Kachi Ebiringah and Nick Gresens on Music as a Creative Form of Healing
Interview by Kachi Ebiringah and Nick Gresens
Kachi, a Chicago based four piece, fronted by Kachi Ebiringah alongside Griffin Tarach, Austyn Carey, and Collin Acklin, is here with the first release from the project. The single This Is Not, is the first single to be released off of the band’s upcoming album I Only Wanna Play For You. Kachi chatted with longtime friend and former bandmate Nick Gresens, who releases music as Julius Dolls. They talk music as a healing process, the meditation and medication it offers and making music for yourself first. Listen to a premiere of the group’s first single below and follow along with the interview between Nick and Kachi.
Nick Gresens: What does it mean to you to finally put out this song and the album as a whole? You and I go way back— we were in a band in high school and we've always kind of fucked with each other. We've had our rocky parts, but, you know, for the most part, especially recently, we really support each other. So what does it all mean to you? I know you've been working on some of these songs for a long time.
Kachi Ebiringah: I was just talking about this the other day. I cried multiple times while I was making the record. It was a true catharsis. It was like the ending of a chapter in my life. You know about my past, but I've dealt with serious mental health issues. I've been in danger and been a danger to myself and stuff like that before. When I was seventeen and we were in a band and all that stuff was happening and I just thought I can never be in a band again, I can ever play music again, I just have way too many problems mentally. So to come back five years later and to work with Colin Croom, who's in one of my favorite bands of all time—honestly, I love Twin Peaks. And to make a song, to make a record and then to have him really like the record and I'm making this with all my friends and it's a band that I lead—I cried in the studio multiple times. I listened to it and cried. It just feels like a triumphant victory. The seventeen year old me would be standing up and applauding. I'm so glad that I was able to stick it out emotionally and wait because good things do come with time.
Nick: There are definitely a lot of people that are rooting for you. I think that's one of the best parts, you never did give up when you easily could have. I know personally a lot of people that just quit music and it's the worst thing to see. So just to not only follow through but to follow through with an amazing product, that’s something that is really awesome. And I feel like with a lot of great music, there has to be some sort of tears involved, that emotion needs to be there.
Kachi: A lot of songs are just about surviving. What's cool is they're about surviving, but I made a record about it, which means I survived. So it was a really weird moment, just kind of having this reformation within myself. I realized like, “Oh, my God, dude, you made it. You did something you said you wanted to do. You swore you would do this.” The record is imperfect for sure, but I made something that I like enough. I want to make something that is perfect someday, but like I said, seventeen year old me would be really stoked, he’d be really proud of me.
Nick: You can't really put a price or value on something like that.
Kachi: That's why I wanted to self release it. If a label does want to press it, that's fine, [but] it's not really about that. I did this because I needed to do this for me.
Nick: What about the artwork? Is that you as a little kid?
Kachi: This single artwork is me at age five. I have four siblings, but there's only three of them in the photo. It's me, my older sister, my older brother, my little sister, my grandma. My grandma is the most important person to me. I want everything I do to be genuine and I want people to be able to see a window into my life. I made that the cover because I remember living in that house and times like that when I was a kid with my family, just smiling and being happy. It’s just crazy to look at a photo like that and four year old me, never would have thought I was going to be playing music and have a record and be doing an interview or anything like that. My grandma, she's been dead for a minute now, but my grandma is pretty much the most important person to me in my life. So like everything I do musically, I try to at least put something of her in it. Whether it's lyrics or her photo or just talking about her. I wanted to make sure my grandma was represented on the single.
Nick: That's awesome, I know how much she meant to you and how much she supported you. What kind of evolution have you seen with yourself with music?
Kachi: I think as we evolve as people, our taste in music evolves a lot. So short background for the interview— me and Nick were in a garage rock band, we're both twenty three now but when we were seventeen we were in a garage rock band. I liked bands like the Black Lips and Fidlar and stuff and now I listen to Wilco all the time and like Lil Uzi Vert and Marvin Gaye. I think just as I evolved as a person, I became more in tune with myself. I like Wilco a lot because when you boil it down, it’s just Jeff Tweedy playing guitar and singing and saying really beautiful things. So as I watched myself learn to accept my faults and learn to also be proud of who I am as a person, as I watched myself become a better artist, a better musician, a better person, a better friend, brother, coworker, my music also evolved and got better. I think the happier that I become, the songwriting is better. Everything I write now is so much better. I write less, but the output is a lot better.
Nick: That’s something I've witnessed personally with your growth, I think you've been able to look at things from a better perspective than maybe you used to. That's definitely a benefit in music. Also going back to your point —what's funny is looking back in the day and comparing it to now— it’s still the same thing, even though so much has changed for us, it's still a guitar and chords. What kind of impact have specific experiences in your life, especially maybe the past five years, had on this record?
