BH: First off - I really admire your work. I can't believe all the things you've done.

KK: Oh thank you. I've been around a long time (laughs).

BH: When did you first learn to play keyboard by ear?

KK: I started playing when I was about 3 or 4 - just by listening, really - mostly to records. I remember playing my cousin's piano. She lived next door to us at the time. I think I was playing something I had heard at preschool. It wasn't anything elaborate but somehow the piano just made sense to me. It was pretty much meant to be. My parents bought a piano right after that.

BH: I learned to play by ear at a young age too. My wrist watch played It's a Small World and I just sat down one day and learned it!

KK: I love it!

BH: Any particular songs that stick out from when you were little?

KK: No, but I listened to the radio from the time I was very small. I liked sort of unusual things like rock 'n' roll - ya know, the Dick Clark kind of thing, in those days - to Perry Como and Sinatra. My mom played classical music at home a lot when I was younger so I heard everything there was to hear. And I remember calling Dick Clark when I was 5 years old. But I was just very, very cognizant of music from the time I was small.

BH: You CALLED him?

KK: Yes. I called Philadelphia when I was 5 (laughs). Of course then, you didn't call directly. You'd call the long distance operator, but he wasn't available.

BH: WOW. At 5?

KK: Pretty tenacious, right? I just dialed zero and said, "I wanna talk to Dick Clark!" (laughs)

BH: When did you initially realize that you wanted to make the world a better place?

KK: What a GREAT question. Maybe it's because I'm blind, I don't know - but I have always lived with a great deal of compassion for the people around me. I think it's vitally, vitally important to try to do something positive and leave the world better than we found it.

BH: How do write your own songs? It boggles my mind how you piece a song together with lyrics and notes without having a visual way to map it out.

KK: Well, I just sit down at the piano, usually. Sometimes the song comes to me in my head and I fool around with it. It can take days, or minutes or weeks. Sometimes even months. A particular tune of mine called Crystal Lemon Lady - something that everybody used to ask for - I must have written it in about 20 minutes. I get a concept in my mind, and often I'll get a snatch of a melody or a bit of a lyric and mess around with it. The coolest thing about music is that it may not be really completed for ages to come. You can keep singing it and it keeps evolving and changing. When I worked for Channel 9 - when we did the pieces for KUSA called "Unsung Heroes," we used to do the packages and turn them over and they'd be done in a week. They'd be 3 or 4 minutes and that would be it! For me, it was kind of a let-down because it never kept growing - where as musically, things keep moving and changing and evolving.

BH: So ... Crystal Lemon Lady?

KK: It has something to do with how I envision color because the concept behind it is basically the words to me. For example, I like the sound of the word "cranberry." I always thought that brown for chocolate didn't make sense. It didn't have a beautiful sound of a word - so I would instead think "mmm ... yellow." I picture color as the words that go with it and crystal lemon is a glorious ... kind of brilliant ... summer afternoon sound to me. I like thinking about who I was at the time, who my girlfriends were at the time, and the popular tune I am woman had come out - not Peggy Lee's but the Helen Reddy version: I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar and I just thought, "Well isn't that ridiculous. No one is that invincible" so I was sorta responding to that. That's how it came about.

BH: Going back to Channel 9 - you were a weekend reporter for three years?

KK: Yes. I remember going to this wonderful man named Jack Mahr- who is an absolute wonderful human being - with an idea to do pieces about people that never get recognized. We went to the news directors and they said, "Ya know, we don't know that blind people can really be reporters." And it was an interesting thing because sometimes I can get very vocal about it. And I said, ya know, that's fine, but I wanna DO IT. They gave me a chance and it went on for quite a while. It was amazing.

BH: So you were on TV?

KK: I was on camera every week. We did the stories, people wrote in, I selected what stories to run - the only concession they made for me was I had the same photographer with me every week. At the time, I lived in Boulder and he lived in Broomfield.

BH: How did you report?

KK: I wrote everything out in Braille and then we'd go into the tracking room (where you put a voice track over whatever sound bytes they come up with) I would read it and Brian Gill would record. So I never used the teleprompter. I just read what I wrote off the page.

BH: How long did you live in Boulder?

KK: Oh ... since college ... so I was there for about 24 years.

BH: Tell me about life at CU ...

KK: I loved college. College was one of the happiest times of my life.

BH: What was your major?

KK: First, I was a music major but the music school was too classically-based for me so I became an english major and finally, after three years I dropped out and went back to work in the clubs - my father was just so thrilled with me (laughs)-then I ended up graduating from University Without Walls and got a degree to do music as a profession.

BH: Tell me about Libby.

KK: Awww ... Libby will have been with me for three years in July. She is my fourth long-term guide dog,she's a little black lab and a very special little dog. It's agony when you lose them but I'm willing to go through with it. I love having a dog, working with them and being with them. My husband says that in his next life he wants to come back as Karen's guide dog.

