Kat Edmonson, whose socially-conscious single “Be The Change” made waves in Austin last year (thanks in part to the excellent video that was made with it), has come back with Take To The Sky, a new album full of old jazz standards and brilliant, unashamed pop covers (although Edmonson may take issue with you calling them “covers”). Her breathtaking live performances have been packing Austin clubs for months behind her band’s unique and versatile arrangements and Edmonson’s stunning vocal prowess. She took time out of her busy independent-artist schedule to talk to us about going up North, the new album, covering The Cure, and “kittenish” puns that were perhaps less than fit-to-print. You can see Edmonson live on Tuesday, July 7, as she plays at the Cactus Cafe on campus. We suggest you stop by and pick up Take To The Sky before a major label grabs it up (seriously).
Austin Sound: So you’ve been on tour for some time now, right?
Kat Edmonson: Yeah, I’ve actually been home for a couple weeks now, but I was on tour in the North East.
AS: How was that? Do you like being on tour, or is it a relief to finally get back home?
KE: I love being on tour. I haven’t hit the wall yet regarding touring and I don’t think i will for a very very long time. I’m actually very anxious to get back on the road.
AS: Where are you headed next?
KE: Well actually before I go very far I’m putting together a tour right now that will begin in San Antonio, and then I’ll be playing around Texas. So I’ll play three shows in Austin and then I’m going to go to Ft Worth and then Houston to hit up the home-base.
AS: Got the Texas three step there?
KE: Well four [laughs].
AS: How was the North East though, were the crowds there receptive?
KE: Actually they were really receptive. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go because that was my first time up there to play, and all the rooms were packed! Not only that, but they seemed all really responsive and enthusiastic. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from different people in different cities from the clubs that were also very receptive. So I’ve got places to play when I go back, and a few extra in my pocket now.
AS: Let’s talk about the new album a little bit. So last year’s single “Be The Change,” I know most people have probably read quite a bit about it and seen it; that single really took off last year in part thanks to the YouTube video going “viral,” as they say. When you were making this album, were you worried about being defined by that one song, or was that not an issue for you?
KE: I was… I was considering putting it on the album, but I didn’t put it on the album and went a different direction artistically. And the truth is, there are still no boxes, it seems that all of my fans are taking whatever I put out at this point and not trying to classify me in any sort of genre. Which I’m really relieved, because it was a concern of mine when I started putting out music, because there are so many different types of music that I like to touch on. Ultimately I knew that there was nothing I could really do about it but continue to put out what I love and hope that everyone would receive it well. And it seems to me that people are welcoming the pop music as well as jazz, and the jazz music as well as pop. So I’m not confined - not yet.
AS: And it definitely seems that the new album goes off in a different direction. Unlike the singles this one is all jazz standards or covers of other pops songs, right?
KE: Right.
AS: I know you said you didn’t want to put “Be The Change” on the album, but what made you decide not to do other originals?
KE: You know its interesting, I hadn’t quite figured out how to arrange my original music to fit the tone of the rest of the songs. So it was really aesthetically motivated, the decision not to put them on there.
AS: But there is material in the works?
KE: There’s lots and lots of material, and it’s where my head has been as of late, with the material that I’ve been writing. And I have some ideas of how to incorporate the different colors of Take To The Sky in arranging my new tunes.
AS: Speaking of which, I’m wondering how you picked the jazz charts you wanted to perform on Take To The Sky. You’ve got so many different things: there’s a couple Cole Porter tunes, and then “Angel Eyes,” which I’ve heard like hundreds of recordings of. Did you go with songs that you could easily create a whole record out of, or were they more just musicians or songs that have influenced you in one way or another?
KE: It was a combination of all of that. For example, The Cure tune “Just Like Heaven,” was simple a tune that I always loved and rocked out to quite a bit when I was in high school. I heard it one night a few years ago and I was just like, “Wow, I love that song so much! I love the melody, and I want to sing that song!” So I brought it to my piano player Kevin Lovejoy and told him it would be cool to cover that song, and he had the idea to do it as a Bossa. And that was the birth of the idea that we had to continue to perform songs and mix genres. We were so turned on by what we’d done with The Cure that we started looking for other tunes that were good vessels for that.
