me, that don't look like me, that don't sound like me to come in behind me, to make sure I'm not gatekeeping in the way that I feel like corporate America and even, you know, our colleges, our universities are very

Carrington Kelso 27:47 gatekeeping.

Dan Hall 28:20 What should a pop star look like?

Carrington Kelso 28:22 I mean, traditionally, I think of, you know, Britney Spears. I think of Madonna. I think of George Michael. I think of now, you know, Beyoncé. But even Beyoncé is, you know, fair skinned, you know, great hair, like there is very rare that somebody of a darker complexion can get that pop star title, perhaps an R&B star or, you know, a rap star.

Carrington Kelso 28:51 But pop is usually the most coveted space in all pop. Pop means popular. What's popular right now. So there are rap artists that I feel like are pop artists because they were making popular music that would never get that title, that would never get the Grammy Award for Pop Album of the year, because they are darker skinned.

Carrington Kelso 29:14 What a crock of shit.

Dan Hall 29:16 I mean, really, it's hard to have an intellectual discussion with you about this because it's just nonsense. No.

Carrington Kelso 29:22 It is. Shit it is.

Dan Hall 29:23 I don't absolutely, but I you know, I've only had 40 minutes of chatting with you, and I'm full of fury and pissed off with this.

Carrington Kelso 29:33 But that's a good thing. It's a good thing because I think that anger and rage is such a valuable emotion that people don't use enough to move. Rage often is spouted at people or at things. But it can also be used to build things to create art, to create community, to organise. And I would encourage especially my LGBTQ+ brothers, sisters, non-binary siblings to use now more than ever in the United States and beyond.

Carrington Kelso 30:10 To use that to create something bigger than yourself.

Dan Hall 30:15 Absolutely. And you know, guys, we don't change things by finding the right hashtag or sitting at our keyboards.

Dan Hall 31:56 We're coming towards the end of the episode now and as ever, you have been a most fantastic guest to have on. Really. And when you first came on, I asked you what your 15 year old self would think of you. And I can't ask that again, because I so was before. So I'm going to ask a slightly different question.

Dan Hall 32:16 What would the Carrington Kelso of three years ago, who first came on the show think of himself now, three years later? How is he different? Is he doing what he's supposed to be doing? And if not, why not?

Carrington Kelso 32:32 I think the Carrington from three years ago would be very proud of where the Carrington of today is. I think that he would be surprised at how fast things have moved, how fast things have changed, and understanding that some things had to pivot, to get to where we are now. But the goal and the focus, music really being the motive for everything else, it is the nucleus and everything else is extra hasn't been lost.

Carrington Kelso 33:12 And I think he would be very proud of that fact.

Dan Hall 33:17 So then, Carrington, what's coming up next? What have you got coming down the pipeline?

Carrington Kelso 33:22 So next is my next album. It's going to be called A Moment for Grief, and it is my proudest project to date. It is picking up right where First We Fall left off. And I just really cannot wait for you all to hear it.

Dan Hall 33:43 Fantastic. It's always useful when the artist actually wants people to listen to it. Yes, yes yes yes.

Carrington Kelso 33:51 That's what I'm doing this work. But I want you to get lost in this world, and I couldn't, you know, imagine a better platform to feel safe, to talk about this than In the Key of Q.

Dan Hall 34:38 Carrington Kelso. Where can people find you online?

Carrington Kelso 34:41 You can find me online everywhere you have internet under my name. Carrington Kelso. C-A-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-N K-E-L-S-O. All my social handles. My website. carringtonkelso.com. Come say hey.

Dan Hall 34:56 And of course, I'll put links to all of those in the show notes. Now then, Carrington, a slight change in the format from when you first appeared. It's that for two minutes I just like to say to the artist, talk about whatever you want. Just got two minutes on this, meet my microphone and not get on my nerd and pencil.

Dan Hall 35:17 The next two minutes is all yours to talk about literally whatever you want. Go.

Carrington Kelso 35:23 So I'm at two minutes talking about whatever I want I'm going to spend it really encouraging the listener and really encouraging artists to think about their art in a non streaming way. I think that as musicians, we've kind of lost the idea that music is art and it deserves to be treated as such. Streaming platforms have messed up our minds, messed up our consumers' minds to think that, you know, music should be worth 0.0003 dollars a stream, and that is not the case.