BH: Awwww. How'd you meet your husband?

KK: I used to shop at the Old Crossroads King Soopers store in Boulder and that's how we met -years ago when we were both in college.

BH: Do you still volunteer for Guide Dogs for the Blind?

KK: Not too much anymore, but I did a lot of PR for them. For a while I worked trying to recruit for them.

BH: What about the American Printing House for the Blind?

KK: Well, I used to go there and sing for the narrators. It was like being with stars from movies or something. I read veraciously ... so those narrators that do talking books are just heroes to me. The first weekend I went, I went to perform because they were celebrating recording 30 years of Newsweek. Most of us were in awe of each other because the narrators don't normally get to meet the blind person. They don't meet many of us and I was just walking around like a little kid in the autograph store!! I've been there five or six times singing for them and they are a wonderful organization.

BH: Where are they based?

KK: Louisville, Kentucky.

BH: So you've traveled the country. What are your favorite places?

KK: I love Louisville! I love LA. I really like it there and always have a feeling that something wonderful and exciting is just about to happen there. My son is in San Diego and I like California a lot.

BH: It smells REALLY good there.

KK: Yes, it does. Guide Dogs has a campus in Oregon - and I was just there to get Libby a few years ago, and that's a nice place too. They have a campus in Boring, Oregon - of all places.

BH: BORING?

KK: Yes. Boring, Oregon. (laughs)

BH: You've worked a TON with children. Can you even count how many schools you've visited?

KK: It was over a period of 30 years. I worked at a lot of schools. I loved it.

BH: Do you still hear from some of these kids?

KK: I do. I actually do! Especially now that I'm computer literate, sometimes kids write to me and say, "I was your student back at this school .... or that school ..." It's very cool. And now that I'm computer literate, it's exciting.

BH: Computer literate? Really?

KK: I use a screen reader. It's a piece of software that reads to me what's on my screen. I learned to type as a young child because that's how we did our work. It's changed my life, actually. I didn't realize how instrumental it would be in accessing the bigger part of the world. But I can download audio books now! I can use the scanner to scan in my own mail and read it. I never could access it before - and had to wait for someone to read it for me. I can now independently read my own bills and numerous things like that.

BH: What are your favorite books?

KK: I love mysteries - not crazy about the icky romance stuff but I love women's fiction about women's lives or people like me. I love biographies and autobiographies.

BH: Speaking of women ... you founded a support group for blind women?

KK: Years and years ago I founded a support group for blind women called Young Blind Women. It was part of my college project through University Without Walls. I was trying to give them access to opportunities and help them be conscious of all of the different aspects of living that they could choose to do. People would come in and talk about everything from jobs to make-up. We even had one later on for blind women with children. To find other women that happen to be blind that were available to talk about what that was like - is amazing. Interestingly enough though - there are TONS of e-mail lists now,when years ago there wasn't anything like that for me to access.

BH: What were your favorite places in Boulder?

KK: I so loved Boulder. It really felt like part of my soul to live there. I loved how small it was - as far as accessing things - I could ride the bus and feel safe. When John's first became a restaurant - I loved it. It's a house that was turned into a restaurant. I love the tea house, too- wonderful tea and coffee and little tea goodies.

BH: What non-music endeavors are you into right now?

KK: I'm not doing as much right now. I'm really concentrating musically. I've really, really decided that this is my last chance and I truly want to see just exactly how far I can go musically - nationally. I don't know very many women out there my age right now that have sent their kids off and aren't saying, "OK, so what the hell is NEXT?" And I'm one of those women. And though I think that it's been harder becoming of age so-to-speak and contending with what it's like to be blind AND being a singer/songwriter who's not of Jordin Sparks' age - I think there's a completely viable audience out there of women. Because I'm probably a woman's artist. I have this sense that there is a realaudience of people out there that are just like me saying WHAT NOW? But why CAN'T a woman of my age become famous doing what I do?

BH: I noticed that you try to reach out to people through your music. What advice can you give me to slow my life down?

KK: (laughs) I feel so fortunate if someone like you says, "I hear what you're saying and it makes sense to me too" because I don't see myself as that brilliant of a person. I just know what I've lived through in my own life. I write about what's around me. But I have no desire on the planet to be anything but the best I can be. It's important to me, all those kids I worked with, my son and mostly for myself.

BH: Any closing thoughts?

KK: I just hope that everyone comes out to my show because I'm BACK. I haven't done a club for years and years. The last time I played a club was about 20 years ago and my doctor told me I couldn't do it anymore because the smoke made me so hoarse. But things seem like they are looking up. I want my audience to be with me and I want to be with them. I really am into this - my final chance.

BH: Thanks so much for your time, Karen. You're incredible.

KK: It's wonderful that you contacted me. I've really enjoyed talking with you today. I really appreciate it.