The Nashville-based Music & Arts instructor, who performs with her sister in the acclaimed classical-country duo Twin Kennedy, reveals her tricks of the songwriting trade.
Carli Kennedy started crafting songs before many children have picked out an instrument. “I wrote my first song at 7,” she recalls, “and I’m sure it rhymed, but I’m also sure it was nothing special. I had a music teacher who was so encouraging, and she just kept saying, ‘Wonderful.’”
In a way, Carli has come full circle. Today, she teaches guitar, piano and voice at the Music & Arts in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where one of her passions is guiding and supporting her students’ songwriting aspirations. “My youngest student who wrote a song was 8 years old,” says Carli, “and she played piano and sang and it was … I get chills thinking about it, ’cause [these students are] amazing. And I’ll be a little co-writer on the side, just helping them bring their ideas to life.”
Her budding songwriters are in great hands. Carli is a deeply accomplished musician who records and performs as Twin Kennedy with her identical-twin sister, the violinist and vocalist Julie Kennedy. As heard on their most recent release, 2021’s Homebound, the sisters make harmony-rich modern country and folk songs that are affecting and melodic; tracks like “Homebound,” “Ghost Town” and “Call It Love” both tug at your heartstrings and leave you humming. Their music has earned them all manner of accolades, including glowing press from Rolling Stone Country and Billboard and three nominations in the Canadian Country Music Association Awards, Canada’s equivalent to the CMAs in the States. Last year, Julie won the CCMA Award for Fiddle Player of the Year.
But to label Twin Kennedy a country act doesn’t do justice to the scope of their abilities. Carli hails from a small town on the west coast of Canada, and grew up performing in a family band. She started taking classical piano lessons at age 5 and guitar lessons at 7, and studied guitar, piano and voice at the prestigious Royal Conservatory of Music, in Toronto. Later, she earned her bachelor’s in classical guitar performance from the University of Victoria. Throughout her journey, she pursued her love of teaching as well as writing and performing with her sister Julie. “We were in the classical-music world for a while,” Carli says. “I went and did a lot of competing and performing in that world, but eventually realized that what I wanted to do was the original music. And so I moved to Nashville and went country.”
At their concerts and student master classes, Twin Kennedy tap into the range of their musical education: It’s not uncommon for a classical performance or a Celtic instrumental to lead into a contemporary country ballad. In schools, where Twin Kennedy have spoken to more than 60,000 students across the U.S. and Canada, the sisters offer a variety of focused programs. With elementary-school students, they survey different styles of music and introduce kids to different instruments; with older students, the Kennedys empower them to become confident, present performing artists. “That’s what our ‘Perform Like a Pro’ master class is about,” says Carli. “How to prepare before the show; how to prepare to be on the stage; what to do in moments when you feel nervous, or if something goes wrong.”
In the end, Carli’s teaching philosophy is rooted in the joy of performance, collaboration and self-expression. Technique and theory are priorities, to be sure, and she points to the good habits she absorbed in her classical training as the reason she’s able to maintain her “musical health” on tour. But “number one,” she says, “music should be joyful.” Nurturing original songwriting can be an integral part of realizing that goal. “Learning to share your story through song is a wonderful blessing,” she says, “because you get to share that with other people and connect. And if a student has got something, I want to elevate it and encourage it.
“The good teachers that I had along the way,” she continues, “were people who did lift me up and encourage me, but let me find my own voice.” In a recent conversation with Music & Arts, Carli shared some of the songwriting insights she’s gained throughout her career.
Three Chords and the Truth
In her own writing and with her students, Carli begins shaping a song by homing in on a title, theme, lyrical phrase or melodic hook. She recommends taking that one element, which will often inform the chorus, and building the song out around it. “If a student has an idea,” says Carli, “like, say they want to write a song called ‘Call It Love.’ OK, we’re going to list out at least 10 things—any words or themes—that you can think of that go with this title or phrase. And then that will be the base of our chorus, to lead to the hook.”
Beginning students shouldn’t let their limited musical vocabulary prevent them from writing—in fact, Carli says, compared to adults, children often excel at communicating their most authentic emotions in song. “I’ll start with ‘three chords and the truth,’” she explains, “which is the Nashville way of saying, we’re going to learn our major chords and start with that.”
Improvising = Writing
Coming up with effective melodies, Carli says, involves much “humming and improvising.” As part of their warm-up, Carli’s students will use whatever scale they’re learning that lesson to improvise over a tonic chord or a progression. That process gets a student’s creative juices flowing, helping them to experiment with melody until they stumble upon a melodic line worth repeating. “They get comfortable with coming up with melodies and just feeling free to explore,” she says. “And that’s what sets the foundation for songwriting.”
Good Form
Songwriting is a discipline, and as much as Carli encourages her students to think freely and break the rules, she also drills down on the time-honored conventions of writing. Her songwriting students will learn about rhyme scheme and the common song forms and sections—including what makes a powerful verse, bridge and chorus. She also encourages her students to bring in music by the singer-songwriters they love—these days, that means a lot of Taylor Swift—so they can analyze song structure.
Like any genre, singer-songwriter music has specific instrumental techniques that make it work, and Carli covers these on guitar. With her future Joni Mitchells and Paul Simons, she introduces a handful of essential fingerpicking and strumming patterns that can be heard across a range of songs.
Record Your Ideas … Or Watch Them Fly Away
“Always have your voice recorder,” Carli implores her students. If a lyric, melody or chord progression hits you, you simply must get it down before it escapes you. “So many times, if I didn’t have that recording,” Carli says, “[that idea] would be gone the next day. So that’s the first step as a songwriter: Always have the recorder on.”
At the same time, writing is an excellent activity to schedule. One of the reasons Carli relocated to Nashville was for its strong and supportive community of fellow songwriters, and she encourages her students to seek out their own songwriting peers, for co-writing sessions and workshopping. Scheduling sessions, either alone or with collaborators, can also help an artist keep their writing chops up and stave off writer’s block.
On some days, Carli will receive a song idea as if it fell from the heavens; most days, however, she has to put in the work. “It’s the same as practicing music. You have to pick up your instrument every day. You have to play,” she says. “It’s the same with writing. It’s a muscle you have to exercise. So when I might not have any ideas, I just go into the writing room. I schedule something with my fellow songwriters that I know are amazing, and then something will always come of it.”