Carrington Kelso 36:00 I know we all want millions of fans, but there is a way to have a liveable wage and also be a musician, also be an artist. And I really want to encourage everybody to invest in the artists that they believe in, support them financially, whether it's, you know, buy me a coffee, Patreon, Bandcamp, you know, $10 can really change an artist's life.

Carrington Kelso 36:26 So, just like you would buy a Beyoncé album or a Beyoncé ticket. It took that kind of fan support to get her from where she's at or where she was to where she's at, and we independent artists need that kind of support now more than ever, because it's not coming from the majors. It's not coming from the streaming platforms.

Carrington Kelso 36:43 It's coming directly from our fans. So, you know, really support the art that you believe in. Carrington.

Dan Hall 36:50 Just to make this absolutely clear, because I'm realising this for the first time, listening to you, if I like Carrington Kelso's music, if I like this artist's music or this artist's music and they're not a major artist, it's not enough for me just to be streaming.

Carrington Kelso 37:06 Not at all. You know, if you pay, let's say $10 a month on Spotify and you only listen to Carrington Kelso that whole month for streaming, Spotify doesn't send me that $10. Spotify will divvy that money up the $10 you paid for your monthly subscription or 12, whatever it is, and send it to the major label artists that have contracted for the biggest cuts.

Carrington Kelso 37:31 The biggest cuts.

Dan Hall 37:32 And that's a pile of shit. Really?

Carrington Kelso 37:33 Yes. And they'll pay me the 0.0003 dollars that you have given me by listening to my song 100 times or 200 times, or whatever that is. There's a lot of research out on the interwebs. Like, you can Google it. I'm not, you know, bullshitting, y'all. They aren't paying us anything.

Dan Hall 37:54 And that honestly. Yeah.

Carrington Kelso 37:57 So buying the music is the best. Go to a website, go to a Bandcamp, go to an iTunes. You can stream it after that. You can buy the album just to support, and then you can go to streaming from there. But the amount of time, the amount of streams it would take to make $10, it's just incomparable to then you just going to my website and buying the project.

Dan Hall 38:16 That's a palling, Carrington. It's a new Centre some new records. I do, thankfully, to put me out of this bad mood. Which song would you like us to wrap this episode up with?

Carrington Kelso 38:28 I'm going to say, Can I Be the One? I think it's fantastic. I think it is encompassing of what we've talked about today, what we've talked about for this album, A Moment for Grief and I think it'll be a nice surprise for people who have heard my music before and people who haven't yet.

Dan Hall 41:53 A huge, genuine thank you to Carrington Kelso for coming onto the show. Carrington. It's always a joy to have you.

Carrington Kelso 42:01 Thank you. Dan, it's always a pleasure speaking with you and talking about art and queer issues and black issues. I appreciate you using your platform for things like this.

Dan Hall 42:14 Hurry up and make another album so we can have an excuse to bring you back.

Carrington Kelso 42:18 Okay, I got you.

Dan Hall 42:19 Now, for those of you who wanted to support Carrington Kelso, and any other queer independent artists, do you think about what he has just said? Because I have learned on this episode that streaming is not enough. So we need to support these guys so they carry on making the music that reflects our lives. And also many of them have secondary income streams.

Dan Hall 42:38 And so for that reason, I'm going to very much promote Carrington's website, clarosecandles.com, and of course provide a link to that in the show notes.

Dan Hall 43:08 And thank you to you all for listening out there. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to In the Key of Q on your podcast platform of choice and leave a rating and review. It bumps us up in the algorithm and helps other listeners discover the show. And you know what? If you do one thing this week, please recommend this show to just one person.

Dan Hall 43:28 And let's really grow this international community. If you want a guest on the show or have any thoughts, please email me at inthekeyofq@gmail.com. And don't forget, you can listen to old episodes, including the 132 episodes, the Carrington's on over it inthekeyofq.com, and you'll also find their deeper dives into our queer lives with a blog, and there will be a number of blogs growing up soon.

Dan Hall 43:53 Inspired by the conversations that I have with Carrington, a massive thank you to Paul Leonidou at unstoppablemonsters.com for our theme tune and to Moray Laing for his continued support. Please join me next week for another conversation with the queer musician who's making waves. Thank you for listening and keep paddling your gay agenda and I'll see you next Quesday!