“Sometimes it takes four or five tries to realize something just isn’t working,” says Kassi Valazza. “I wrote this after my thirteenth try.” She’s referring to the song “Roll On” specifically, but the stagnating pull of repeating patterns — and the brutalizing work of breaking them — inform every song on her new album From Newman Street. “In songwriting and in life, you can’t keep expecting the same thing to work every time.”
Valazza grew up between Prescott and Phoenix, Arizona. She penned her first song at age ten but in those early efforts to perform, found herself halted by stage fright of a clinical level. “I’ve gone to therapy for it,” she says, half-laughing. She didn’t stop writing music but she let less paralyzing means of expression lead the way, eventually enrolling in arts school for painting, an illustrative instinct that inevitably reveals itself in her vivid songwriting. It wasn’t until she relocated to the Pacific Northwest as an adult that Valazza picked back up the proverbial — and actual — guitar.
“Zach Bryson was kind of like the honky tonk ambassador of Portland when I got there,” Valazza says. “He was so welcoming and encouraging.” She discovered an inspiring, supportive artistic community, a less rigid relationship with musical output, and then — vocal nodules. “It was actually kind of the best thing that could have happened, because I learned about the crossover of physical and mental that takes place in performance.” Recovery entailed recognizing the reflexive functions of the voice in response to anxiety; as is the case throughout the human body, stress reactions can be damaging. “Because I suddenly understood what was happening with my voice, I could handle it, wield it. I felt more confident.” Valazza recorded an album with Bryson in an old-house-turned-studio. It was an informal, friendly endeavor, though not at all small. “I think probably thirty people contributed,” she says. “I listen back to that album and I think ‘this was me learning how to do this.’ I can hear that moment in time.”
Valazza’s debut Dear Dead Days fused the Southwest’s rustic romance with the Pacific Northwest’s rocky realism and garnered Valazza a cult following. She landed a deal with Fluff & Gravy, a label known for launching earthy, emerging treasures like Anna Tivel and Margo Cilker, and toured with folk favorites including Melissa Carper and Riddy Arman. Her sophomore album Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing followed, a glimmering set of sonic talismans among Ann Powers’ Favorite Songs of 2023 for NPR and Bandcamp’s Best Country Music of 2023, with praise from KEXP, Uncut, MOJO, and Brooklyn Vegan to boot.
By the time Valazza was ready to record her third album, she had spent a decade in Portland — and that, she realized, was enough. “As someone with anxiety, I always want to know what’s going to happen,” she says. “But knowing can be limiting. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, that’s growth. That’s what this album’s about, really.”
