"No Vacancy" boasts a talented group of musicians including Tony Harrell on piano/keyboards (India Arie), Spencer Campbell on bass (Eagle Eye Cherry), Tate Cunningham on drums ( Crew ), Steve Rutledge on guitars, Gary Tussing on cello (Trey Anastasio), Peter Hyrka on violin ( Gypsy Hombres ), and Elisha on guitars and programming. The album was recorded at Vibe56 with engineer, Kevin McDevitt manning the board, and Geoff Koval mixing it up. After a few months of recording, "No Vacancy" was born.
Kristi's Thoughts on "No Vacancy"
When I thought about making my first record, I thought about the records that I love the most. Why do I love them? Why do I listen to them over and over and over, even after many years? I concluded that the records I love most are the ones in which the artist utterly and completely permeate whatever they are obsessing about into their music. Their obsession becomes the music - whether it is anger, apathy, or desperation, the artist goes to the depth of the soul with raw, vulnerable, unabashed emotion and in doing so strikes a chord deep inside each of us.
So in making my first record, I strive to be honest and without fear so that my innermost feelings come out on the paper and the music becomes the living spirit of the words. Then I look over my work and find the collection of songs that represent my artistic obsession, and a record is born.
"No Vacancy"Vacancy is the state or condition of being vacant; emptiness. “No Vacancy†is a depiction of the period of time I spent sleepwalking through my life and the aftermath of the awakening that started a new one. Sleepwalking for me was actually living life so fast that I lost myself. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I know I didn’t like what I was doing, but I didn’t know my way out of it. So I lived faster and piled distraction upon distraction to keep myself from thinking about being lost, much less how to be found. But I was haunted. Even while sleepwalking, I was haunted by something deep inside telling me that I needed to change, that there was something better. Finally, after a lot of crying and turmoil, I woke up. And packed up. I ended a successful, but miserable, career and moved across the country to find the real me.
An awakening of this magnitude changes everything. The aftermath is a total sense of freedom – the relief that I will never go back to my old life. The aftermath is the realization that I’ve chosen to live consciously, to actually think about who I am, who I want to be, and what I want to do. The aftermath is the realization that living consciously means actually hearing the little voice in your head (it’s much louder when you’re awake). Sometimes the voice whispers hope, sometimes it shouts FAILURE. I choose not to let fear rule my life, so the aftermath is ultimately the search, and the search is on. “No Vacancy†is the search for self, the search for spirituality to battle the shouting voice, the search to find your soul from the ether to make you feel alive again.