Lola Kirke
While best known as an actress whose résumé includes lead roles in the art-house film Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, Lola Kirke makes country-informed adult alternative songs as a recording artist. With a warm, smoky quality to her voice and her songwriting, Kirke made her full-length debut with Heart Head West in 2018. In 2022, she released her sophomore album and Third Man Records debut, Lady for Sale.
Lola Kirke was born in London, England to a musical family that includes her father, one-time Free and Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke, and her oldest sister, singer and songwriter Domino Kirke. Their middle sister, Jemima Kirke, is also an actress, introduced to many as Jessa on TV's Girls. The family relocated to New York City when Lola was five. By the time she was 16, she was already well-schooled in popular works of classic rock and Laurel Canyon when she picked up Bonnie Guitar's Affair! (1969) at a flea market and began playing it on repeat. She even tracked down the country singer on the Internet, learned that the then-octogenarian had a residency at a venue in Soap Lake, Washington, and had a lengthy conversation with her by phone. A couple of years later, as a student at Bard College, heartbreak inspired Kirke to take up the ukulele, and she started to work her way through a country songbook. She picked up a guitar soon after and joined an all-female country band, something that she credits with being empowering and somewhat revelatory to her as a young musician. Meanwhile, she acted in a few short films beginning in 2010 and made her feature debut in 2011's Another Happy Day alongside a cast that included names like Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn, and Demi Moore. More supporting roles in films followed, and in 2014, she was cast in the music-themed Amazon comedy-drama Mozart in the Jungle as oboist Hailey Rutledge.
Kirke continued to audition for film work during the four-season run of Mozart in the Jungle, winning roles such as the lead in Noah Baumbach's Mistress America (2015) and a supporting part in the Tom Cruise vehicle American Made (2015) before releasing her first set of original music via Spirit House Records in 2016. The four-track EP introduced her twangy, hazy, country-influenced sound. In the meantime, Mozart in the Jungle released its final season online in February of 2018, and Kirke appeared with her sister Jemima in the film Untogether, which had its Tribeca Film Festival premiere in April. That September, she released her full-length debut, the Wyndham Boylan-Garnett-produced Heart Head West on Downtown Records.
Kirke stayed busy throughout early 2019 playing live and releasing a cover of Rick Danko's "Sip the Wine." She returned to acting, appearing in the 2019 drama American Woman, 2020's Lost Girls with Amy Ryan, and 2021's Broken Diamonds with Ben Platt. Following her signing to Third Man Records, she released her sophomore album, 2022's Lady for Sale. Produced by Austin Jenkins, the album found her embracing an '80s-influenced pop-country sound.
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo
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