Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoë Knight.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I began singing before I could speak, and I’ve been a musician ever since. Growing up in the very rural North Country above the Adirondack Mountains in New York State, I learned quite early to be entertained by my own devices. I first studied piano, then drums and percussion, then classical voice, and I taught myself to play the bass & guitar. After Mom left when I was 10, home with Dad became a hard place for me to be. I found an outlet in the hardcore & punk rock scene that grew out of one of the local colleges, which were the only influences of culture around for hours. It was there that I formed my first original band, with whom I wrote, recorded, and performed as the growling, bass playing front woman.
I graduated high school a year early to get away from home and attend the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, where I studied Music Education with a concentration in voice. My teachers there were not at all supportive of my independent artistic endeavors, so I left Crane after a year. Two weeks later, a few weeks before my 18thbirthday, I moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to be with my ex-fiancée. We’d been dating about a year and a half. When I got there, he isolated and controlled me, and he beat me on a regular basis. I stayed because it felt safer than going home.
I got my first job at the mall across the street from our apartment. We moved several times. After a string of retail management jobs selling everything from guitars, to books, to medieval weapons, to bedsheets, I began working as a receptionist, and soon a manager, in boutique hair salons. I also wrote and recorded countless sad songs for voice and guitar, and rehearsed a few times with a couple of different bands.
When finally I decided I’d had enough, I left my ex-fiancée the night before my 21st birthday while he was gone and without telling him, and moved to Boston, where I knew one person I’d met 3 weeks earlier at a festival. That person was a filmmaker, and I was fortunate to be dropped right into the middle of Boston’s underground art and music scene by accompanying him to video shoots. I found a heavy metal band to sing for within days of moving to the city, and went on to form my own hard rock project shortly after, with whom I wrote, recorded, and performed for the next few years.
I continued my career as a salon manager. While running a high-profile salon in the South End, I discovered the visionary art world through two world-famous artists, and their non-profit arts organization with a 12,000 sq. ft. event space in Manhattan. In November of 2006, I moved to Brooklyn to get more involved with these artists, and their organization. Within a couple of weeks they offered me a full time job as Managing Bookkeeper for the non-profit organization, as well as their private studio. I also quickly found a band with whom I wrote, recorded, and performed.
I ran these artists’ businesses for three years, and ushered the organization’s transition to their 40-acre property in the Hudson Valley, where I lived and worked on-site for one year. When I left Brooklyn I left my band as well, but a new band came to me a few months later in the Hudson Valley. With them I wrote an epic, heavy, psychedelic art rock concept album about the human experience. It was to be presented as a full-length choreographed performance art piece.
Ultimately, living and working in community was not sustainable for me, so I left after a year in 2009, when the album was only half lived and written. Being at the tail end of the recession, it was proving impossible to find employment without a degree, despite my 9 years of business management experience. So, I decided to return to Boston in 2010 to complete my degree at Berklee College of Music, after nearly a decade out of school.
I wrote the second half of the album remotely during my first semester at Berklee, with the guitarist and drummer still in the Hudson Valley, where I traveled to rehearse every few weeks. Two days before studio recording began, our guitarist left the band in the midst of his own life-changing events. The band couldn’t continue without him. For the next several years I couldn’t find musicians I wanted to work with, so I went on hiatus from performing, but continued to write music.
I started teaching voice and piano privately in 2011, while still a full-time student, and I found I absolutely loved it! In May of 2013, after 9 consecutive semesters, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with my degree in Music Education. My reputation as a voice teacher had spread, and I quickly had a full private studio, mostly just by word of mouth. I continued to teach in people’s homes, and in a few public & private schools, until becoming fully self-employed in the fall of 2015. Then, I began producing semi-annual student recitals at Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge. These performance opportunities became the highlight of my students’, and my, music experience.
In late Winter of 2016, after a devastating breakup, I went for the first time, alone, to a tiny club in Somerville that a friend had been telling me about. There, I found musicians who had spent their entire lives mastering their instruments, like I did, and they were all playing funk, soul, reggae, and blues! Most of what they played was improvised, and this music being created as a living, constantly evolving entity made me want to dance! It was a joy I’d never experienced, and nothing had ever felt better. After spending most of my career making music that was heavy, dark, and moody, and resonated with my own traumas, I finally found music that made me feel really good!
I was hooked, and immersed myself nearly every night after (and since) in this vibrant community of working musicians. Right from the start I wanted to be one of them, but I knew I had a long way to go to be able to make it worth their while to work with me. So, I spent a year and a half getting to know all the musicians & venues in town, learning the last 60 years worth of funk, soul, and blues music, and writing in this new paradigm on the Steinway grand piano that came to me around the same time.
In August of 2017, I returned to the stage and debuted this material with my new band, Mythical Beasts, which is a varying assortment of this city’s monster players. We play original funky bluesy disco soul sprinkled with reggae and rock & roll, plus select covers, for your getting down pleasure a few times a month in Boston and the surrounding areas. We start a first Sunday residency at Mercy Tavern in Salem on August 5th, a second Friday residency at Bull McCabe’s in Somerville on September 14th, and I’m putting on a birthday and anniversary show at the Sinclair Kitchen in Harvard Square on Thursday, August 16th!
