Although diminutive in stature, Wheelchair Sports Camp’s (WSC) sole female MC Kalyn Heffernan is a mighty lyrical force. Armed with a dream, pen and voracious appetite for songwriting, rhyme spitting, and mic rocking, the Denver-based artist has cultivated a career in Hip Hop that is slowly but surely beginning to pay off. Along with drummer Gregg Ziemba and trumpet player Joshua Trinidad, Heffernan began playing locally under the Wheelchair Sports Camp moniker until the group was offered a chance to tour with Strange Famous Records affiliate B. Dolan in 2011.
That set in motion her relationship with Strange Famous label head and indie Hip Hop god Sage Francis, who eventually signed WSC to his imprint, more specifically SFdigi. The jazz/Hip Hop hybrid released the debut video, “Mary Had A Little Band,” from its first official full-length, No Big Deal, which was produced by the late, great Ikey Owens (Jack White, The Mars Volta, Lookdaggers, Free Moral Agents) in its entirety.
In Part I of the RAPstation interview, Heffernan talks meeting Sage Francis, growing up on TLC and Salt-n-Pepa, and WSC’s beginnings. In Part II, she’ll discuss the new album and getting through those tough days. For more information, visit www.strangefamousrecords.com.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): I know you’ve been known Sage Francis and B. Dolan for awhile, but how did you officially end up on Strange Famous Records?
Kalyn Heffernan: So after doing our first tour in 2011 with B., we’ve been Strange family. He bailed my crew out of jail and introduced me to Sage when we got to SXSW. I've remained close since and have been talking to them about the album since before it was even started. Then we had Ikey [Owens] produce it, who toured with Sage and so it just kind of all started to align. Ikey wanted it to be on SFR and had lunch with Sage right after we recorded the thing.
When did you realize making Hip Hop was something you could do, too?
I studied my few Hip Hop loves hard as a kid. I knew every single word to Oooooh On The TLC Tip and Salt-n-Pepa’s Very Necessary when I was only 5 or 6. I was always the kid in school who could recite popular rhymes from front to back. But it wasn't until I was 12 that I started thinking I could do it, too. There was a talent show and I signed up with a friend of mine. We rapped a song about the Broncos winning Super Bowl 33 and I rapped over a terrible three-minute long beat box I recorded onto tape. I ran out of breath by the end and I'm sure the tempo slowed down drastically, but we did it and I used talent shows for the next two years as an excuse to wits my own rap song. Then in high school I started saying it's what I'm gonna do. I wasn't doing it as much as I was talking about it, but I kept at it slowly. I recorded a few demos at a studio and realized I couldn't afford to pay people for beats or pay studio time to teach myself, so I got a job at the local amusement park and saved up for a Roland 909. Then I started making my own crappy beats and rapping over them. And then I got a scholarship to go to college, but knew I wasn't interested in anything else, so I found a rad program in Denver, and used my projects as another excuse to write songs and teach myself. And that's when I started Wheelchair Sports Camp.
Did you grow up in a musical household? What was your first introduction to Hip Hop like?
My parents always liked music, but they were collectors by any means. I typically didn't like a lot of things either of them listened to, but I was into Michael Jackson, Talking Heads, REM, En Vogue, Peter Gabriel, and Tracy Chapman. But when I heard rap on the radio for the first time, my dad told me to "turn that shit off" and that was it. It was my identity from there on. I was only 5-years-old. I somehow had Michael jackson's Dangerous from my mom or someone and that record was super Hip Hop heavy. But I somehow convinced my parents to get me TLC’s Ooooh On The TLC Tip and that was my first love. It took even more convincing to get Very Necessary, but I got it. Those few albums held me down for a long ass time.
Did you ever imagine you’d be able to make this far?
Yes and no. As a high school kid, I definitely had this dream to ‘make it big’ like the people I heard and saw on TV, but I didn't really understand what that meant at the time. And I was hardly even ready to work hard at it. The more I started really doing it and getting involved in the scene my whole perspective changed. It was quickly apparent this shit is no joke and if you're gonna do it it's because you don't see yourself doing anything else and you still are in love. You'll be super lucky to live off of raps semi-comfortably. And then really cool shit started happening for us, which I did not expect—like touring coast- to-coast or being on the cover of magazines, or hanging out with your heroes and collaborating with some of your favorite musicians in the world. Not to mention we've done all this before even having a full length album. So, no I didn't really think any of that would happen the way it did or how fast.
