In the school of hard knocks, Kevin Loving has taken his share of courses.
He hopes to put what he’s learned into song, thus completing one of his life’s goals in the process.
Loving, of Colony, admits his dream — to become a recording artist — still may be a ways off.
He’s plunged most of his savings into creating a demo CD with three songs.
“I’d like to have a CD with 10 songs,” he said. “But that costs money.”
He’s hoping the right person will hear the demo and offer him a recording contract or financial support.
The three songs — “You Can Talk About Me,” “Come Shining Through” and “Rhymes Keep On Spinning” — are all a mixture of rhythm and blues with a slight touch of rap, much like you’d hear on most any top 40 radio station.
“It’s definitely not as hard as some rap you’d hear, and it’s definitely not as rough,” he said. “A lot of my music has a message, a lesson,” Loving said.
“I think the quality is there,” he added. “It’s just a matter of being heard.”
LOVING, 43, grew up in Paola, the third of eight children.
School, Loving admits, was hardly his highest priority.
“We were poor,” he said — so poor that he and his siblings qualified to eat lunches for free at school.
“School didn’t really interest me,” he admitted. “I went basically so that I would have something to eat for lunch.”
Loving struggled in the classroom. His shyness around others was exacerbated by a speech impediment.
“I couldn’t talk much without stuttering,” he said. “I just shut everybody out.”
But he still had gifts.
Loving was an exceptional athlete, winning a Kansas City area Golden Gloves boxing championship at age 17.
“I didn’t realize it then, how much God had blessed me in my life, with athletics, my art and my music,” he said.
He dropped out of high school as a teenager, bouncing around from job to job.
“My first job I earned $3.43 an hour,” Loving recalled. “I don’t know that I found one that ever paid more than $6 or $7 an hour.”
A conversation with his mother, shortly before she died, convinced Loving to reshift his life’s focus.
“It was the day before she died,” he said, in 1997. “She told me she was counting on me to support my family. She thought that I’d be the one out of all the kids who could ‘do something.’
“In reality, I hadn’t been doing anything,” he said. “My mother was the light of my life, and I didn’t want to let her down.”
LOVING’S road to redemption eventually took him from Paola to southeast Kansas — Colony to be exact — where he and his family found an affordable home with the promise of lower heating bills in the winter.
He worked odd jobs, including a stint as a carrier for the Iola Register, where a conversation with a coworker led Loving to Allen County Community College to earn his general education development (GED) certification.
The courses, and meeting with Karen Culver, ACCC’s adult education instructor, were life-transforming, Loving said.
The classes were grueling.
Some math courses that his classmates mastered in a few weeks took Loving a full semester to complete.
“I was a slow learner, and I basically had to relearn everything,” he said. “Karen was with me every step of the way.”
Loving eventually earned his GED, then continued to take courses at ACCC, earning his associates degree in May.
“I figure if the music doesn’t pan out, I have a backup plan,” Loving said.
BUT MUSIC is his love.
Creating the first three songs culminated in a recording session in Lawrence earlier this summer.
Loving took songs and poems he had written years earlier and meshed them into “beats” he created using computer software that developed the music.
“It was a matter of putting the lyrics to the songs,” he said.
The recording session — although done at a friend’s house — was a costly venture.
“Those three songs cost me $550 to record,” he said. “Now I’m out of money.”
Loving is considering posting bits and pieces of his songs on YouTube, “just to see how many hits it gets. I’m trying to think of everything.”
But he also realizes that making his music too available could be even more costly.
“Once you release the music, people essentially have it for free,” he said. “That’s why recording companies are struggling now.”
BUT HE STILL dreams.
Loving listens to excerpts from one of his song, and thinks of a vision.
“I can see myself walking over a hilltop with my arms raised, singing that song,” he said.
Suddenly, Loving’s dreams have expanded.
“I guess I have my first music video planned out,” he said with a laugh.