Kachi: When I was seventeen, I almost died, essentially, and then I didn’t, but when you're seventeen you don't realize the repercussions of that. I pretty much have been and still am dealing with the trauma of what happened when I was seventeen. And as I grow older, I grow stronger and it becomes less and less me. I used to think that what happened to me was me. I used to think that people could see what happened to me. As I grow older, I'm able to look at it from a different point of view and a different lens. I'm able to appreciate myself more and the experiences I had more and all of the people that I met during those times. It's been extremely painful. I want to be clear about that. It's been a really, really painful year and I've been alone a lot, but every year it gets a little bit easier. Every year I get a little bit stronger, a little bit smarter and I have a little bit more fun. And I think finally we made this record, and I think it’s the first time in my life in the past eleven years where I'm actually happy and enjoying life. Living in the moment. It felt really good. It felt like the right time to make a record.
Nick: That's what it ought to be. It's a positive sounding record. What was your favorite experience from the whole process of making this album?
Kachi: My favorite experience actually was realizing it was a real thing. I was being freed from a lot of pain and tension. The thing that I cried about a lot when I was making it was I hadn’t realized the amount of people I just don't talk to anymore. And the title “I Don't Wanna Play For You” is a play on words because the “you” isn't just one person. The “you” is my grandma, my parents, it's my siblings, it’s you Nick. All of my friends, every girl I've ever liked, anyone that's ever helped me in my life, the “you” is the audience who is listening. It can mean a lot of different things. So as I'm making the record—the band is called Kachi and my name is Kachi, but I didn't write these songs. Everyone in my life, they wrote this music with me. They helped me write this music. Everyone who rooted for me, who had to deal with so much pain and suffering, who stayed in my corner, they get to share this with me. And that was the biggest moment. I finally felt like I was giving back to all of the people that had invested in me. I was in a really tough position in life and had it not been for some of the people that I know now or even some that I don't talk to as much anymore, that helped me out, I wouldn't have made it. So this record is for them and it feels really good to be able to do that on their behalf.
Nick: Isn’t that crazy? It becomes so much more than you may have ever intended.
Kachi: Music for me is completely emotional.
Nick: Do see it as an escape?
Kachi: Yeah, definitely. Music is meditation. I practice meditation and music is meditation.
Nick: It’s medication, too.
Kachi: Its meditation and medication. What music does for me is helping process emotions, but it also helps me speak the truth because sometimes it's hard for us to tell ourselves the truth. So there's been songs that are on this record that I wrote and I cried when I was writing because there's something inside of me that I just couldn't get out. I just couldn't understand. All of my music is extremely vulnerable.
Nick: What was the hardest obstacle during this process?
Kachi: I had to let people have more input than I wanted, which I think ended up backfiring because then I stopped trusting myself. There are some mistakes in the album that I wouldn't have done had I just felt confident right out of the gate. The hardest part was just letting people tell me what to do. Working with Colin was the hardest part. He’s an amazing person, one hundred percent, and the hardest part was learning how to let go and let him take the lead. Learning to let go and to let the band have more input and learn to trust other people. Yeah, I like the music that I make, but I also like the music that other people make. I needed to realize, even though it's my song, I wanted to share this stuff with the world in the first place. I can't be super selfish with it. So that was a hard thing to overcome, but also it was fun.
Nick: That's a really hard thing. I think I had a similar experience when I was making my record. These songs mean so much to you, so you don't want them to get fucked up. But once you do let other people in, even just the smallest input, it can make such a difference. You to me—you're a brutally honest person. So when you say something is good, I know it's good. When you say something sucks, I’m like okay what can I change. I remember when I was first working on my record I showed you “Bloomed Out” and you were like “Bro, what the fuck is that?” I cancelled all my sessions, I went home and redid a bunch of shit. I rewrote the hook that it is now.
Kachi: Are you happier with it now?
Nick: Yeah, one thousand percent, but that's what I'm saying, that's why you let people in. But I have one more question, a generic question, but what does this all mean to you? Getting this album out there to the world, what does it mean to you?
Kachi: I have to tell you the truth. It's liberation. I live with shackles around my body, around my mind, around my soul. Shackles that have held me back for doing things that I wanted to do because I thought I couldn't do them. Seventeen year old me still lives inside of me and there is still a lot of pain that I deal with as a person. I love to prove myself wrong. I doubt myself a lot. I'm insecure. I love when I'm able to rise up and look in the mirror and be like, I fucking did this. The past can't stop me. Being brave enough to go to a studio, sing about your life, sing about the pain that you've been through, whether people can tell or not. Then you put it out and people listen to it and critique it. I remember I sent it to a ton of people that didn’t even listen to it, and that really, really hurt me. But, you know, ultimately, I can deal with that pain now. I’m strong enough now, right? I was strong enough to make this record, I’m strong enough to deal with the pain. So it feels like victory. It feels like liberation. It feels like freedom. It feels like happiness, like joy. I feel free.
Nick: It is a victory, definitely.
Kachi: This record, just making it, all my people can just do that victory lap. Everyone who wanted me to have this gets to celebrate with me. So that's the best part. It feels like a celebration.