When KP, the singer-songwriter who performs as Black Belt Eagle Scout, speaks with me, she’s smudging “some sort of cedar” throughout her home in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, where she has lived since moving back in July 2020.
“It’s sort of spiritual, sort of grounding for me,” they explain, plumes of smoke wafting up through the Zoom call window. “It makes me feel at ease and comfortable. I often will do it if I’m realizing that I need to have some clarity and well-being and goodness.”
The grounding that KP finds in nature is a core theme of Black Belt Eagle Scout’s new album, The Land, The Water, The Sky, out now on Saddle Creek Records. Although the guitar-driven tracks recall the Pacific Northwest grunge that’s typically associated with the region, Black Belt Eagle Scout’s latest finds them at their most expansive yet, both thematically and sonically. While KP’s delicate but powerful voice and guitar playing remain front and center on the record, they are supported by other instruments, like saxophone, cello, and violin, as well as the singing voices of their parents.
This new phase of Black Belt Eagle Scout comes largely thanks to the freedom KP felt by moving back to her homelands after spending several years in Portland, both in terms of their relationship to nature and to creativity itself. As the artist notes in our conversation, and as the album itself makes clear, those values are inseparable for her. Nature and the land are the foundation of their creativity, and indeed of their very identity.
Ahead of her album release, KP spoke with Them about the solitary process of songwriting, the vulnerability of opening up to collaboration, and how her queerness informs her creative practice.
What was your songwriting process like for this album, and how did that differ from your previous albums?
I have to feel very comfortable and at ease. And I have to be alone. It’s really hard for me to go to very vulnerable places when I write music or when I play guitar or craft songs when there are other people around. That’s sort of how it’s always been, and I think that’s how it always will be. But I’ve been trying to get to a different place where I can feel more comfort in my vulnerability. That actually really showed itself within the last record. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked with people — I worked with my friend Takiaya Reed from [the doom metal band] Divide and Dissolve, who produced it with me.
This was your most collaborative album yet. What was that like?
I’ve been stubborn in the past records, because I always had this thing where I was like, “You gotta do everything yourself. You gotta prove that you can do everything.” What I realized is like, “Yeah, but you could have more fun if you had people you were working with.” What I really loved most about working with Takiaya is that in the past, I would have ideas, and then I’d be too scared to go with them. But I would bring these ideas to Takiaya and she’d always say, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
I feel like this new way of putting out music in collaboration — that’s something that I feel like was really powerful and a shift in what Black Belt Eagle Scout sounds like. There’s new energy. There’s more people behind it. The other thing is that I went to back to the studio where I recorded my first album, and I just felt so at home there because I had already been there. It’s on my homelands.
I wanted to create this atmosphere, and that’s where more collaborators came in: adding strings and helping create an atmosphere that supported the sound of the record. It goes from feelings of intensity to feelings of being serene, feelings that are very big but also small at the same time.
We had various vocalists on this record. My parents sang in the chorus of one of the songs called “Spaces.” That song doesn’t have very many words on it, but it has this melody. I wanted it to be the chorus. My dad, he’s this powwow Coast Salish drum singer, and his voice is very powerful. And so I was like, “Can it sound like [this?]” and then he takes it to this different level. My mom’s voice is really beautiful and it sounds very open wide. There was a lot of love and a lot of compassion from people during this process.
You’ve mentioned that some of your earliest musical inspirations were the singing and drumming practices of your family. What was it like to bring that full circle and collaborate with your family on this record?
It just felt natural. I’m really close with my parents. And when I moved back home to back home to Swinomish from Portland, I left all of my friends behind in Portland, and sort of had to figure out new friendships up here. We moved during the pandemic, so our tribe wasn’t doing any sort of community gatherings. I became really close with my parents during this time, and so it just made sense to invite them in and have them sing on the record.
You’ve mentioned that part of this album is also about your tenuous relationship with the concept of representation. Could you expand on that?
I grew up here on this reservation, and it’s a small community and you see the people in your community who are role models. They’re the elders in the community. They’re the people who will step up and help during hard times — during funerals, during other ceremonies. When I was younger, I’d go to powwows and there’d be jingle dress dancers and all types of different dancers that you’d see that were representing their communities.
I’m the only Indigenous artist signed to my label, and I don’t see a lot of other Indigenous artists signed to very many major indie labels. And so I’ve had an interesting time doing things like interviews. Oftentimes, people will ask me big questions. Like, don’t ask me what it is to be Native American, because I’ve had to answer those questions and it’s been really weird.
I think it’s important to have representation within entertainment. I’m supportive of that. But also I think it’s important to recognize that, without entertainment, you still are able to find representation and inspiration within your own communities for those of us who have that connection to community. I feel like there should be a balance of representation. Specifically from a mental health perspective, I do think it helps people when they can see that there are other people around the world who look like them, who have similar values. It helps us survive. It helps us continue on, when we know that we’re not alone, when we know that we can feel happy and inspired by people.
You’ve previously spoken about how your identity as an Indigenous woman informs your music. How does queerness inform your music, if at all?
I feel like I’m still trying to figure this out. I have gotten to the point of just, “I am who I am.”
There’s a song specifically on the new record about this, and it’s called “Sčičudᶻ.” And the lyrics are, “I saw a part of you that’s there / There’s not a part of me that’s not there / I feel it every time I walk through you / I know it’s like a part of me is you / I know what is a part of me today / I wish I could explain to you someday. I see the way you look at me dancing / I see the way you love me / I’m dancing.” I wrote that about a place called Sčičudᶻ, and it’s a place that I was able to feel close with in the last couple of years since moving back home.
Specifically when I would go there, I would recognize this one cedar tree. I remember telling somebody one time and they were like, “Well, if you see it, it sees you too.” Knowing the history of this place where I live, in that my people have been here since time immemorial in this area — I know that those trees have the essence of my ancestors within them. And when I go to that place, I feel 110% like myself. It’s like this very intense feeling of being held and supported in my identity and who I am at that place.
In that song, the lyric about dancing is supposed to represent my identity: I identify as queer, I identify as a woman, and I’m here within my homelands. I’m being 100% myself, and I feel this connection here. I’m still trying to figure out how it is that I can explain this to people because sometimes I feel like when I talk about it, people are like, “What?” But I think my identity and my queerness is very specifically tied to nature and tied into my homelands. And there’s this feeling of love and support here for it.
One of the cool things that happened when I moved back home is I got together with a couple of our other tribal members, and we created a Pride day here on my reservation. We never had a Pride day or a Pride celebration. I had to go to our Senate’s meeting and tell people why it would be important and it was such an emotional, hard thing to do. But everybody was like, “Yeah, we should do that.”
When I was growing up, I didn’t know that there were queer people here within my tribe. There were, [but] there just wasn’t a place for people to feel comfortable and recognized in those forms of identity. Maybe it is [because] they had that same feeling that I did, when they would go out into the forest or something and that’s how they felt recognized. But also it was important to our community to have that day and that celebration here.
I didn’t feel comfortable coming out to my community until I was much older, and now there’s this space here where, if you do come out, you will be loved and you will be supported. We created this slogan: “Be who you are, love who you are.” I’ve had a really beautiful time having that here every June so that’s something that I feel proud of, living here and of being back home.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The Land, The Water, The Sky is available now from Saddle Creek Records.
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