The Music of Kirstie Kraus
“Music is literally everything to me, my heart, my soul, like everything. I do music stuff pretty much all day long every day, because that's what I love to do.” - Kirstie Kraus
Today, we’re talking with Kirstie Kraus, an amazing young talent who has found a way to navigate two parallel tracks to success and stardom: in both the country music and Trop Rock / Island Music genres.
She already has racked up country music success and grabbed the attention of Nashville with hit songs that include Bird, Thirsty, Silver and Dab A Dolly (a tribute to country music icon Dolly Parton). In fact, Kirstie was honored at the Grand Ole Opry as the 2024 Female Country Artist of the Year by the Josie Music Awards for Independent Musicians.
But at the same time, Kirstie is also one of the most popular singers in Trop Rock today, with songs that include Beaches Be Crazy, Floridays, Tide Down (with Mark Mulch), the holiday remake Tropic Wonderland also with Mark Mulch, and the soon-to-be-released duet with Mike Nash called Largo.
Although it’s only been a few years that Kirstie has appeared on the Trop Rock / Island Music scene she has proven herself a natural at writing and singing the songs that quickly climb the Trop Rock charts and bring that beach vibe to life in a song.
Kirstie now lives in Nashville and performs all over the country as well as overseas, including a tour of England. But she's never forgotten where she comes from, and returns regularly to her home state of Wisconsin to perform in locations where she and her previous band Thirsty Jones made its mark.
I was able to catch up with the very busy Kirstie Kraus recently while she was on the road, and she shared with us how her love of Florida, warm breezes and sandy beaches drove her creatively and musically to dive into Trop Rock / Island Music.
Kirstie Kraus: Yes I am immersed in the both the country and island music scene, it is so much fun I've even adapted the description of describing my music as “modern country with bluesy rock undertones, all mixed with a boardwalk stroll on a sunny day,” and I feel like that wraps up and describes my sounds that I've just kind of evolved and created.
One of Kirstie’s songs that quickly climbed the Trop Rock charts is Beaches Be Crazy, a tune she co-wrote with Scott Southworth. It’s a song, she says, that reflects her love of beaches all over the world.
Kirstie Kraus: So Beaches Be Crazy was actually a title that my friend Scott Southworth had, and he is such a gem of human, we’d never written together before, but I've known him for many years, and so then when we finally sat down, he pulled out this title and told me he was saving it for the past ,like, three years and he thought that I might be the perfect person to do a song like this, and I heard it, and I was all on board, so we started looking up various fun things, we put our brains together and we're like, this is what you do in Hawaii, you know, this is South Padre, like places we've been, beaches that are famous ... and just like what people do at these beaches to have a good time, and so it was really fun to write, and next thing I know I'm in the studio with the glorious Buddy Hyatt with Scott Southworth and I am just so happy with how the production turned out. It was really fun to work on. We added, like, the whole mariachi band feel, based on the Bob Marley Buffalo Soldier intro, so it was just cool to kind of reference those iconic songs as well.
Beaches Be Crazy is one of Kirstie’s most recognizable songs, but it wasn’t her first foray into Trop Rock / Island Music, which she says all started when she wrote the song Floridays.
Kirstie Kraus: I absolutely love writing music. Writing started for me when I was eight in, like, a rugrats journal, and then when I was 12 with a mentor. And at 15, I joined the National Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and I started making trips to Nashville to just hone my craft in songwriting and write with the dogs in Nashville that are doing it every day. So writing is equally as expressive to me as performing. And when I started traveling to Florida in 2020 to visit my aunt and to play down there I just naturally started writing songs about the people I was meeting and my surroundings. And so the first song I wrote was called Floridays and it just was talking about how the daiquiri deck is opening up, and there was a daiquiri deck opening up right on Anna Marie Island that everybody was talking about, and you go to the Circle K for ice, and so just a lot of lyrics are just like things I kind of just immerse myself in. So it's been really fun to get into the writing space of trop rock music because it makes me feel good. I literally am obsessed with Florida. I wish I was there all the time, or just in warm weather on a beach.
Kirstie was joined in harmonies by Krystal King on that beautiful rendition of Floridays recently recorded in the Tiki Man Radio Studios on the Tropical Country program. Thanks to Tiki Man Danny Lynn for sharing that clip.
If you’re wondering how a Wisconsin girl became so immersed in the Florida lifestyle, Kirstie will tell you she was born with it in her soul.
Kiristie was born in Coral Springs Florida but at age 2 weeks her parents moved to the land of wind chills - Wisconsin. Kirstie thrived in Wisconsin and eventually started her own very successful band in the Madison area but she always longed for the warm tropical air and sandy beaches of Florida.
