Terry Kitchen

In 2001 Easton, Pennsylvania native and songwriter Terry Kitchen followed separate musical directions at once. One path addressed sweeping social concerns alongside spiritual themes, while the other examined ordinary personal struggles with greater ease. During his youth he questioned established religious teachings, an experience he honored in the track “Martin Luther.” That song recounts the reformer’s defiance while probing whether modern society can still pursue genuine spiritual understanding, and it appears on his 2000 album Blues for Cain and Abel. Although his sister died young in Easton, the same city nurtured his early commitment to social causes; gatherings around campfires there first sparked his songwriting habit. He later married documentary filmmaker Cindy, and the couple settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, where Kitchen served in 2001 as production materials coordinator at Rounder Records, the nation’s largest folk and roots label. Born Max Pokrivchak, he retained warm recollections of St. John’s Lutheran Church, where former minister Reverend John Steinbruck had shaped his views on activism, faith, and daily living.

The 2001 release Right Now, titled after one of his prize-winning compositions, drew its themes from social pressures Kitchen observed among people he encountered regularly. The song “Billy” depicts a grade-school boy offering a Valentine’s card to another boy. Kitchen’s own sense of being an outsider intensified when his family relocated from Easton to Findlay, Ohio, in the early 1970s. His sister, still suffering from kidney disease, received care at Cleveland Clinic Hospital, prompting father George—a chemical engineer previously employed by RCA in Somerville, New Jersey—to accept a transfer. The new surroundings were predominantly WASP, making it difficult for Kitchen to stand apart; he acquired a reputation as a hippie musician. One benefit emerged nevertheless: lasting friendships formed and a rock band called Loose Ties took shape, later reassembling in Boston.

Before the Ohio move, political arguments with classmates and late-1960s anti-war demonstrations at Lafayette College had already fostered Kitchen’s activist outlook. His musical growth also advanced through time spent with friend Jack Coleman at the college’s radio station. He first viewed the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night while in first grade, and each summer at the Easton YMCA camp he acquired guitar skills amid folk sing-alongs featuring Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” Theater studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles introduced him to the music of Jackson Browne and Graham Nash as well as the anti-nuclear cause promoted by Alliance for Survival.

A wish for tighter musical connections eventually drew him to Boston. Through most of the 1980s he played with rock band Loose Ties, yet he gradually became more absorbed in the local folk scene at spots such as the Nameless Coffeehouse in Cambridge. In 1995 he adopted the professional name Terry Kitchen, taken from a character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Blue Beard. Responding to Kitchen’s request for permission, Vonnegut sent a postcard that read, “I’m pleased and amazed to be of use.” Kitchen’s decision to base himself in Boston aligned with his goal of crafting narrative-driven songs. The composition “Right Now” captured both the grand prize in the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, sponsored by the Songwriters’ Association of Washington, and first place in the country category of the U.S.A. Songwriting Competition in 2000. Right Now reached stores in late 2001.