Kind Keith

photography by Gavin Alexandra / Artwork by Patrick Duggan

The technicolor lights of a packed Swan Dive dancefloor dim. The surrounding discotheque is hushed into silence as the crowd gravitates en masse beyond the barstools to get a better view. A group of six stood in a circle onstage, fingers and arms intertwined through guitar necks that glistened with the little light left lingering above the crammed sets of tables and booths against the walls. Silence engulfed the stage as the musicians bowed their heads and whispered words of encouragement to one another before returning to their respective instruments. The first song began as blue-white light slowly flooded the stage with a recording of a myriad of voices overlapping, all saying, “You are now listening to…KindKeith.”

Before the shows and the KindKeith name, they went by Keith Galloway and they couldn’t decide if they wanted to play piano or guitar. At the age of six, Keith’s mom had signed them up for piano lessons, where a love for the keys began to form.

When Keith was 13, their mom had signed them up to compete in the NAACP’s Afro-Academic Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) for contemporary piano. Not only did Keith win at 13, but again at 14…and 15…and 16. On top of these literal award-winning performances, a teenage Keith played keys in a band, Majik Taylor, where they began working with a later integral player in their music career, Ian Salazar – otherwise known as Skinny. Local tours were in the works, and one of these tours included Austin at the 21st Street Co-op, which struck a chord that resonated into Keith’s future.

This, my friends, was Keith’s proverbial “a-ha” moment.

With a slew of honors and multiple shows already under their belt, Keith’s desire to pursue music professionally took an accelerando into their secondary education. All of their experience contributed to Keith’s driven immersion into the jazz school at Austin’s own University of Texas campus in 2019. They became a jazz piano major, learning both the technicality and freedom within the genre – an evolving conversation between musicians and their instruments in rhythmic intonation, soul and movement. This path never crossed a shadow of doubt in Keith’s mind.

“What my mom has literally told me throughout my whole life is that if you do what you love and you do it well, there will always be money in it,” Keith said. “She’s always been so supportive.”

In the magic of generational collisions in music taste and influence, the artists Keith’s mom introduced to them not only affected how or what they played as a child, but also affected the influences Keith grew to find on their own later in life to inspire the music they’ve released today. Influential artists via maternal guidance included R&B singers and songwriters like Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and D’Angelo.

As Keith got older and started navigating the giant world of the music industry on their own, other artists like Thundercat and Nick Hakeem became staples in inspiration. Much like Thundercat’s story of notoriously sticking to bass before making music under his own name, Keith found a relatability in this expansion to other areas of music production to become their own unit of creativity.

“I felt connected to [Thundercat] because I was trying to figure out how to weave in the jazz stuff that I was learning into something that was not jazz – and he’s mastered that completely,” Keith explained. “And in 2020, [Nick Hakeem] dropped an album called Will This Make Me Good? and I remember listening to it and crying, thinking this was everything that I wanted out of music.”

KindKeith’s 2020 EP release, Phone, sounds like the music-child made by the pure love of groove alone, exhibiting minor influences from Toro y Moi, Nick Hakeem (duh) and Unknown Mortal Orchestra – dreamy soundscapes with sleek synths bubbling through, encompassing guitar riffs that can only be described as love-drunk desperate, yearning to match the depth of the lyrics. Songs that really stand out on the album include Depression Jazz and Phone – two emotionally-perceptive and lyrically charged tracks that rank as the most played on KindKeith’s Spotify profile with over 3,000 plays each. This album, Keith’s biggest project at the time, was created while they were in schooland with Skinny helping on instrumentals.

The next project for KindKeith was Take What You Need, released in 2021. Keith keeps the same ethereal soundscape as a foundation while adding a nice contrast of backtracks and low bpm beats, solidifying these songs into a halfway state of reality and dream. Keith continues to show their gift of lyricism, which sneaks up on you with emotional gut punches hidden behind Daniel Caesar Blood Orange-esque vocals, sweet and longing. Stand-out tracks on this album include Unfair, Softened Expression of a Quiet

Type and Alive – a song powerful enough to even be alluded to in an introductory paragraph of an article to really set the scene for an artist like KindKeith.

