photo by Jon Wood

Kat sings about bad asses and goddesses, doing the backstroke for love, hitting the road and drinking wine with ghosts, or with anyone for that matter.  In "Satan's Sheets" she documents the soul sucking attempts at straight day jobs.  Kat also sings about human generosity and kindness in "Hitchin' a Ride."

Crash on the couch or on the floor
When you leave just lock the door
My home is your home
What’s mine is yours

Yet stops along the road can also bring the darker side of experience.  In "Cream of the Crop", she sings of  “male whores and hanging raw meat” in Hell's Kitchen, New York.  In "Still have my Dreams,” she ponders the life of a female junkie on Hastings and Main in Vancouver.

She sings of the road, farmland, cityscapes, back alleys, and flophouses in a voice honest and pure, full of experience and tarmac.

My thumb is out
My cap is on
My guitar at my feet
Gonna go to the wild wild west
Or maybe I’ll go east

Kat was a farm girl from the Slocan Valley of British Columbia, Canada.  With heart restless and thumbs supple from a childhood spent milking cows, she soon set out to see the world.  From Mexico to Australia, and after jumping ship in the South Seas, she hit New York City, the Caribbean, Britain and Spain, and then San Francisco.  But the Kat always came back to Canada.

Her first singing experience was busking in the tube station in London, England.  She only knew one song – “Femme Fatale” — and sang it non-stop, taking time out only for swigs from a nasty bottle of cooking wine.  A shy, flute-playing skinhead asked Kat out for supper.  Over a pint of Guinness, he told her, in a thick Cockney accent: "You sound like me Aunt wailing at me Uncle's funeral.  It sends shivers down me back." It was the beginning of her shakin' career.

She continued to travel, busk on the streets and perform in music venues and on alternative radio.  She traveled across Canada's countryside dipping her seasoned thumb into Newfoundland's raging sea and that some year swimming at Vancouver's Wreck Beach.  In Vancouver, Kat lives in her purple van and you may have heard her play at such venues as the Railway, The Marine Club and The Whip.  Her voice will shake you like the mournful wail of a skinhead's bereaved aunt at his uncle's funeral.  But it's the road that forever calls, and soon:

Pack my bags and my guitar
Hit the road again
Don’t know where I'm goin
But I know where I've been.


In the February 2000 issue of Sex and Sexualities, published by the Womyn's Publication Network of Victoria, BC, Jesseca White writes:

Kat’s first cd release, Just Some Chick, marks the beginning of another road trip.  Gearing up for her journey down North America’s blue highways, Kat has painted her eighties camper van lollipop grape and filled her tank with rocket fuel.  With her voice at one moment comforting then edgy, political-satirical lyrics, and wheels like she's got, Kat will be welcomed whether she heads into the wild, wild west or decides to go east.  Whether she is in a smoky cowboy bar in Canal Flats or finds herself at a feminist folk festival in Michigan, Kat’s music will be adored by many.

With songs like “Stan’s Sheets,” whose galloping guitar and accordion rhythm carries the witty story about a woman waking between animal print sheets “Wondering if the devil wants me/ Feel my honor beat away/ stripped of ethics and I feel ashamed/ Like a rat in a pit of snakes/ Frantic search for my escape.”

Then there is the haunting track, “I Still Have My Dreams,” that was inspired by her time working with women of the Vancouver's downtown eastside.  Hoping to draw more attention to the devastating effects of drug use, Kat made this song into a video depicting images of the women from Lincoln Clarkes’ photographic series, “Heroines: Portraits of Women of the Downtown Eastside.”

This cd is driven by angst and compassion, intelligently sharp humor, Kat’s folksy back-forty guitar and a beautiful haunting accordion on a few tracks.



Write ellavon@ellavon.com for ordering information.

Email Kat directly.

For more music visit Kat's past life.

Kat's blog.