Music to her ears By VIRGINIA GRANTIER, Bismarck Tribune About a year ago, Kris Kitko was still based in Chicago, a classroom teacher by day, playing guitar by night and turning the heads of music critics. "She displays several superpowers," a Chicago Tribune review said. "... She should be considered with the Alanis Morissettes and Arica Roses of this world," wrote A-J Charron in a 2003 review for Guitar Noise Newsletter. "Remember her name as Kitko is one who will be going far." Kitko, 37, left her inner-city Chicago elementary school teaching job last fall to come home to Bismarck to teach music at Stringbean Music and Coffee Shop (514 E. Main Ave.) and to continue a music career that has produced two CDs, one a children's CD titled "Who Let the Fly In." About her life in Bismarck, Kitko -- who has shared the stage with such performers as Ferron, Rhiannon and Sarah Douger -- said "I'm the happiest I've ever been." Other people are happy, too. "She's one of the most incredible musicians around here," said Brad Stockert, 36, of Bismarck, who has taught jazz and percussion at the college level and now teaches on his own. "She is the total package." She dreamed for decades of achieving music stardom -- something that started at about age 7, when, already a songwriter, she called a recording studio to get prices and other information about recording her work. Kitko wasn't always familiar with North Dakota. Life started out in a rural area, small-town Monroe, Conn., where her pianist mother would play Beatles songs. Kitko started dreaming about the days when she'd make her living traveling the world, making music like what she heard on the radio. But in sixth grade she moved to Valley City. Her dad wanted to live out West and he found a job as a school principal there. Tthe music kept coming along. An ad she posted in a local music store got her plenty of young musicians wanting to start a band -- too many. The band had two drummers, for example, because it didn't want to turn people away. Kitko, playing bass guitar at the time, said the 1980s rock band's best cover tune was "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." After high school graduation, and a year at Bismarck State College, she dropped out to join a band called "Out of Line." The band performed throughout the state and in a couple of other states. But life on the road wasn't what she expected and she quit to write music and get discovered, and earned her pay in a new way. She got a janitorial job. It lasted about nine months. She ended up at University of North Dakota, getting an elementary education degree. She taught first grade in Florida and later taught on Chicago's West Side. At her school there, a school counselor was grazed by a bullet and Kitko was attacked by a troubled fifth-grade boy. She knew of kids whose parents would leave them alone for days, forcing older siblings to care and cook for them. "I feel like I owe a lot to those kids," she said. She learned much more about patience and kindness, and said she doesn't think she could ever judge anyone again after seeing what those kids went through. Here in Bismarck, the vegetarian has a vegetable garden and time to think about the things the writer of hundreds of songs likes to think about -- music. And she has time to do what she has discovered is more important than stardom: She said she wants to help people have a positive relationship with music ... and help the countless people who gave up playing instruments years ago and have regretted it ever since. Kitko to the rescue. And maybe that has given her some stardom, after all. (Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com)