Lately, besides teaching voice & piano full-time and managing Mythical Beasts, I’m working on opening a music school with a restaurant/nightclub attached, probably in Roslindale, but possibly in JP. The Constellation School & Stage will be a non-profit organization that provides a space that’s welcoming to families, where people of all ages can come to engage with music, as a student, performer, member of the audience, or some combination of the three. Music belongs to everyone, and so I’m building a place where everyone can experience it. I hope you will come!
Has it been a smooth road?
Certainly not. I was bullied relentlessly in school for being very poor (and consequently poorly dressed), pretty weird, and a little fat. My father is an angry, manipulative, alcoholic narcissist who, after my mom left, taught in a maximum security federal prison, and was skilled at punishing a person in every way he could that didn’t involve physical harm. I first attempted suicide when I was 10, and my last attempt was when I was 19. My brother ran away when I was 14, and it was just me after that until I went to college. When I was 16, I met a man who offered to take me away from it all, but he just controlled and beat me all the time. I thought that was love though, because I didn’t know any better. I stayed with him because I’d learned from my father to be arrogant, too proud to admit I’d made a mistake, and too accustomed to being criticized for my shortcomings to ask for any help. I couldn’t go back home to my Dad, who ridiculed me for pursuing a career in music, and ensured with his lies that I wouldn’t want a relationship with my mom, which worked until my mid-20’s.
My adolescence was sucked of all it’s joy and color by men who showed their love by abusing me. When I moved to Boston on my 21stbirthday, there I was, with all the thorns and scars I carried, and which I had to come up against a few years later in my mid-20’s in New York City. It was a rude awakening to realize that everything I did was out of love, and my idea of love was entirely wrong.
After I figured that out, I met a man with who I thought was the love of my life, with whom I moved back to Boston. He had his own issues, and after we lived together for nearly 5 years (through and after my time at Berklee), I found out that he had another life with another woman in another city. That was a devastating blow to my self-esteem. Again, everything I thought I knew was wrong – about love, and about myself.
I always knew, and music taught me, that there was something greater that had to make it all worthwhile. I made it my life’s mission long ago to find whatever that greater purpose was.
Right after that last breakup is when I encountered funk music, and discovered a happiness I never knew possible. I was tired of feeding into the pain I’d lived through, so I gave myself entirely to this joy that I found in getting down to funk, soul, and blues music, which filled the hole in my heart like no other music had done before. There’s no room for anything anymore but this joy. It’s the greater purpose I always knew was there.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I am a private voice & piano instructor, and a working musician. My students are the light of my life! I take great pride in connecting deeply with them, and helping them grow by giving them all the support and tools they need to fully realize their own potential as artists, and human beings. Many of my former students are now performers, music teachers, music therapists, and theater professionals. Their successes are mine, too. To know that I have helped to support musicians who are now out sharing their joy in music with the world heals my own heart and makes me hopeful that we, as a species are on the right track.
I’m very proud of the music that I write, too, purposefully calling attention to the struggles we all share, and the goodness and beauty that we can create together. I’m also proud to play this music with my band family, in which the beautiful diversity of the cultures in our world is well represented. Music is what unites us!
Places that make music accessible to everyone, like Johnny D’s and Ryles Jazz Club did, are valuable community resources. This is why I’m opening The Constellation School & Stage. We need places that foster these experiences of expression, excellence, connection, and collaboration in our communities, and which also provide the skills we need to accomplish these feats of greatness. The Constellation will provide a space welcoming to families and people of all ages, where the community can engage with music 7 days a week by taking lessons, playing in a student ensemble, having a meal and seeing a show, or playing a show! The teachers and students will perform there, and there will be all-ages open mics and jams in which the community at large can come to make music. As far as I know, there’s nothing else like this, anywhere.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Absolutely! This city is full of artists, and patrons of the arts. However – it’s not the city alone that is responsible for this. It takes a village! It’s what we choose to do with the connections we make with each other in the communities that we build and participate in that create support for businesses such as this. I’m fortunate to now be calling on the benefits of the communities I’ve been part of for many years. I couldn’t possibly accomplish The Constellation without the people around me! It’s by, and for, all of us.
Contact Info:
- Address: Roslindale, MA
- Website: www.theconstellationschool.org – coming soon!
- Phone: 617-642-3699
- Email: theconstellationschoolandstage@gmail.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/
mythicalbeastsband
Image Credit:
Photo 1: Third Grade Halloween Parade, Canton, NY, 1991
Photo 2: Decima EP Release Show, Manhattan, NY, 2008. Photo by Salma Chiu.
Photo 3: With Nathan in 2012, student from 2011 – present. Photo by Cynthia Breazeal.
Photo 4: With students in 2016, left to right: Katherine (2013 – present, BM Expressive Arts Therapy, Lesley University, grad. date 12/2018), Sasha (2013 – 2017, Singer with international touring ensemble, The Young Americans since 2015), Angelina (2013 – 2016, BM Music Education, University of Tampa, grad. date 5/2020)
Photo 5: Mythical Beasts at The Plough And Stars, Cambridge, MA, 2018. Photo by Tom DesPres.
Photo 6: poster by Zoë Knight
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