Then was the 2022 release titled 11:11 (WHAT TIME IS IT?), a two-track homage to Keith’s regular post-class naps and the ideal behind making countless unheard wishes at the proverbial time. Keith’s vocals overlap one another as a patchwork of backing tracks, drums and whistles elevate the tempo and overall funk.

“None of the wishes I made during those 11:11 moments came true necessarily,” Keith revealed. “But things overarching throughout my life that I have been wanting to do have been happening – I’d always wanted to go on a big tour, I’d always wanted to play some of my favorite stages in Austin. So I guess the thesis of this album was that, in a way, my whole life felt like an 11:11 moment.”

In 2023, KindKeith broke away from the standard studio norm as an independent artist with the release of live recordings featuring the usual show set list. In lieu of news regarding a bandmate’s move, Keith felt it was a better time than any to capture that live sound they worked so hard to curate. With a shoddy audio set-up that took try after try, the set was recorded at Keith’s own house, also known as the Pink Palace.

“I think the main reason I wanted to do a live album came from the fact that after the world opened back up in 2021, I worked so, so, so hard to make the live sound something good,” Keith divulged. “After every show, I would think to myself, ‘I wish we recorded that, it was so fun, so special.’”

And so it was. What came out of that night was a beautiful amalgamation of Keith’s insane creative euphony and the natural way it seamlessly blends into the musicality of their full band, leaving the listener with a lingering urge to witness the action at an actual show. Most importantly, however, is the undisguised whimsy and nonconformity that sits in the heart of KindKeith’s live performances.

In creating all these projects while attending courses geared towards the jazz cannon of big band production, Keith found the flow in writing their own music. They found it easiest to start with the familiarity of piano and work their way out to incorporate other parts, including synth, drums, bass and guitar. With a specific idea in mind for songs and real sound, Keith needed a strong team of instrumentalists to back them up in live performances. What remains noticeable to those truly listening at KindKeith shows are those moments of change, both intentional and unintentional, that bring out the band’s true intensity of love for music as a whole. No live song from a KindKeith performance will sound exactly like its original release, leaving each show to be almost a special secret between Keith, the venue and the chosen audience.

Keith recalls a set in which they performed a cover of Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets, where they gave drummer Zach Kursman the okay to go absolutely buckwild on a solo at the end of the song. Heads and chairs spun, and Keith knew they achieved exactly what they wanted: a live show of impromptu jam sessions between friends that anyone watching is bound to enjoy.

“That’s something that’s really important to me,” Keith emphasized. “I feel like we’re all such great performers, and we all put so much work into being great instrumentalists, and you don’t always get a chance to show that.”

When it comes to a musically-saturated city like Austin, meeting one musician leaves potential for infiltrating three to five bands in the area. The music industry is as big as it is interlinked, making networking a total dream and scheduling band practices an absolute nightmare. What sticks out with Keith’s sound is not only the musical conversation held between each instrument, but also an underlying flexibility to play broken down sets when not everyone is available.

Keith makes do, however, continuously scheduling shows where no two performances will sound the exact same.

February has been a big month for KindKeith, including their 23rd birthday celebrated on Valentine’s Day with a show at Chess Club downtown. The momentous occasion led Keith and company to play a new single release that dropped hours before for the first time live. Can You Trust Me? starts off with a slew of syncopated clapping between the group before the keys and guitar burst into total groove, enticing the crowd to dance through infectious stage and musical chemistry. Keith also won the award for “Best Pianist” from the Austin Chronicle’s Music Awards, posting a video on social media saying they are at a loss for words and choosing instead to play the keys in gratitude before simply signing off in total KindKeith style.

Bask in the glory that is one’s pure love for musical creation and remember that life is beautiful.