Kora Feder's search for some kind of truth

The Detroit singer/songwriter talks about her new record and being big in Germany

For Kora Feder, the thrill of putting out a record that has resonated with her audience manifests itself in many forms.

From the heartfelt messages and emails she’s received to the more specific stories about how her lyrics have been used to rekindle conversations with exes, the new Detroit homeowner said it’s gratifying to hear her heartfelt and confessional lyrics have an impact on others.

“It's been fun to just have people really connect the songs to their own lives,” Feder said.

Six years after the release of her crowdfunded debut album In Sevens, Feder’s recently-released second record Some Kind of Truth finds the singer/songwriter fleshing out her sound with the help of producer Justin Farren.

While the lyrics rarely stray from the confessional and heartfelt topics she wrote about on her debut 2019 record In Sevens, Feder has tightened up her songwriting and added a backing band to elevate her previous more spare acoustic Americana sound.

Even with a more fleshed out sound, Feder’s music remains very personal, touching on relationships and loss. It’s a record that looks intospectively at the life of a young person in America in the 2020s, Feder said.

"More than my last records, it's very personal and me processing and getting to know myself and the places I've been and people that I've lost in the last few years and people I've gotten close to,” Feder said.

Feder, 30, was born and raised in Davis, California, located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, before moving to Detroit a couple of years ago with her partner. She was introduced to music at a young age, touring as a member of her mother Rita Hosking’s Americana band. Her father Sean Feder was a percussion teacher when she was young, as well as a multi-instrumentalist.

After earning a degree in Global Studies, Feder traveled abroad, accumulating material for became her debut EP Marigolds and her first album, 2019’s In Sevens. Her two years of traveling in Asia also landed Feder on a Thai PBS special on songwriting and indigenous rights.

Described as the best young singer/songwriter since the young Anais Mitchell by Rich Warren of Chicago WFMT Folkstage & Folk Alliance International, Feder’s music has caught on in unexpected ways. Her most streamed song, the von Trapp inspired I’d Be a Maria, landed on a popular German Spotify playlist amassing more than 1.5 million streams.

Feder spoke with Radio Amor about her new record, her experiences traveling abroad and how her most recognized song became a German sensation.

Radio Amor: The opening lyrics to your album on a Rambling Man, you say, Time to figure out what the West Coast did to me. I wondered if that was sort of an intentional way to start things off with, as a mission statement for the album?

Kora Feder: Honestly, I just liked the song and how it came out in production, and it felt like a kind of fun way to open a record. I didn't necessarily think that line had to be the first line or anything like that. I just liked the song as a track one. I think it is kind of like welcoming the listener into my brain in my late 20s.

RA: It feels like this record is a bit more intentionally fleshed out with a backing band and production from Justin Farren. I wondered if you were hoping to achieve a fuller sound than the more stripped down acoustic guitar-centric arrangements?

Feder: I always want to sound like me and my songs and really be focused on the songs and how to best tell the story of them and if sometimes that means it's just going to be me and a guitar, that's great. If that means that we're going to add more, as long as it's about supporting the feeling and the story, then I'm down for it.

Part of why I picked Justin as the producer is just because he's a friend and a fun person to hang out with, but also because he is a songwriter and a storyteller. If you go to a Justin fair and concert, like you're in his world, and you're in his stories, and he really gets that. He also plays a bunch of instruments, and I think just has good taste and how to support a song. It definitely does have more drums and more consistent bass than past productions. I will say that most of the time when I perform, it's still solo, and I like it that way. I mean, I would be open to having a band, but I like it that way, just as a way to keep it focused on the song and the connection between your audience and the performer.

RA: I think one of the standout tracks from the album, In a Young Person's Body references what it is like to be living during COVID pandemic times. I wonder if you could give some background on that song and how it came together, and why it was important to highlight that on the record?

Feder: So I wrote that right when COVID was starting, when John Pryne died in April 2020, and that was kind of what the last straw for me in sort of accepting that the pandemic was happening and not going away, and was affecting us all in really big ways. I wrote the song right after he died, and that's kind of the opening line.

Some songs I write I'm very meticulous and I take a long time, and I have to think about them a lot, but some of them, like this one, just kind of come out in a very free form, just what I'm feeling, kind of way. That song and Paragraphs are both examples of that. They feel more just like me, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, kind of journaling and processing and they're very much like therapy songs for me. This was really just me processing my life in that moment of early COVID and how it was changing the world and changing the world for so many people in so many different ways, from bartenders to my grandpa.

I submitted it to the Tiny Desk contest, just as like a video, and they ended up sharing it, which was really nice. The Washington Post ended up picking it up and doing a story about how the pandemic was aging us all and including this in the article. It kind of went out into the world in a tender time where people were, you know, ready to start processing. So it was really fun to share it then and in a very kind of intimate, just me and guitar video kind of way.

Then for the record, I sent it to Justin, and was like, you know, there's this video of it -- it kind of served its purpose already in the moment when I released it in 2020 as a video. So I was hesitant to just record it again in the same way for this record, because people have passed that moment, and I don't want to just duplicate it in a less intimate way. He suggested, 'What if we try putting it on piano and just kind of giving it its own second life so it doesn't feel like a duplicate of that?' I loved that idea, and that's kind of how that came to be the only song I've ever produced or ever put out that is just piano, no guitar.

RA: Jason Song is another one that stands out for its granular in specificity. I wondered if you could give me a little bit of background on what that song is about?

Feder: Part of the reason that I love the Midwest and Detroit is because it's close to Ontario and the North Channel, and this summer, little kind of shack cottage that I go to. There's a community of families who've been going up for over 100 years, who are all really close and Jason (Schneider) was part of that community. So, I knew him in the context of little, very up north vibes, little tiny cottages on the Great Lakes and falling apart sailboats and dessert, potlucks and just like family history.

(Schneider) loved Joni Mitchell, and we would always play Joni Mitchell songs together and do littles hootenannies and that kind of stuff. He was like a pillar of that community for me, and honestly, just a pillar of my extended family. He was sort of an uncle figure to me. He was a social studies teacher, and just a fierce advocate for everyone in his life, from his students to the preservation of land up in Ontario and kind of everywhere, but especially in that region, helping out like global nonprofits with land preservation. He was also on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic and a fierce advocate in the ACT UP movement. So, just a really inspiring person. He passed away of cancer. He got the diagnosis and then died within, I think a month in 2022. This was another song where I was just needed to process and think about it.

RA: Lastly, I was wondering if you could explain how I’d Be A Maria has caught on in becoming your most recognized song?

Feder: I wish I had a clear answer for you, because people ask this a lot, and I really don't understand how it got on this German Spotify curated playlist. I think someone heard it ... maybe on the radio in Germany, and then someone put it on a playlist that just got tons and tons of traction. Since that playlist has since, like closed down -- it was like a seasonal German folk playlist -- but it got put on a bunch of other folk playlists. It's so funny because it's one of the earliest songs I've ever written and shared - maybe the earliest. I wrote that song in like high school, before even some of the songs that are on the earlier EP. It's just sort of a silly little love song inspired by the Sound of Music, and nuns and feeling like kind of a private person. For some reason, it has resonated with the Germans and obviously other folks, too. The majority of my streaming on streaming services is actually in Germany.

Feder will play Ann Arbor’s North Star Lounge on May 14 in support of the release of Some Kind of Truth. The show is free to attend.