An Interview with Kerry Alexander

by Sarah Tachau ’27

The spring semester has brought a symphony of exciting opportunities for visiting professor, English alumna, and co-founder of the Bad Bad Hats, Kerry Alexander. As she says a sentimental goodbye to her introductory songwriting students, Kerry is looking ahead, or should we say “abroad,” at the Bad Bad Hats’ first European tour. The Words sat down to chat with the bubbly singer-songwriter about everything from her discovery that Gen Z has heard of Owl City’s “Fireflies,” to purchasing her first set of bongos.

Bad Bad Hats’ newest, self-titled album was released on April 12th! You can listen to the band’s music here. Enjoy Kerry’s responses below.

**Responses have been edited for clarity

How has your experience teaching songwriting been?

It’s been great. It was one of those things I’d been thinking about for a long time. And then the second that I got the okay to do it. I was like, “Oh my god, I have to figure out how to teach song writing.” Like, “do I know how to do that?” So I was super nervous and stressed. There was a lot of mystery when I first started but I got the best group of students I could have ever gotten. They were just super open, excited, and supportive of each other. They made me feel at ease. I feel like I’ve been learning stuff that I guess I technically knew but I didn’t really have the terms for. I also just love hearing their songs. Their melodies are stuck in my head constantly. So yeah, I’ve been excited. I think I’ll carry this experience with me forever. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Were there any class activities that you really enjoyed or think were great, creatively?

Yeah, one of my favorites was I wanted them to think about writing a melody, and we learned some terms for certain kinds of melodies. We were thinking about short notes, long notes, notes that are very clustered. They learned about all those terms during class and then I put all the terms on a wheel. So students would come up, spin the wheel, and they’d learn what kind of melody they needed to write. Then they would write it to a karaoke track. We had “Teenage Dream,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and “Wonderwall.” They chose which backing track they wanted to sing to, and then they had to come up with a melody on the spot that fit the parameters. It was super fun. We all jumped around to the drop of “Teenage Dream” every single time it came around. We also did a thing where I would randomly assign them to an idiom, and they had to write a pre-chorus to it. Like, “‘Cat’s got your tongue,’ that’s your chorus, now write a pre-chorus to get us into that chorus.” That was super neat, because they were working together and some students had more of a knowledge base of the origin of the idiom and brought that kind of knowledge to the lyric-writing table. Collaborative writing is so fun because people come up with stuff that you would have never come up with. They have a different set of experiences and influences.

What is one of your favorite memories from teaching this semester?

This is kind of silly, but it’s been fun to learn what songs the students are into. I’m always kind of confused about what they are familiar with or not familiar with, in terms of past music. It’s been fun to both be surprised that they know a song but also be like, “Oh, great. I get to make sure you get the song.” One that I was surprised that they all knew was “Fireflies” by Owl City. We were doing an exercise and I was trying to get everyone to feel what it feels like to sing over a beat and how a melody fits on the beat. So I was like, “Okay, what’s a song you think everyone would know?” Someone was like “‘Fireflies’ by Owl City.” I was like, “I don’t think that’s a song everyone knows.” But then the whole class was like “You would not believe your eyes…” and we were all singing together.

How has it felt to return to the English department as a professor?

It’s kind of funny because in some ways it just feels so natural to be here that I kind of forget that I’m not just still in college here. I came for faculty orientation a year ago, and everyone’s my age, basically, so truly in my mind, it was like, “Wow, there are so many cool people. I wonder what dorms everyone’s living in.” I was like, “No, Kerry, you’re a professor.” But the vibes are still so similar to when I was here. I feel very at home. Though it has been kind of funny to have an office and go to English department meetings and be like, “Oh, I’m getting the behind the scenes peek.” But it’s been cool. A few of my professors are still here, and it’s been awesome to have them as resources as I teach for the first time. They’ve been very helpful and supportive which is great. 

Tell us a bit about your newest, self-titled album: what was the inspiration?

It was born out of our Patreon page. We have a Patreon page where every month we write a new song inspired by a different musical theme or prompt. We started in 2020, as a way to keep busy and be making music. So we wrote a song with a key change or a new wave song, we wrote a song with a wordless chorus too. We were just making the songs for the Patreon and not really thinking too much about them, which is kind of fun. But then eventually we were like, “These songs are not half bad.” We were kind of surprised to find that we had half an album done. I think that just inspired the whole vibe of the rest of the album. It was just to work quickly and follow any idea that sprang up, but not put too much pressure on it. And I think that’s why it has a bounce to it. It has those springy-summery vibes and some upbeat, fun, quirky sounds.

Why did you choose to self-title the album?

I mean, honestly, it’s partially because we couldn’t think of another title. The idea of a self-titled album made sense to us, because it was the first time we produced an album ourselves since our very first EP. In that way, it felt like getting back to where it all began. And because like a lot of the album was made sort of like in the dead of like, 2020-2021 it also feels like a re-emergence. At that time, things were so wild and kind of dark. I think there were a lot of conversations about what it was going to look like, on the other side. I also think, in some ways, it’s a way of being like, “We’re back, and we’re not going anywhere.” So I think it kind of worked out that we could think of another title.

Do you have a favorite story from the creation of this album?

There are a lot. We just sat in the living room, wrote and played through the song. And we knew we needed a bongo so we immediately put on our coats, walked to Music Go Round, bought the bongos, came back, made the track “Let Me In.” That’s the first ever and only song that features all band members playing drums at different points. I got my drum debut, feeling pretty good about it, sounds kind of cool. Yeah, I mean, we would just make the songs in two days. You know, just record drums in the basement, eat some sandwiches, run upstairs to do the vocals and the guitars. It was just a fun process.

What does the future look like for the Bad Bad Hats?

We’re feeling good. We just released an album a week ago, so it’s always exciting to do the first release tour and play the songs for the first time. I’m super excited because we will be playing in the UK and Europe for the very first time. I don’t know why it took us so long, but we’re excited to go. So that’ll be super cool. We’re playing Bristol, Manchester, London– a ton of cities. Then, later in the summer, we’ll be playing local weekend shows. We love doing summer block party shows.

Being back at Macalester, what is one piece of advice you’d give to students that you wish you’d heard yourself?

I think the best thing that happened to me in my music career was finding other people who shared my interest in music. And it’s really easy to do it all yourself now with GarageBand and other programs that make it so everyone can record themselves. It saves time and money, for sure. But I do think there’s just something about making music with other people. That, at least for me, opened up the world and made it possible for us to play shows and for me to see a new destination, a place for the songs I had been writing in my bedroom or in my dorm. So I guess in that way, it’s just finding people who like doing what you do and making those connections and sharing that passion. Something else I was always think back on is how I was always very stressed about school, which makes sense, because, you know, you gotta do that part. But sometimes I wish I’d given myself a little bit more time for activities.That’s so, so important as you leave school and think back to your experiences. Like what clubs are you in? What friends do you make in different areas of Macalester? I think leaving time and space for those kinds of things is good, even though academics are so important as well. Meet as many people as you can. I love the web of people I know, just from going to school, who are now doing all kinds of really cool stuff in the world. 

We thank Kerry again for taking the time out of her busy spring schedule of band practices and finishing up classes to chat with us, and we wish her an abundance of luck on her musical journeys this summer!