The title of the final poem in 2024’s Ridgerunner: One Hundred Poems From Rural Vermont is fitting when you consider its author: prolific singer-songwriter Kristina Stykos. Five lines long, with sentiments bitter and sweet, “Sing” reads like a redemption song, but that’s hardly the whole story.
Stykos, a record producer and owner of Pepperbox Studio in Lincoln, lives with spasmodic dysphonia, a chronic voice disorder that affects the larynx, or voice box. Named “Best Songwriter of 2013” by the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, Stykos had released six albums before being diagnosed in 2017. Mining her own experience for raw material, Stykos infuses the existential poem with a sense of comedic irony, without sacrificing its elegiac tone or losing its optimistic outlook: “I fell into a world / where nothing / made sense / but what I had lost / & so, I began to sing.”
Ever the lyricist, Stykos knows how to pack a melodic phrase full of meaning, but the ability to give voice to those deep emotions — the butter to the singer-songwriter’s bread — doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee. She describes the deep frustrations that creep in at the worst of times, such as when she can’t sing the harmony line she hears in her head during a client’s recording session. But she’s not the type to wallow in the hard stuff; in true Vermont fashion, Stykos gets right back to work.
These days, inspiration comes to Stykos, 68, in the most elemental aspects of rural life. When she’s not working her day job as a landscape architect, engineering a recording-studio session for her Thunder Ridge Records label or connecting with subscribers through her personal blog, Vermont Ridgerunner, she’s sitting at her corner desk, typing out the frictions of the day in its fading light. You might also find her chewing on a bit of wisdom from the old-timer at the country store or cursing the near-constant struggle that is making ends meet as a Vermont artist.
On the cusp of a new year that promises to bring Stykos’ myriad creative projects to fruition, including her second book of poetry with Korongo Books, a small press based in Randolph, Seven Days spoke with her about writing, freedom from the tyranny of melodies and making a record with her daughter, Freya Yost.
So, what becomes of the singer who’s lost her voice?
My feelings of inadequacy caused me to take my first engineering courses, play harder and begin hanging out in places where I could shed some of my folk-music pretensions. And yes, my personal experience of being knocked off my perch as a singer made me feel angry and sorry for myself. But as is often the case, hard feelings can motivate one to excel in other areas.
Your foray into the literary arts seems a natural articulation of your lyrical gifts. What are some of your preoccupations as a writer?
Every writer has their own places of habitation lyrically. I’ve tended to write about getting in a mess and having to sort it out, whether it’s a relationship or a storm. Without melodies to worry about, writing has become my remedy to all these issues and obstacles I’ve encountered. I’m not sure what the future will bring, but when you can’t sing, you have a different relationship to lyrics.
You’ve written six albums’ worth of music in the span of a decade, as well as penned several short stories and published a book of poems. Considering how polymorphic voice can be, has your diagnosis given you more “vocal range”?
I don’t refer to myself so much as a writer as a woman of letters, because that’s kind of how I write — to somebody. I’ve spent so much time with so many people from different walks of life. It’s really important to me that my voice be accessible to all kinds of people.
[In the studio] a producer should understand music with a special kind of intensity and know enough about engineering to figure out how to put things into motion that are derived from the imagination. Top-level producing requires a sophisticated understanding of music, artists and engineering, all at once. And in the end, the more musical fluency one has as a producer, the better the result. But losing my vocal capacity and range has never stopped being a reality which must be compensated for with innovation and humility.
Would you say that constraint has had a positive impact on your musicianship?
Originally, singing allowed me to explore more nuanced and sophisticated places with melody and improvisation than I was perhaps able to reach instrumentally. Having had to redirect myself to other instruments, it helped take a lot of that frustrated vocal energy and ring out deeper experiences through chords, harmonies and arrangements.
Let’s talk about Thunder Ridge Records. What was it like to work on Los Lorcas’ 2026 album, Wild Island?
I love those guys. Two of them are actually poets — Partridge [Boswell], who was the winner of the 2025 National Poetry Prize, and Peter [Money], his cohort, who’s a great slam poetry performer. They incorporate some of that into their songs, and there’s some recitation over the music, but most of it Partridge has turned into songs that he sings. It’s a great fit for the studio, because I’m so into words and poetry, and these guys are just the ticket.
You produced, recorded and mixed Freya Yost’s 2024 album, Delicate Elements. What was it like making an album with your daughter?
One interesting thing that happened was that she decided that she wanted to cover one of my songs. Despite being determined to sing it like me, she didn’t really understand some of the musical choices I had made, and we recorded a lot of takes as we struggled over the melodic phrasing. Afterwards, I sent her downstairs while I edited the vocal. When I called her back up, it was an incredible experience to hear her singing my song — a song I wrote as a very young woman about her dad. Listening to it together turned out to be a really special experience for us.
Do you come from a musical family?
I grew up in an academic family, so I certainly knew how to fancy up language and even obscure meaning through a bunch of, you know, too much talking, basically. But I’ve striven to simplify and pare language down. My younger brother is a musician in New York City who owns the audio company Dangerous Music. He helped me get the studio started at the original spot in Chelsea. A few years after that, I started making records with Steve Mayone under the moniker the Cousins Project.
So, you’re related to one another?
Steve is my second cousin. We met by chance when he was playing in Bow Thayer’s band. That was a surprise to me. My dad [Joseph Stycos] was also a very accomplished musician, although he preferred to sing jazz standards and show tunes at parties. He was a famous academic who spent a lot of time in Latin America, and he’d also sing in Spanish. He was quite the character, a total show-off.
I’m imagining a Greek American father-daughter version of the ’90s film Postcards From the Edge.
Well, I’m not totally unlike my father. When I got into recording, it was a way for me to do what I wanted to do on the guitar and not have to try to fit into a band or a solo act. I don’t like to be the center of attention, but I can go do it privately, then put out a record where I’m the center of attention. It’s a different thing completely.
Speaking of records, do you have any new music in the works?
My next album is instrumentals. It’s called Forest Mirror and will be released in January 2027. I play acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, bass, and keyboards, with support from Jeff Berlin on drums, Bow Thayer on banjo, Steve Mayone on lap steel, Patrick Ross on fiddle and Seamus Egan’s low whistle.
It seems like 2026 has been a busy year for Pepperbox Studio.
There’s never a dull moment, and it’s always different. I probably have seven different projects that are in some stage. I might be in a certain groove for a few months in the winter, but then landscaping gets really busy and I’m out four days a week, so I have to fit in recording sessions on the weekends. Other times, I’m like, I don’t have anything to do; I better go write another book. I just make it up every week.
Do you have any parting wisdom to give other working artists?
I think a day job is really healthy and important. You’ve got to have the right day job, and I wouldn’t trade my alternate jobs to do this all the time. It’s much healthier to have adventures out in the world that I bring back to the studio.
Secondly, life does change over the decades. I’ve had all kinds of different jobs, and I’ve had to figure out how to keep a consistent creative practice. I’ve been a single parent, and I’ve been married. Having achieved what I set out to do — which is to create a compound with a lot of artistic opportunities and a place where my kids can live and people can visit — took a lot out of me.
Losing your voice is all about not being able to sound beautiful, and it makes me mad at myself, illogically. But I know this will resonate with anyone who has lost any kind of ability due to sickness, injury, trauma or aging. It’s just plain old triggering sometimes, but that’s OK. We’re only human. That gives me the drive to go in the studio, try something different and work harder to say what it is I want to say.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
This article appears in October 28 • 2026.
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