You found Wisconsin's local music authority. This is Magsink Radio. We are local music.
How you doing everybody? Welcome to Magsink on Civic Media, original local music from Wisconsin.
Time for the double dip of the mini-layer rocker.
Jimmy, Kelly Hepper draws her listeners into an emotive experience, offering a vicarious catharsis for all.
Hepper's heartfelt songs are generally rich with self-expression, revealing a deep authenticity.
Kelly is performing throughout the month of April. I was Wisconsin's famous landmark,
Cave of the Mounds, in a series called Sound Baths. And here with us in the studio to perform
a few songs and tell us what a sound bath is. Madison Singer, songwriter, Kelly Hepper. Kelly,
welcome to Magsink Radio. Thanks for having me. So Kelly, tell us a little bit about yourself.
What's your backstory? Well, I'm just a little white girl from Northern Wisconsin, you know.
What town are you? Manitouac. I grew up in Manitouac. Oh yeah.
Yeah, that was very homogeneous up there for a long time there.
But yeah, I moved here in 2010 and to go to school as a non-traditional student.
I was a mother with two kids and just really fell in love with Madison and I felt just a different
sense of home here and just so I was born and raised in Manitouac. But I feel like a spiritually
reborn here in Madison. How did you get into music? Oh, it was just my coping mechanism. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, and still like when? How long? I mean, I wrote my first piano song at eight.
Oh, okay. I still love it. Okay, so your parents put you in piano lessons? Yeah, I never learned to
read music. I don't understand why that's not color code in. You learn how to play piano without
reading music. Yeah, yeah, by ear. Yeah, yeah, I have several. That is non-traditional. I have
several piano songs I've written and I love them, but I forget them because I don't know how to
write them down. So Kelly Epper is live with us here in the layer 844-967-2789. So when you came
to Madison, you've reverted here. You live here now, right? Yeah. Do you ever play shows
up in Manitouac? You know, I haven't. I think that one day I will, but I just haven't. Okay.
Now, let's get to some live music in the layer with Kelly Epper presented by the Aaron Webber group.
The first song you have for us tonight, it's called Mary Goround. Is this a song about spinning?
No, it's about getting off that spin. So it is about spinning. Yeah, yeah, my head was spinning
from a toxic relationship and there was kind of this, I had, you know, just been going through my
own inner work and I was in a place of very a lot of reactivity, but at this point when I wrote
the song, it was like this place where I found a choice point and it was just like, I can step off
of that and I don't have to, I can be in a place of stillness where a choice point shows up and
I can make a different choice. Let's check it out right now. Kelly Epper is live in the layer. It's
Maxine on Saturday night.
Every door and I melted with my will. Anything you said before doesn't matter to me anymore.
I am amazing. I am strong but still. I intend alignment with divine creators will.
You don't want to hold on me now.
I set my course and chose my path open, my heart beat in the crease and released my guilt.
Shaman, fear not welcome, do you hear anything? Reducing my cheer is kind of active to my deal.
Santa Pada, you've built my heart rate. Santa Pada, you've built my heart rate.
Shaman's soul is my new book. I'm able to see the shame of something real I don't always
seem but I can feel it but you try I bet you will. Anything you said before doesn't matter to me
anymore. I am amazing. I am strong but still. I intend alignment with divine creators.
Re-creators will. You don't got to hold on me now.
You don't got to hold on me now.
I do not come in my own authority. I am an angel of the light.
It goes against your conventional wisdom but this is my right.
I do not come in my own authority. I am a service of the light.
I live here now where I found you in the corners of the night.
Hey yeah.
I am amazing.
I am strong and still.
I intend alignment with divine creators.
Oh, I intend alignment.
You don't got to hold on me now.
Beautiful. Taxing, cost of immediate, Kelly Hepper live in the layer.
Don't forget if you want to call or text your questions you do that right now.
844-967-2789.
Kelly, tell us about going to the new music industry night in Madison for Copa which is
community organizations promoting the arts. It's an open jam with workshops.
What do you know about it?
I started going in December and it was a friend told me about it and I was like let's go.
Roll the dice and it's great. They have a house band and then you just sign up at the door
if you want to step in and place in music and they'll rotate people in and then they have a
featured performer and it's every other Monday. I just started printing my music and bringing it
and say okay guys you want to try this with me so they were just kind of on the fly
going you know try to back me up and so it's been fun and I actually was the featured performer
this last time and I think the next one is April. Yeah, the first Monday in April.
So yeah it's a I'm you know meeting new musicians and looking for people to collaborate with them
so I get to kind of feel them out you know. That's kind of the edge of Madison in in Fitchburg.
