Camp Kona is the musical brainchild of Ko Narter, a Bay Area native and student at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.  Ko spent her formative years in the Piedmont East Bay Childrenʻs Choir and attending various summer camps where she became one with her surroundings and made friends at every turn. The music of Camp Kona is, simply put, raw emotions from real experiences. Every song is a look into the life of its creator, her childhood, and her growth throughout her career.

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Who are your primary fashion inspirations?

I have been really interested in Japanese and Korean fashion lately. This is a musical influence thing as well; Iʻve been listening to a lot of K-pop and K-pop videos as well and I love the androgyny with a lot of the fashion, especially in the male K-pop idols, that’s something I really like to play with in my fashion. I love pieces that are not gendered or very genderless brands.

What is the story behind Homesick?

Simply put, Homesick, is a song about longing. The whole writing, production, release process came at a time when I had a lot of long-distance relationships; I was in a long-distance romantic relationship; I grew in California and just spent the summer there working at a summer camp, then I came back to New York for school. Iʻm someone who likes to make friends and keep them, so I felt like every new place I was going I was making friends and then leaving. So, it was really every place I was, I felt like I was missing out on things; it wasn’t the fear of missing out it was just like all these people Iʻm close to arenʻt here—why am I here? Why am I in New York? Why am I doing this? I think Homesick just captured the sense of longing I was feeling to be in nature, to be in California, to be in the woods with my friends but also feeling like there was always something missing from where you are; I think that’s the most relatable element, everyone misses something or someone at some point.

How has relocating to New York affected you as a musician and as a person?

Musician wise, I came to New York to go to music school so my opportunities to collaborate have been blown open since moving here! All the new music Iʻm working on now would not have been possible if I hadnʻt moved here so that’s an amazing plus. I feel like even if I had just moved to New York in general—I feel like Iʻm also meeting new people like on the street. I worked a retail job and met a friend who shot the album art for Homesick, Iʻm just meeting so many more creative people here—not that that wasn’t present, Iʻm from the Bay Area which is also a creative and vibrant city. Moving to New York as a young adult, it was very easy to continue being creative and develop that side of me.

How has being in New York during the pandemic hindered or helped those opportunities to collaborate?

I actually spent away from the city. I ended up living with my dad for a little bit, my mom for a while, and out in Cape Cod for a little bit with some friends. It just showed me that nothing you plan is certain and even if you do plan it, it can all go to shit so you might as well make the decision you want to make. The pandemic in general has inspired me to be a bit more spontaneous, maybe that a little counterintuitive considering we canʻt really do anything. Iʻm someone who had a 5-year life-plan, I was a sophomore in college when the pandemic started and I was like “okay, Iʻm going to take these classes and these classes and graduate at this time and move here”. I really did have my life planned out a couple years in advanced and now Iʻm more willing to be comfortable with the unknown and not know exactly what Iʻm doing in a couple months and just enjoy what Iʻm creating now.

In terms of being in New York, during the pandemic, there have been a lot more virtual opportunities which I think is really cool! I participated in virtual writing camps, met people online that I do Zoom sessions with, though nothing is as good as sitting in a room with someone and making music, but I do feel like people are more willing to meet online. Iʻve never been really into meeting people online but now Iʻve met people from all around and if I did want to move outside of new York after graduation, I have a much larger network now to fall into.

As a person, New York really matches my energy; good and bad. I definitely feel a sense of purpose when Iʻm here and feel driven to do things; you look outside, and people are doing things every day so why not me too? Like, “Iʻm going to go to the park, then Iʻm going to run all these errands, then Iʻm going to make music, and go see friends”. Itʻs also so expensive to live here, why wouldnʻt you go do all the things you can do while youʻre here? I think being here has inspired me to take action in my daily life. The negative side of that can be the pressure to feel like you have to always be doing something. Not being able to have as much rest as you would want, not taking minutes to breathe.

            How do you take that time for yourself in such a busy city?

I seek out the green spaces; last week I went on a long walk in central park last weekend. I live in the lower-eastside so Iʻll walk to the East River where you can look out and see Brooklyn. Really just accessing the nature when youʻre in the city. Well, I guess by all of that, walking really is the main way, but also getting out of the city is important. You donʻt realize it until leave New York but then  you take a deep breath when youʻre outside of the city and you realize that you havenʻt been breathing fully the whole time. In the pandemic, it has been hard to get out of the city—it has really rooted me here—but that has forced me to go on walks, find the green spaces here, and find ways to balance the chaos.

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What juice would you be?

I feel like I have to go with the joke answer—itʻs an inside joke among my friends and I didnʻt eat fruit until I was a teenager. I just wasn’t that into it; I didnʻt eat anything other than, like, apples and oranges. After high school two of my friends and I went to the Philippines and Japan. While we were in the Philippines—mangos are a big thing there and I have eaten a mango before in 2018—I was drinking this juice and I was like, “Guys, this orange juice taste really weird?? Like why does it taste like this?” and they were like, “Itʻs obviously mango juice”. I hold that memory near and dear to my heart so I think I would be mango juice if I were a juice.

 

How did you come up with the name Camp Kona?

