Today we’d like to introduce you to Kay Kowaleski.
Hi Kay, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to go to the club. Looking back, in many ways I was primed for my life to fall down this path. Dancing and revelry might literally be in my blood.
The 2-car garage of my house growing up in North Carolina was decked out with a disco ball, neon lights, lasers, and custom-built speakers. We even had black lights that brought to life the otherwise invisible Sesame Street characters in a bright, electric green that my dad spray painted on the concrete floor. As I entered elementary school, our cul-de-sac started filling in with families my parents’ age, and kids my age. Friday and Saturday nights would be spent playing kickball, living out fantasy lives in the creek behind our houses, and finally coming to my garage to party. We’d turn on the disco ball, and the lasers, and later a fog machine—aptly we would call it “doing the lights.” I’d get to be in control of my dad’s third-gen iPod that was filled with basically every billboard hot 100 song on the charts, going back to probably the 70s. Me and the girls on the block would dance and sing our little 9-year-old hearts out to the likes of Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Usher, Fergie, Hannah Montana, and The Black Eyed Peas. Our parents would sit around a fire pit in the driveway opposite the garage, keeping a loose eye on us from across the street while their drinks stretched the night into early morning, forgetting what time it was and when kids were supposed to be in bed.
So in a way, I’ve been going to the club for as long as I can remember. This was my first taste of nightlife. Long before I knew what a club was, I knew what it felt like to lose myself in music alongside loved ones. It’s always been a tender place of communal joy for me, and it’s always been, quite literally, my home.
My dad has eternally been an avid music fan and collector. He credits his mail-order subscription to Columbia House in the mid-’80s with helping him amass his enormous CD collection. (I’ve since learned they just stopped accepting orders after 71 years in business!) My mom, who was working as a leasing agent at their apartment complex in the late ’80s, volunteered my dad to DJ a party for the residents. With his electrical engineering background, he built his own speakers, cabinets, stands, and racks, picked up a mixer, and DJed the party with his collection of CDs and cassettes. It went so well that, alongside a friend, he started DJing corporate events, weddings, and parties.
All of the equipment from this venture—the speakers, the lights, the accumulated music—then ended up in the garage of the first house my parents bought. With the perfect set up for parties, their garage became the hot locale for weekend neighborhood block parties, infamously dubbed the “One Car Bar.” I was told the cops showed up probably half a dozen times for noise complaints. Maybe partying is an inheritable trait!
When my parents eventually settled down and had me and my brother, my dad brought the old setup back to life in our garage, adding touches like the Sesame Street characters spray-painted on the floor and a giant whiteboard with UV-reactive markers. He later transferred his music library to an iPod and laptop, giving me easy access to just about any song I wanted to hear. That garage became the backdrop for my earliest memories of dancing and singing to my favorite songs with my friends under moody lights.
I grew up listening to all kinds of music thanks to my dad’s wide-ranging tastes and his background as a DJ, but funk and disco were the sounds that always resonated with me most deeply. My parents definitely had an affinity for these genres too, as I can remember many an evening blasting Chic, Kool & The Gang, KC & The Sunshine Band, and Earth, Wind & Fire. As my mom says, “I just love a good bass line!” and that must have been passed down to me, too. The grooves of disco and early house are evergreen inspiration that consistently appear in my track selections and emerging music production.
DJing wasn’t something I had really considered, much less understood as an art form, until the last few years. Despite my dad’s history as a DJ, I never saw him mix. I just knew he could find any song I wanted and he had a vast library. My impression of DJing was more or less that you pressed a button and played a song. My tastes continued to evolve as I discovered more electronic music, and I found myself cataloguing and organizing playlists around moods and vibes. Once in college, I’d often be handed the aux and trusted with my music taste. As I graduated into being able to actually go to clubs, I felt that nostalgic pang of familiarity, paired with reverent awe for the person that architects the entire experience of the night from behind the booth. Somewhere between my degree in Experience Design and my love for the collective release of dancing all night in a full room, I realized I might have a place in this craft.
I’m coming up on two years since I got my first deck, and I can truly say I have found a creative outlet that makes so much sense to and for me. I really enjoy the entire process, from discovering new tracks, cataloguing and organizing my library, cueing tracks and training my ears, learning to respond to a crowd’s energy in real time, to creating sets and mixes that flow and feel like a story. Before this was my main practice, I was making a lot of collages from various magazines. I love skimming through the reporting in National Geographic, stitching snippets of phrases with the imagery from Playboys, tech, and travel magazines. The completed piece would always result a new story that emerged from the sum of its parts, and I think this mode of creating very much tracks and aligns with the pivot to becoming a DJ and selector. I love finding the through lines between seemingly disparate works and bringing them together in a way that reveals something new.