Correct. And they're they're actually going to be building a campus there if I'm correct.
Yeah, that's a Dale stick. Yeah, Copa. It's community organizations promoting the arts.
They have an open jam and when did you say that? It's on Monday nights every other Monday.
Every other Monday night. There's a lot of cool stuff going on there so it's worth checking it out.
And what are the workshops like? Oh, they did like a writing workshop like how to write a screenplay.
Wow. Yeah, and yeah, I thought that was cool. It got snowed out so.
But yeah, it's worth yeah, a lot of different stuff so I check it out.
So at 40, you have a new perception. You are shedding identity.
What does that mean? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm 40 so yeah, I saw a video where someone was talking
about like yeah, you know what's like a whole new life. It's like I've dealt with a lot of the
insecurities of my youth and you know, it's like I have a whole other life I get to live without
carrying that baggage. You know, all these different things I thought, you know, that I thought I was
and one I was talking before with you with my religious and decoration. I didn't realize that it
was just walking around the world with this belief in my base programming, believing that I'm bad.
So I just had a lot of guilt like walking through the world and I didn't even realize it was
just like static in the background. So just really looking underneath of like the who and what
I am and shedding the stuff that is not really true to who I am at my soul level.
So I like the the new version who I am now. I like myself a lot better than I did last year and
I thought I was pretty great last year. So I'm just gonna keep working on shedding the stuff that
is not me and stepping into who I truly am. Wow, it sounds like a tool song. 46 and 2. I can only
imagine too that that's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be an ongoing process. Oh yeah, I mean once
you start, I mean, I really don't understand not doing the inner work because I it's like I thought I
was in a box and then I found the edge of the box and I was like, oh, and I broke those walls down
and I'm like, okay, now I'm free. Oh wait, I'm just in a bigger box. Where's the new edge? Yeah,
so, wait until you hit 50. Oh, I'm gonna be so shiny. What, what are your kids think?
All that I'm a nut. Yeah, well that's good. That's all right. Yeah, but yeah, how old are they
right now? They're 17 and 20. Oh, okay. Yeah, gonna be 18. Yeah. Wow. So right there. Yeah,
are you gonna be an empty nuster? No, no, okay. Do kids leave the nest? No, my first one left the
nest and she loves it. She said she's never coming back. I don't blame her. She's very clean and
I'm a slob. So, bless her. I want to be just like I want to grow up.
Well, let's get back to live music and the layer with Kelly Harper presented by the Aaron
Webber group. The next song you have for us tonight has even it hasn't even been recorded yet.
It's called Darkest Before Dawn. Is this a song of warning or hope? It is a song of hope.
Yeah, it's I mean, I guess especially in the transformational work that I do, I can kind of tell
when it's like myself is fighting myself and it's like that's when I can tell there's going to be
a breakthrough soon because it's like the ego doesn't want to die. I mean, it's job is to keep you safe.
But then when I'm in it feeling that that crunchy spot, I go, oh, wait a minute. This is probably
among the verge of shedding a layer. And so, yeah, I really like the poetry of this one. It's a
collaboration with my friend Adrian Walner who was a poet in the Northern Woods. And yeah,
Darkest Before Dawn. Kelly Harper is live in a layer. It's Maxine on Civic Media.
They say the darkest is just before dawn.
Well, I've been feeling this darkness for far too long.
But we can't see the light when our eyes are closed.
Gotta open up, let the shadow be exposed.
The darkness I found in me was connected to everyone like a tree.
When I face the darkness in me, I face it in you.
Trying to read a reflection of what is true.
And yeah, we trigger and twitch and pull each other's strings.
Stacking our sounds on splinters and stings.
We're taking the route to a rabble-lock tension to light the way to sincere expression.
To be honest with you, it's been with me my whole life.
The battle scene of shadow and strife is opening up for something better
out of the darkness and into the light.
Can you feel me?
Can you feel me?
And I may lead you to the devil's door.
And I may lead you to the devil's door.
And I may lead you to the devil's door.
But we've been here before.
Yes, we've been here before.
And we may see that the devil is just a long lost friend.
And we'll remember how to live in light again.
Can you feel me?
Can you feel me?
In the darkness, we can grow.
Yes, through the darkness, it will show.
That our roots connect to give us strength.
Our tap roots feed in this wavelength.
The love inside of me, it's inside of you.
Very nice.
Kelly Huppert live in the layer here on Maxine Corradio, 844-967-2789.
Kelly, one of the things I'm excited to talk to you about tonight are the sound baths
at the cave of the mounds.
Tell us about our speedos encouraged here.
Oh, I mean, speedos are always encouraged.
Please don't take your shirt off.
Jimmy, do you have a speedo?