My name is Koyuki Narter, so I took the first two letters of both to make Kona. In a more lengthy version, my freshman year of high school, when people started to make private Instagrams, my friend was like “You should make a private Instagram!” and I was like no, I donʻt need another social media platform that Iʻm not going to use. He ended up just making one for me anyways and named it Camp Kona. Going to summer camp was a huge part of my identity, which I feel like that is a thing for all people who go to summer camps, Iʻve grown out of that. As a kid and into the last few years when Iʻve worked the camps, I spent a lot of my formative years at summer camp. When it came time to pick my artist name, I was just going to go with Kona, but Camp Kona had a nice ring to it.

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Were you ever a CIT or considered being a CIT?

I did! I was a camper for like a decade and my camp that I went to had a teen leadership program then junior counselor, and full counselor, so I did it all.

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What influences from your childhood do you see coming out in your music?

A big one for me was growing up and singing in the choir. Choir taught me so much about not only music theory, singing in harmony, and blending but also, professional discipline, showing up to rehearsals on time, and knowing how to complete projects; really just being profession in a creative environment. I grew up doing choir with all my friends and we would hang out, mess around, but when it came time to focus, we were able to focus.

 

What is your song writing process like?

I feel like this is a very generic answer but its kind of all over the place. When I started writing, I learned four chords on the guitar and messed around until I came up with something. For a year or two, I was very lyrically based, I would write a phrase or two as they popped into my head; I have so many notes in my notes app that are literally just two lines. Now, I have been focusing on melodies more; it has been the most exciting, to me at least, to write lately. I usually loop beats people send to me and hum things to myself. Iʻve realized the way I come up with melodies is just that I listen to something and I sing what I think is supposed to be there. Iʻll sing like there is a melody that already exists like when youʻre listening to a song for the first time but youʻre trying to sing along; thatʻs kind of how I operate. Lyrics are still important to me but when I listen to songs, the melody is what sticks the most with me so that’s what I want to focus on.

How do you feel that your process has changed even just from Homesick to Clean Slate?

I got a lot better at production over the past year. That was also a big result of quarantine/lockdowns. When I write now, I feel like I have a much clearer vision of what the final production will look like. With Homesick, all I had was my voice and guitar and he was the one who brought in a lot of the ideas. With Clean Slate, I came in with a pretty fully produced demo and throughout the production process I was able to have input and articulate what I wanted and knowing how to make those sounds really made a difference. I could be like “Oh those drums are a little too sparkly, why donʻt we do this?” being able to voice that, execute it, and have the final product be something I came up with. I actually have co-producer credit on Clean Slate because of that.

 

Where did pull musical inspiration from for Clean Slate?

I started writing Clean Slate, the week before or week after Homesick came out, so about a year ago. That beginning was very much just…words? I just had a couple lines from the poem I came up with, which is the opening now. I was also in a song-writing class at the time, so I had the opening poem, filtered in the rest of the lyrics, and played it for the class the next day. You can really tell in a songwriting class when you play a song, every week, everyone is going to be like “So good. Amazing” and gently clap, but you can really tell when people are actually like “Wow. That was really good.” I felt like the energy after I played the song changed; everyone was quiet, and I realized that I was actually on to something. Shortly after, because of the pandemic, I went home and tried to work on the song from home but I didnʻt have anything to work with, so I went out and bought a mic, a pre-amp, things I could use to start producing at home more. I started to develop what a demo would sound like of the song and it took on a lot of different forms. Originally, I was more acoustically inspired—I was pretty stubborn about it and wanted to self-produced but come November, I was just not getting it to where I wanted it to be. So, I brought it to my friend, Nick, who co-produced the song, and he is very Still Woozy and Remi Wolf inspired so I feel like he brought in that alt-pop/indie inspiration. It was a lot of us meeting in the middle where he would try something and I would be like, “That’s not exactly it”. When I listened to the final product, I was like, “Oh, this makes me want to take a deep breath” which draws back to what I was talking about, feeling like sometimes I can’t breathe while Iʻm in New York. I was sitting on my fire escape listening to final mixes thinking, “I feel really calm listening to this. This feels right. It feels heavy in an important way”, so now I feel like this is a chill, R&B song that would fit in with a Daniel Cesar-kind of energy.

 

What your favorite Summer camp memory?

That’s a very challenging question, I spent many, many years at summer camp. I think what I love most about summer camp is the drama and how high-stakes everything feels like at summer camp. Like if you have a crush at summer camp, every time youʻre at the dining hall you see them, or you go to your afternoon activity and theyʻre there too and then you just never see them again, I think its so funny but also, when youʻre in it, it feels so important like this is the only time you’re ever going to live. Something I love about summer camp is that it does feel spontaneous, just do what you want, you only have these few weeks, make it count.

For a specific moment, though, I think of campfires in general. I mean, duh, I love singing and singing around the campfire, haha. More specifically, in the dark, I think people are willing to be more vulnerable and so campfires, especially at the end of summer camp, you know everyone is saying goodbye, crying, and singing the last songs, being comfortable in sadness and acknowledging you get to experience it, and being grateful for that is really encapsulated in the final songs at a closing campfire.

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~Reagan Thornley