“I think that it is good to want to have a community get together once a week, sing some music together, read together, do all those things,” McKenna acknowledges, a type of grateful reflection across her face as she discussed her approaching EP release show. “I have just had to seek structure and community in different ways, and I think Chicago has been very open to that.”

Edie McKenna is best known for her leading role in the Chicago-based alternative group, Modern Nun, who have spent the last few years dedicated to creating spaces built on acceptance and collective experience through music and community.

With the release of her debut solo EP, For Edie, out everywhere today via Devil Town Tapes, McKenna is leaning more into her folk roots – reliving and repurposing the words she wrote almost a half decade ago. It’s an open letter to her younger self, only four songs long, as For Edie carries past trauma with such confidence – a striking invitation into the life she lived and where she has been headed ever since.

I recently got to sit down with McKenna to discuss the new EP, learning to redefine imprinted expectations and the joy found in mutual congregation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Shea Roney: What was the transition like from St. Paul, Minnesota to Chicago? Where did you find yourself in the music scene here?

Edie McKenna: I graduated in high school in 2016 and moved to Chicago to go to DePaul. I really hadn’t been on my own before and it was really hard. I ended up dropping out of college because I just wasn’t doing well, but I made my core group of friends at DePaul and I fell in love with Chicago. My friend Sophie, whose brother is in the band The Slaps, saw the music that I started posting online and asked if I wanted to open for them. That’s when I had my friend Lee [Simmons], of Modern Nun, come play guitar with me. I think that the music scene was really lacking a lot of non-cis men at the time, so I think we just kept getting asked to play shows. Not to discount any of the non-cis men bands at the time, I just wasn’t aware of them because I was so new. I always was obsessed with indie and folk music, but I thought that I would be, I don’t know, a lawyer or whatever you think you’re going to be when you’re younger. I would just play music for fun, but then it kind of kept going and now I really love it, so I just kept going.

SR: In the past with Modern Nun, your recording sessions were more of what you described as ‘collective experiences of trial and error’. What was it like when you decided to take on these songs? 

EM: Maybe this is just for me, but I find recording folk music just a little bit easier because it’s a little more straightforward and I don’t mind being so cheesy. Particularly with these songs, because I wrote them so long ago, the cheesiness is abundant. I don’t care if we’re just playing three chords, that’s fine with me. Whereas, with Modern Nun, it’s just different in that the music is a bit more complicated in a way. 

SR: It’s funny because you said you never thought you would put these songs out, claiming that they were ‘too cheesy’ or ‘simple’. Did you find that there came either a motivation or a need for these songs to find daylight?

EM: I don’t know, I felt like I was just sitting on them. I’m lucky to have a really supportive group of friends who knew these songs, particularly “Lava Lamp”, which was one of the first songs I remember ever writing. I just had wanted to work with Seth [Beck] (Rat Future Recordings) for a minute because we were friends outside of this. When we finally got to work together I already had those songs and thought I might as well just try it. It went so well that I was like, why not make it a whole project? This whole thing has been a ‘why not’ sort of situation.

SR: Did the songs go through any changes from when you originally wrote them?

EM: They didn’t really undergo many changes, but I have been really under the influence of distortion, like Neil Young or MJ Lenderman vibe lately. I was just craving to add that to the folk music because I just think it’s so fun. We definitely tweaked them a little bit, because I’m not really a riffer and I wanted Seth, Zack [Peterson] and Eric [Beck] to be able to play off it, so we expanded some of the bridges and the intros and outros, definitely. But the lyrics stayed the same. 

SR: Throughout this EP, you write from your own lens of some pretty difficult subject matters, especially on songs like “Kick in the Shin” and “Hail Mary”. What was it like to revitalize those moments and those feelings? Has revisiting these songs sharpened your understanding of your path of healing at all? 

EM: I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I definitely have been feeling like I am almost ready to move on from these things. And in order to move on from them, I wanted to put these songs out. I do feel like I have processed these events and feelings and now when I write I don’t talk about them as much anymore. Like this EP was me writing about those experiences. When I named Modern Nun, that was about those experiences. But it is interesting to talk about it and I feel really proud about how far I’ve come. Songs are so specific and I think the best songs in my opinion are really specific moments or stories. It’s like time travel to those moments, but then I get to add something that I’m interested in now, like distortion, and it becomes a merging of two times in my life.

SR: “Swinging” feels like you are cutting yourself some slack, almost a brief grace period on the EP. Can you tell me about that song? 

EM: That song is so gay. I’m sure it is definitely something that a lot of queer people experience, like when it’s two people not raised as men trying to make a move on each other. I remember it was impossible, the first date was like a week long and nothing happened, and I was like, ‘okay, that’s kind of the vibe.’ But it gets easier as you get older. That’s kind of what I was writing about. It’s so cute and it’s fun and I’m proud of it. I wanted to release it because I knew it is catchy, but whoa, I cringe. Just a little. Just a little.

SR: There are a lot of instances of longing in these songs – to be accepted, to be loved, etc. Do you feel like you have caught up to those feelings? 

EM: No, I don’t think I’ve caught up to those feelings. I definitely think I’ve found my people and I’ve found it in other ways and in moments, but I think that it’s eternal. That feeling was so strong in high school and in early college when I wrote these songs, because, particularly being queer, it was just like, ‘I’m never going to act on these things’, or even, ‘I’m just going to pretend… ’. I also have extreme anxiety, so I get those feelings confused – excitement or yearning with like genuine fear, I get them really confused, so I think it makes the feelings stronger. But I think if you don’t have something to yearn for, what’s the point? It’s like having a crush on life, you’ve got to have something to be excited about it.

SR: While still talking about this longing, did the use of physical placeholders in your writing, such as sunglasses, a lava lamp, or even a malleable prayer make things feel more obtainable, or even just more realistic?

EM: My favorite kind of writing is just very straightforward because I really like someone who respects the intelligence of the reader and the listener. When I was first starting to write songs that I liked, the easiest way to do that is to just be observant and recognize, ‘this is my point of view’. I definitely think that it made the answers more realistic. I think using objects really just grounded me in the present moment because I felt so out of control and in the clouds in my life. They brought my answers into real life and made everything seem real at a time when I was really existing and hiding in my head.

SR: You grew up very religious, and I won’t ask you to dive back into it, but growing up in the foundations of congregation – which at its barebones is people who believe in the same thing/entity – have you found a draw to that same kind of belief when it comes to the local music community here?

EM: Totally, there are a lot of similarities. The things that I grew up doing, in theory, were amazing. Getting together once a week, singing, seeing some art, being with your family, being with other people, reading, talking about the reading, eating together – structure. I think I really struggle because a lot of things in my life I feel like I went from zero to a hundred. I went from not knowing what being gay was and going to private school where you got in trouble for doing the wrong thing always, to immediately smoking weed, etc. I just crave structure and I crave a very rigid routine and seeking that in my adult life has been really complicated. I had to seek structure in different ways through my friends here, which has been a huge learning experience because it’s like, ‘okay, I am living my truth. I am doing what I thought I would be doing just in a different way.’ That’s really nice to think about.

Written by Shea Roney | Feature Photo by Clare O’Mahony

For Edie is out every where today with a limited run of cassettes via Devil Town Tapes