No.
I already saw you in one in my mind.
Oh, oh boy.
Oh boy.
It's great.
It's great.
I'm really sorry about that.
That sounds like something from that darkness song, which is here.
I'll give you my card that I have from my therapist later.
Oh, sure.
She's great.
Yeah.
It's actually called guided meditation and vibrational sounds at the cave of the mounds.
It's a ticketed event.
So 430-6, it's like guided meditation.
And then it ends in the, I guess, the main area of the cave where I will be doing sound bath.
I have crystal singing bowls and they're very beautiful, meditative.
And I do sound baths once a month on the second Sunday of the month.
It a place called Clarity in Middleton.
And so every Sunday in April, they'll be at the mounds.
Yeah, 4 to 6, 30, or whatever.
I just said before it was correct.
Yeah, and it's, I mean, the thing with meditation and stuff,
it's getting started in meditation.
It's not really that fun.
But remembering that the space between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.
And with this state of affairs out in the world, a lot of people are dysregulated.
And just coming into presence is like so valuable, so important for us.
So sound bath is really a great way to just be nourishing yourself.
You know, you mentioned the world today.
It comes at you so fast, so hard, so awful most of the time.
I know.
It's hard to process.
I know, I couldn't stop that speedo picture from just popping in my head.
Even though you told yourself, no, right?
You know, it just comes, but tell me about the guided,
what did you call the guided meditative experience through the cave?
What's that like?
Well, I'm not doing that part, so I don't know.
But I assume that it's someone with maybe a soothing voice.
I mean, yeah, they're hanging out.
It's probably a cut.
Yeah, and slight mints and
a meditative walk through.
Okay.
And there in a speedo.
Yeah, well, that'd be cool.
But it's 50 degrees, so bring layers, I guess.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ooh.
You know, Kelly, you said you also do
personal sound healing sessions with intuitive energy work.
Yeah.
You incorporate a variety of techniques, including vocal toning.
That's, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, so I was somewhere along my journey.
I just started to recognize organically that I could feel energy coming out of my hand.
And
and I just was like, well, what's this?
I read a coffee table book on a rakey and I was like, let's rakey each other.
It's not rakey what I do because I haven't been fully trained in rakey.
But we all do just, I mean, guys, do you believe in this energy
that we're all just swimming in it?
Everything is energy.
Yeah.
So I'm being aware of my energy.
And in my mind, I'm imagining that I'm just tapping into
God energy.
It doesn't really matter what anyone actually believes.
It's just like come with playful curiosity.
And so my sessions, I have clients laying on a table,
a treatment table, fully clothed with a little blanky.
It's very like nurturing.
And I use different tools to just kind of like bring someone into relaxation.
But a big part of it is touch.
I just place and hold my hands.
I usually start at their feet and just guide them into like a little bit of breath work.
And I'll do vocal toning over it.
So I'm just going, oh.
Just like bringing you into presence.
Wow.
I'm feeling relaxed right now.
But listen, we only have a few minutes left.
And we have one more song.
So let's get to it and get a little healing going.
This next song, it's called Nighttime Baby.
Why don't you just go ahead and get into it?
Oh, yes, it's a lullaby.
So it's Nighttime Baby.
The moon is high in the sky and the stars are all around.
Night has come and it's time to put all your worries away.
I'm always near.
I never go far.
The playground's silent in the dark.
No one's playing in the park in the dark.
Close your eyes, just let them fall.
Mama's never too far.
Good night, my baby.
Your dreams are waiting for you tomorrow's a new day.
And it's just for you.
Mama's love for you can never fade away.
Mama's love never sleeps.
Mama's love never sleeps.
Wow.
Kelly Harper pulling off the acapella tonight in the back seat studio.
I don't think we've ever had that.
That was bad.
Other than the UW, that was like 13 guys.
Kelly Upper, you're a solo.
You knocked that out of the park.
Wow, that was amazing.
Have you ever done acapella work with other than that song?
I mean, like a barbershop quartet or something like that.
I mean, in high school.
I sing to myself.
Do it more.
That was fantastic.
Hey, working people come out and see Kelly Harper play live.
Hepper like pepper.
It happens.
No, you're not.
I often play cargo coffee.
I don't have any books on the books.
I don't have any shows on the books.
See the, uh, in participant in soundbath.
You can check me out on my website.
Kelly hepper.com.
Hepper like pepper.
Facebook Instagram.
High priestess of harmony on Instagram.
Nice.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you guys.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
Hey, you know what? You should probably put a shirt on.
Cover that speed.
Okay, I'll do that.
Need to shave as well, I guess.
And great local music.
This is Max and Gradio.
We are local music.