We started working all of the material out at my monthly show at the Elephant Room, and it all came together. A little over a year we’ve been working on the material, building all the arrangements at each show, and the ones that were left standing when I was totally itching to record my record were the ones I recorded. So it came down to what the band was really functioning strongly on.
AS: Especially with the pop covers, they sound so tastefully done. It sounds like The Cardigans are just playing lounge music, as opposed to a “novelty act,” I guess. At what point did you decide “Okay, we are going to do covers of pop songs.” What made you feel that it was going to be more successful than just a “novelty” cover.
KE: When I realized that we could do it in a very… I’ll use yours, “tasteful” way. I wanted to do it with integrity, and I didn’t want any of my songs to be written off as “cover tunes” or “lounge tunes” so much as just new interpretations. And that’s really stemming out of my love of jazz and the way that for decades really fantastic artists have performed music out of the great American songbook and molded the songs into their own, and that’s really in praise of the composers - the songwriters. And today, all these tunes are referred to as covers, but back in the day it wasn’t necessarily called a “cover,” it was like Tony Bennett’s version of “Angel Eyes,” or something… I actually don’t now if Tony Bennett ever recorded a version of “Angel Eyes” but I’ll go check that out now [laughs].
So that was important to remember, because I really was worried. I’ve heard people cover different tunes and I’m sometimes embarrassed by the way that it turns out [laughs]. So when I realized that I didn’t feel that way about the arrangements we were working with, I decided to move forward.
AS: I think that’s very true. “Summertime,” for example - there’s a John Coltrane cut of it that just rambles on for twelve, thirteen minutes or so, and it’s great! I guess in the jazz community, or jazz tradition, there isn’t a cover, like you were saying, but I guess I’m wondering: how do you see the songs that are jazz standards fitting in with the pop? You’ve got “Summertime” sitting right next to “Just Like Heaven,” where do you see the connection?
KE: They were all popular tunes in their day. And at the time “Summertime” was pop. Jazz players were performing pop tunes, popular standards, that have now been designated as another genre. “Summertime” is more well known that the Cure even, so it really comes down to the essential songwriting. And the beautiful compositions.
AS: And you really feel that there’s a fit there?
KE: Yeah.
AS: Well I’d definitely agree [laughs].
KE: Making it come together on an album, though, that’s the very fine line to walk.
AS: So what was that process? Both on your part and on that of the band that you’ve got with you, who do an excellent job by the way. What was the arrangement process?
KE: Well it varied from tune to tune. At the core of it was Keven [Lovejoy] and I sitting at the piano somewhere just working stuff out for our shows, and that’s what we had in mind until we decided to record a record. All of the time, we were just thinking about, “Well what are we going to play at the next show?” We’d be sitting playing with grooves - we’d come up with a groove that we though was cool, or we’d find a groove in a song that we were like “Wow! This would sound really amazing under… under ‘Night and Day’.”
And sometimes Kevin would hear something. For example, “(Just Like) Starting Over” by John Lennon, he just heard it while we were playing the song one day. I didn’t hear it at all, and he just said, “Trust me, I know this will sound amazing.” So we just went for it.
“One Fine Day” was that for me, I just thought that would be a really interesting swing tune. And we’d yet to take a pop tune and actually transform it into swing, you know? Again, it was all a really fine line to walk, it was an interesting balance because if it teetered in the wrong direction, well, there were so many times where we just looked at each other: “Is that corny?” [laughs]
AS: It’s a good question to be asking yourself I think.
KE: It’s always a good question, you know! There’s sometimes when you just want to operate with the band in, but usually in those moments there’s nothing corny happening at all.
AS: So what about bringing the whole backing band into the mix. I’d say it’s… well I guess I’d say its a very subdued sound, although its definitely energetic, there’s a lot going on. For example, the trombone solo in “One Fine Day” is very pronounced. To what extent were you controlling those specific arrangements, and to what extent did it just happen when you started playing?
KE: Most of it just came out when we were playing, and I knew that it would happen because I was hiring the best players. And to me that was really important working on this project that I pull together extremely strong players that could not only play what I wanted, but more so play their character into the music - things that I wouldn’t think of myself. I think thats really the whole point of collaboration anyway.
