Get to Know: Rising Songwriter, Multi-Instrumentalist and Vocalist Kathleen
Photo Credit: Chimera Singer
To rising songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Kathleen, nature is the ultimate artist. Raised primarily in Steamboat Springs, Colorado with parents who are both multi-faceted scientists (her father is a Pediatrician with knowledge of botany, while her mother worked for two decades as a park ranger before becoming a Physician’s Assistant), a sister studying evolutionary biology and history and her own experience as a florist for many years, Kathleen’s innate reverence for nature’s creative processes bloomed early on and became an integral part of the way she writes music.
Photo Credit: Chimera Singer
After teaching herself how to write songs, Kathleen moved to New York City to pursue her art. Although she found inspiration in the work of New York-based producers like Ariel Rechtshaid, the city still didn't feel like home. She heeded her instincts and returned to Colorado in the hopes that creativity would flow freely, and it did. She began writing and recording music, channeling the natural beauty and familiarity of the place she grew up. Kathleen’s vision honors who she was as much as who she is, and she explores her many loves in her music in hopes of inciting the same joy in her listeners. She celebrates her love of flowers by featuring them prominently in her songwriting and visuals. Her enthusiasm for the world around her is contagious, and by the end of even one song, it’s difficult not to feel the same way.
“My focus for the art surrounding my project is to re-awake our dormant affinity to nature by exposing the beauty of what we normally dismiss and the necessity of re-incorporating it in our every life in a modern, positive way.”
Kathleen’s music provides a perfect gateway into re-discovering the importance of our essential relationship with the world around us while simultaneously exploring the complexities of the human spirit. Her voice is haunting and strong, but it also exudes a crucial vulnerability that reminds us we can still be effective communicators while remaining soft and human. In fact, it is Kathleen’s unique ability to walk these two lines — of strength and of softness — that makes her songs even more accessible, particularly in times defined by extremes.
This past October Kathleen released her second EP Kathleen II via Let Me Know/Warner Records. The EP features “Can’t Sleep,” as well as previously shared singles “August” and “Dark Side of the Moon” and a new track, “Glass Piano.” The follow up to her deput EP Kathleen I ,released in May, finds the singer digging deeper into her roots as a poet and environmentalist, using the backdrop of the pandemic to heighten the urgency of the music and contrast the EP’s lighter moments.
“Dark Side of the Moon” was written at the beginning of quarantine when uncertainty and chaos abounded, inspired by “everyone running and hiding from this microscopic pathogen,” yet there is a tenderness in Kathleen’s voice as she prepares for a once in a lifetime opportunity to reconnect with her family.
There’s a similar duality on “Can’t Sleep,” which finds Kathleen comparing the state of the world to a bad dream. On one hand, it sometimes feels like the reality we’re collectively enduring would end if we just woke up, and on the other hand the song is also about the worst nightmare of those in power — everyone uniting to effect change. The EP, which is in large produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Adele, Beyoncé, Vampire Weekend, HAIM, Kelela), references some of Kathleen’s favorite poetry and further highlights the precision of her voice and her devotion to nature, setting the scene for the rising singer’s next chapter.
Kathleen recently partnered with Klean Kanteen to create a custom bottle that features Kathleen’s own illustration of the Glacier Lily, a resilient flower found in the Rocky Mountains that often grows right through the snow, symbolizing the spring that awaits us after the quarantine winter. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Indigenous ReGeneration, a charitable organization dedicated to the preservation and re-indigenization of Native Communities.
Keep your ears peeled for more music coming from Kathleen in 2021!