I spent a while trying to come up with an artist name that felt distant enough from myself to feel almost like an alter ego. I ultimately landed on the same name that has followed me through my life, “Kiwi.” One of the aforementioned friends I would dance with in the garage had a little brother who couldn’t quite pronounce my name, Kayleigh. He’d call me Kiwi. That name stuck between us, and it’s been a creative moniker I’ve come back to again and again.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Honestly, my journey so far has been relatively smooth. There is a beautiful community of DJs in Austin that is largely facilitated by those who host open decks, which are essentially open mic nights but for DJs. You show up with your USB of songs, and are generally randomly selected for a 15-20 minute slot where you get to practice on club standard equipment. It’s a fantastic place to mingle and meet other people in the scene, connect over shared taste, and have the opportunity for exposure to others looking to book shows (or create your own!). It was not long after I started frequenting open decks that I would see the same faces over and over, found a community, and started getting asked to play at official gigs. It’s been a quick build in momentum since the top of this year, and I’ve been following wherever it takes me!
Currently, I find myself in a more reflective, almost incubatory period. I’ve had a pretty wild and fast-paced year, with a lot of opportunities that I’m incredibly grateful for. Lately, I’ve felt my musical tastes drawn to more minimal sounds in this current era of my life. I’ve been stripping back some of the ultra-high-energy tracks I’ve historically gravitated toward (though I still love playing to that energy when the moment calls for it) and find myself increasingly drawn to the depth and subtlety of early house music. I’ll unearth a track that sounds so fresh and forward-thinking, only to discover it was released 30+ years ago. There’s something endlessly inspiring about that, and about the pioneers who helped shape a sound that continues to evolve without losing its power. I’m still relatively new to this craft and very much a student, and I’ve been making an effort to learn more about the history of house music and the art of DJing. The more I learn, the more I appreciate the Black and queer communities—particularly in Chicago and New York—that gave this music its life. I want to approach the craft with that history in mind, honoring what came before me while finding my own way to contribute to what comes next.
I was recently selected for a year-long creative residency with a local arts and culture organization, [Future Front, but I don’t think I am allowed to disclose this until they officially announce it] designed to give artists space to explore and develop their creative practices in conversation with the public. This is a question I’ve been sitting with for a long time, really throughout most of my creative life. I’m drawn to the possibility that something I make might shift how someone thinks or feels, even if only for a night, or a fleeting moment. But I’m equally interested in how that experience might change me, and how my practice might evolve through the people, places, and experiences I encounter. DJing feels uniquely suited to this kind of exchange, where the work is never entirely separate from the people experiencing it. I’m excited to explore what my practice can become, and what it might offer others, as I have more opportunities to bring it into different public spaces and contexts.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I ultimately got into DJing because I love to dance. I know the comparison might be a little well-worn, but the dance floor genuinely feels like church to me sometimes. I love reaching this flow state where it feels like my body is being carried by the music as it would by waves in the ocean, when I forget my worries and feel truly present and connected to something much larger than myself. It’s an experience I know and love deeply, and one I carry with me whenever I play. It’s that feeling of surrender and connection that I hope to cultivate for others, even if only for the length of a set or just for a moment.
My background is in Communication Design, with a concentration in User Experience. Much of my education centered on understanding how visual information shapes our perception, and how people navigate and interact with the products, systems, and spaces around them. That perspective has stayed with me beyond digital design. I’m interested in all the little decisions that shape how an environment feels and who it invites in, from the layout and atmosphere of a space to the way an event is communicated, the people it brings together, and the details that make someone feel welcome or encourage them to stay. I also design flyers for shows and events, which has become another way for me to think about how visual identity and communication set the tone for an experience before someone even arrives. As I find my way back into event curation, I’m excited to bring these sensibilities together and think more intentionally about the full experience, from the first impression to the feeling people leave with.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
I’m going to leave this blank because I have written quite a bit already, and that through line I hope comes through in the sense that I love bringing people together and providing a space where people can feel good for just a bit.
I also answered a lot of these questions more narratively, of course move around some of these paragraphs and responses in a way that makes sense in the format of the interview :~)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://heykiwi.komi.io/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/v0idkiwi/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@user-ox3gz9gb6o
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kaykow