Kirstie Kraus: I was actually born in Florida, in Coral Springs, and then without my consent, because I was two weeks old, two weeks later, after I was born, we moved back up to Wisconsin, so I have that innate, like, love just for that environment, in the ocean, and a huge goal of mine is just to play every beach festival there is around the country and hopefully the world. When I'm in those environments, I feel so good, and (after) this last tour to Florida it was really hard to leave Florida to go back to cold Nashville - it's 48 degrees here in Nashville. So I have found that I write songs about my experiences. And I just started co-writing a lot in the trop rock community with a bunch of the artists, and I just love it and people are digging it, and so I feed off of that. It definitely feels like a natural avenue and genre for me to include my writing.
For Kirstie, working with other Trop Rock artists is motivating and inspirational. Recently she collaborated with Trop Rock musician Mark Mulch on two songs, including a bluesy, rockin’ yet beachy song called Tide Down. And you probably guessed it, yes, TIDE is cleverly and appropriately spelled TIDE.
From mariachi to blues to rock to country to trop rock, you can tell Kirstie has been exposed to and has embraced a wide variety of genres, and they are all reflected in her craft.
Kirstie Kraus: Music is literally everything to me, my heart, my soul, like everything. I do music stuff pretty much all day long every day, because that's what I love to do. So I started listening at a young age, I remember Styx was in the house, a lot of Bryan Adams, like Phil Collins, Elton John, and then of course my first females ever at three years was like Amy Grant, Gloria Estefan and Celine Dion. I mean the powerhouse pop divas came into play. And then I discovered country music at the age of seven, LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain was crossing over and LeAnn Rimes was coming out with Blue and I just absolutely fell into these amazing women, Martina McBride, Faith Hill. Another big influence was the Beach Boys. Pretty young, I remember singing the Kokomo song back and forth with my aunt at like four years old, and the Beach Boys always made me just really happy, so my goal was to do music that made people feel good, inspire them, made them wanna do something, like, whether it was to stop the nonsense in their lives, or get up and dance, like all of those things. So those are my past influences. My current influences are definitely, like, Dolly will always be that - Dolly Parton.
That was Kirstie kraus and Christie Huff singing Dab A Dolly, a tribute to the influences of Queen of Country Dolly Parton in their lives.
As you can tell by now, Kirstie is constantly on the go. In addition to writing, recording and performing, she does all her own marketing and social media and even has her own company Kraus House of Entertainment. She and Mark Mulch recently recorded, released and marketed the holiday song Tropic Wonderland, a tropified version of the Christmas classic Winter Wonderland, and is working with Mike Nash on a new Trop Rock song.
Kirstie Kraus: I am so excited, obviously, just released Tropical Wonderland so that's been a whole celebration around Christmas time. Love that, that we have tropic music, ah, trop rock music with Christmas music. Love that. So next I have a duet with Mike Nash. And we are working on the mix right now, in final touches. We got to perform this song together for the first time at Meeting of the Minds in Gulf Shores this year. He had a full band show on Thursday, and I joined him on stage, and we debuted our song Largo - L-A-R-G-O, I'm so excited and it is just the perfect duet. I'm very pumped about this song, so that's next, and of course, about more music and touring, tours to other countries, there's just a lot in the mix. I hope to make it to Australia, that's a goal of mine, and go back to the UK again, and I had a lovely time in Texas recently so I hope to make Texas another trip next year. Lots of house concerts in the trop rock community coming up and of course festivals which are gonna be so much fun. One day I hope to, you know, release a Christmas album, release a trop rock Christmas album, release another country album, release a full trop rock album like, release a seventies bluesy kind of vibe you know ... I hope to release literally just as much music in my lifetime, that that is my goal, that's what makes me happy in this world, and I feel like that's what I'm called to do.
As someone who started singing at the age of 2 by jumping up on picnic tables, Kirstie never looked back, acting in plays, and singing at church and any opportunity that arose as a young child. Kirstie has always been driven to succeed at music. Yes, she’s talented but she’s also ambitious, outgoing, easy-going and, most importantly, very hard-working, a trait that is reflected in her song Gotta Do. “I hear this calling pulling me,” she sings, “to where I need to be.”
It’s clear, Kirstie, that you are doing what you gotta do, and it’s working.
Thank you Kirstie for being my guest on the Beach Maniac Island Music Podcast and know that we’re all enjoying your music and wishing you continued success in your career.
And thanks to everyone for joining me, Bill Hurley the Beach Maniac as we go behind the scenes and explore the magic behind the music. For more about me and my passion, visit https://www.beachmaniac.com or contact me at bill@beachmaniac.com.
Remember, whether you're soaking up the sun or catching the waves, we hope you’re feeling those good beach vibes. Until next time, keep the sand between your toes and the ocean breeze in your hair. Stay safe, stay cool, and we’ll catch you on the next wave.