For example, on “One Fine Day” I just told Ron Westray to take a solo. But he’s so familiar with swing music. He played with Wynton Marsalis for so many years, and he’s played in so many different incarnations, including his own band he plays with. So that was a no brainer for him, he could probably do that while he was sleeping.
There were a couple times when we didn’t have the groove completely together. We knew in what time we wanted a song, or the kind of rhythm we wanted, but we didn’t know what shape it would take. Eric Revis the bass player and JJ Johnson the drummer really contributed a lot to that. And then I had a really fantastic horn player named John Ellis out of New York playing on several of the tracks, including “Just Like Heaven.” He played on several different instruments, just went through each tune a couple of different times and we just got to pick which one we liked best, which is super fun of course.
For the most part we recorded it all live together in the room and just went for it. We wanted to capture, again, the spirit of the shows and where the music had arrived.
AS: So the record’s been very well received, it’s been getting tons of great press, especially outside of Texas too. It’s been a best seller on iTunes now for a while I think too. So what’s your response to that? Do you congratulate yourself, or do you not even miss a beat?
KE: I don’t stop too often [laughs], for the reason right now that I’m still doing everything on my own. I’ve got help from Kevin Lovejoy, who started Convivium records with me, which is the label we put Take To The Sky out on. But I’m doing all my own booking and promotion and everything else that’s involved. Tour managing… the list goes on. So basically there’s so many things I’m doing at once, that when something comes in I give Kevin a call and let him know how excited I am and just keep working [laughs]! Because I’ve had to learn how to multitask, which is something I never, never though I would do. Never really cared to be much of a multitasked, but I don’t have any time these days to do anything but maintain all this stuff.
AS: Well one review specifically, The New York Times, I think they said your voice was “kittenish,” which I’m going to take as an underhanded pun on “Kat.” How do you feel about that description, or more to the point, what musicians inspire the way that you sing, how do you conceptualize yourself?
KE: Well, “kittenish” isn’t actually a word I use to describe myself, although it was clever. And it was the New York Times, so I’ll take it.
But I was originally influenced by a lot of male singers from the 30’s and 40’s who were staring in old pictures, musicals and things. That’s where I got my musical foundation, by listening to Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and a lot of other wonderful singers. I was really being saturated by that kind of music and those movies, and the style from that era that I was being exposed to. So it had the impact on me that I’m in touch with, but to what extent I don’t know actually. I’m just so comforted by that era of music, as well as music from the 50’s in 60’s, it was all really founded in the movies I was watching.
And then I started listening to Judy Garland, and Tony Bennett. And then the first concert I went to when I was seven was The Ink Spots. And gosh, Frank Sinatra was a really big influence. I started checking out other genres of music, and really digging a lot of Sam Cooke and Motown. I got really obsessed with Carly Simon at one point, and was really taken with Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Crosby Stills Nash and Young. And The Beatles and the Beach Boys. Now I’m just talking about music that I like, but they all really influenced my singing because, all the while I guess I was listening very closely and mimicking everything I heard. I still do that and that’s the sound that comes out.
AS: It’s interesting that you say you were most influenced by male singers because there’s a certain confidence in male jazz singers that’s always struck me as… well “confident” really. Hearing your singing voice, I much more identified it with that than “kittenish” for example.
KE: Thank you [laughs].
AS: But there’s no good pun to be made there. Nor do I write for the New York Times [laughs].
So what’s the next step for you. I know you mentioned a tour, and that some new material in the old brain box. But with this label, are you looking for more releases to put out, or is it primarily for you?
KE: Well, this record is doing really well in Austin right now, and it’s doing really well elsewhere and I feel as though I could really grow a fan base from this record. And my ultimate goal is just to tour everywhere, so I want to use this record to do that, as my springboard. I have actually gotten a lot of interest from labels and entertaining offers from some of them, but as we all know the music business is really tricky and the old ways aren’t necessarily the best ways anymore. So I’m really really trying to decide if I’m going to keep my record on my own label, if I want to put it out on an independent label, or if I want to go ahead and put it out on a major label. They’ve all got different aspects that are great and downsides, so I’m trying to figure that out today.
AS: Well those are good options to be looking at!
KE: They’re great!
Mp3s from Take to the Sky:
Just Like Heaven
Just One of Those Things
Websites:
http://katedmonson.com
Myspace
