Kate Tucker + SOS
Kate Tucker + The Sons Of Sweden create lush, cinematic sounds that stay with you and are very hard to get tired of. In fact each repeated listening feels like the first time. Like a blend of Mazzy Star and Cocteu Twins, Tucker creates a musical score that sets you to dreaming. The Shape The Color The Feel is easily one of the most gorgeous recordings ever made, while her solo project, White Horses, combines this magic with a rich flavoring of Americana. In essence, it is a music that dreams big, leaves enormous energy in its wake and transports the listener to an enduring state of grace. AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Kate: I think the best lesson I’ve learned began with something Robert Deeble told me backstage at The Triple Door in Seattle many years ago. He said, “Kate, you know, you are not your music. You are you. Your music is just one part of you.” It took me sometime to grasp the depth of what he was saying, but after years of striving and doing everything I could to “make it” as an artist, I realized that it’s LIFE that we are living, and this is my one single life as far as I know, so living it well and doing everything I can to be fully alive is the business about which I must concern myself. It just so happens that writing music and singing songs is still the best way I’ve found to do that. But it feels very different now. It feels like a gift. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Kate: I lived a very sheltered existence musically, early on. My parents didn’t permit anything ‘secular’ in the house, but we did listen to classical music which gave me a strong sense of melody, harmonics, and overall arrangement. I suppose it gave me drama too. And emotion, and all the things that come with good music. When I would go trucking with my dad or my uncle, we would listen to classic rock and that’s where I wanted to be. AHC: Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Kate: “Dreams” by The Cranberries came along with this very visionary moment in my youth. “Wish You Were Here” was the first song I really felt an adult sense of longing and nostalgia, well before I’d lived enough years to be nostalgic. “Sweet Child of Mine,” “Carry On Wayward Son,” “Dream On,” played over and over in the truck with my dad and those moments felt huge. U2’s “All I Want Is You” devastated me. I was a hopeless 90’s romantic. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Kate: My parents gave me a cassette recorder when I was 4 years old and I pretty much got right to work, so I have no idea what my first songs were, but I definitely sang them loudly from the backseat of the car on the way to church. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain albums or songs you couldn't live without? Kate: Musical inspirations are Patti Smith, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Neko Case. Albums I go back to consistently over very different times in my life include Grant Lee Buffalo Might Joe Moon, Mazzy Star So Tonight that I Might See, Cowboy Junkies Studio, Innocence Mission Glow, Long Division by Low, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball, Daniel Lanois Belladonna, Black Angels Passover, Band of Skulls Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Let it Bleed by the Stones. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Kate: If I feel it in my body I know I’m onto something. It’s the songs that make me cry when I’m writing them that usually have the most life in them. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Kate: Yes most definitely. My mother passed away this last year and I don’t know what I would have done if I had not been able to sit down and write it out in song. Music is cathartic from start to finish, for the writer, the performer, and the audience. It’s a force well beyond anything any one of us can conjure on our own. AHC: When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Kate: Lately a lot more than I had thought, but I hear quite a few folks saying that. I think collective consciousness finds its way into any “true” story, whether it be told from a pulpit, a soapbox, a storefront or a stage. AHC: I read this beautiful quote once which reads "music is not only the art of harmonious sounds; it is the expression of the world before representation", I wonder do you experience music in this way, as you create, write and compose your songs, do you have the feeling that there is something in the music that jumps ahead of you, so to speak, some ineffable mystery that you try to put your finger to the pulse of? That the song is a translation of a deep inner experience that is sometimes, maybe not always, hard to name or recognize outright? Kate: I joke about how people better look out cause I’m writing into the future, but actually I’ve seen a few of my songs that puzzled me upon writing them, come true, sometimes unfortunately. Prophecy is a dangerous modus operandi. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Kate: Night drives under the full moon, especially in the desert. One time we were heading to Sedona with our first day off in a while. We had driven in the night before from a show in Phoenix and the terrain looked more like Mars than Arizona, with everything in eery lunar relief. With Band of Skulls on the radio, it seemed like we could just slip into another dimension. The next day the guys went golfing and I proceeded to get lost in the desert for four hours with no water or cell phone. To celebrate finding my way back, I went to see a roadside psychic and bought a bunch of crystals. We had steak for dinner that night. AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Kate: That cliche that we hear about music being its own reward — it’s true. If you’ve lost sight of that in the glare of ambition and the din of the expectation, find your way back somehow to the very center of song. We are so lucky to be able to listen to the records we love and go see the artists who inspire us, AND we also get to write and sing and play our own songs and use our very own very unique voices. In any capacity, this is an incredible gift. You are needed. Your songs are needed. Your voice is heard. AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Kate: I have a new band called Little Reader and we just finished our record, produced by Mark Watrous, here in Nashville. We’ll hopefully have a single out soon with the new album out in early 2017. I’m back in the studio right now finishing the new Kate Tucker record too. Thanks for listening. For more information visit www.katetucker.net/ & katetuckerandthesonsofsweden.com/
2 Comments
Fifi
10/24/2016 03:04:30 pm
Kate Tucker is a goddess
Reply
Rob Taylor
10/24/2016 05:46:11 pm
Hey beautiful... you've got it right... goodluck with your passionate path... I could be your friend, Rob
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
Categories |