there’s room for all of us
Kristen McNamara “In Key West, there’s room for all of us.”
Kristen McNamara performed at the 2025 Fantasy Fest Headdress Ball.
Kristen McNamara was born in San Louis Obispo, California and raised in the natural beauty of the serene Napa Valley on scenic Howell Mountain. Her grandmother Shirley McNamara sold guitars and pianos and inspired her to sing.
K-Mac performing at one of her gigs at the Saint on Duval Street.
When she was very young, her family raised chickens and, instead of a lemonade stand, Kristen sold eggs for two dollars a dozen. As a childhood singing phenomenon, Kristen didn’t have a normal education because she got into the music business very early and studied independently. Later in life, while in Nashville, Tennessee, country music icon Wynona Judd would tell Kristen that “normal” is a just cycle on the washing machine.
Seventeen-year-old Kristen was featured on Star Search with Arsenio Hall in 2003. She moved to Nashville in 2004, singing on demos for many songwriters. She toured with Big & Rich, worked with Kenney Chesney, Alan Jackson, Wynonna Judd, and others. While in Nashville, Kristen was a finalist in the Nashville Star in 2006. She was also a contestant in season eight of American Idol in 2009 along with Adam Lambert and other talented singers.
In 2010, fellow songwriters Pete Sallies, Kris Bergsnes, and Gregg Fria suggested Kristen come to Key West for the Key West Songwriters Festival. While there she met a British Royal Navy fighter pilot who was training at Boca Chica Naval Air Station. They met near a sausage cart at the corner of Duval and Caroline streets. They quickly hit it off and he convinced her to stay in Key West with him. Her friends returned to Nashville. The romance did not last long and she moved to Los Angeles, California.
About a year later, the fighter pilot contacted her and said he just didn’t feel the same as when they were together in Key West. She told him that they should “meet me on Duval Street”. She returned to Key West but the he never showed up.
Kristen is also a talented painter so while waiting for the pilot, she went to the beach near Casa Marina to paint the ocean. It became cloudy and started to rain. She quickly moved under an awning but a bolt of lightning struck nearby with current passing through her body. The concerned manager wanted her to go to the hospital but instead she felt inspired to write a song, “Duval Street” (a story about the meeting that never took place). While the pilot never showed, Kristen got a very good song out of it.
After living in Nashville, Los Angeles, and frequently visiting a producer in the Bronx, Kristen said Key West was the first place she lived that “hugged her back”. She moved to Key West full time in 2011. The laid-back atmosphere here allows her to have a chance to be bored, and when bored, she gets very creative and has done some of her best work.
COVID was a terrible experience but it taught Kristen to slow down, stop over performing, do more artwork, and sing only three days a week. She said, “where else can I go and paint and sing about the ocean. She performs only three nights a week and takes care with her voice.
In 2024, she went through the hardest year of her life, breaking off an engagement. During this past summer, she was able to stay in the home of Larry Smith and his wife Christine Cordone’s while they were traveling up North. Christine is also a vocalist and painter and Larry, a songwriter, so the house was full of good energy for Kristen. During the summer, she was also commissioned to paint new murals on the Sunset Pier.
Kristen opened for Kenny Chesney at the height of his career, and it’s different to see him in a new light while here in Key West. She finds herself now writing music with James Slater, hoping to get Chesney to cut one of their songs. 
To Kristen it shows how we are all really human. Glamorous stars and famous people like Jimmy Buffett, Shel Silverstein, Tennessee Williams, etc. walked the streets in Key West along with the rest of the population.
John Vagnoni (Green Parrot) once told a story of bartending at the Midget (an old 70s shrimpers bar on Greene Street). John found himself waiting on Peter Fonda, Truman Capote, and Tom McGuane together one night. No one knew who they were at this funky shrimper’s bar, or for that matter, would have cared.
Key West is a very difficult and expensive place for housing. It’s also a one of a kind music scene with 55 venues for live music and hundreds of performances weekly. Its diversity is also the coolest part. 
Some in Key West have never played professionally, some have only performed in clubs and bars, some have been in Key West for decades, others just want to play music without dreams of becoming a star, and just want to enjoy their musical life.
To Kristen, Key West is more family like – the mixture is the most exciting part. It’s unique and unlike Nashville and Los Angeles. We don’t have a lot of egos. According to Kristen, there is “room for all of us”.
You can catch Kristen at La Te Da’s Piano Bar on Thursday and Friday nights and at the Bull on Wednesday evenings ironically near the famous sausage cart on the corner of Caroline and Duval.
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