Singer, songwriter, political activist, and all round task manager has her new album out on July 27th, is released on her own Howlin` Hound label. Along with producers Chuck Prophet and Simon Alpin, Kathleen has made an album of immense weight, warmth and searing honesty. Prophet and Alpin have woken the guilty preacher, smoked his last cigarette and served him up a condemned man s breakfast whilst Kathleen`s songs challenge his congregation.
These two men have produced an album of casual brilliance, letting the songs rise in the swirling swell of 21st century uncertainty. Kathleen is a sussed and culturally aware musician who passionately believes in the healing capacity of music, people power, and that the personal is most definitely political. We got together to chew over music, life, and the family tree.
You have lived a varied and interesting life Kathleen. Looking at your bio on your website, what came first for you, music or politics? My dad was a singin in the shower kind of guy.
He has a beautiful voice and was into Tommy Wolfe and Fran Landesman s Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most type jazz. I was in school and church choirs from a very young age. An alto age 10!
Tell me something about your political awareness. How did your bullshit detector antenna know where to home in? If activism can be genetic then it may have always been there laying dormant until it was lit up at 14 by my high school history teacher, Paula Ogren.
Her mantra was apathy is a sin ! and if you have the right to vote in what purports to be a democratic society then it is practically criminal to not exercise that right. And if you are a woman, even more negligent and a minority woman, well, you get the gist.
Who would you namecheck as inspirations to your music? My dad, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Bob, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Bros, CSN Y, JD Souther, Jackson Browne, Marianne Faithful, Joni Mitchell, Dolly, Bobbie Gentry, Steve Earle, Robert Burns, and the mighty Chuck Prophet. And more generally on your life?
My mom, Sister Mary Karlyn, Paula Ogren, Tom Hayden, Tom Paine, Sarah Raphael, my ridiculously beautiful, talented sons, Skylar, Aubrey, and Luke are a constant source of inspiration and exasperation. My mad scientist/physician husband Dorian. His work ethic and dedication to his vocation is astounding.
You have quite a lineage, ancestors who led challenging political lives, tell me about them? My maternal grandfather Robert O Dowd was an Irish 1st generation American who was a card carrying member of the Communist Party back in the day when it was a romantic movement. When the farm in Michigan went bust he went into town to join the rank and file in the booming auto industry.
He became embroiled in the embryonic Labour Movement and fought for the rights of workers to be members of a union. Though inspirational it was to be his undoing. He helped organise and lead various strikes and routinely got his head stoved in by government goon squads.
He died of a brain haemorrhage years later in his favourite bar. He wasn t yet 40. My maternal great grandmother Elizabeth Broom was a colourful Englishwoman from Devon who owned and ran a speakeasy during the Prohibition which included girls upstairs as an optional extra.
And my great great uncle on my dad s side of the family, Jesus Garcia, is a folk hero in Mexico who was a train engineer when a dynamite laden train caught fire in the middle of the town of Nacozari, Sonora. He drove the train out towards the mines away from the heavily populated town center and blew up with the train! A folk song Maquina 501 tells the story in a bit more detail.
That was November 1907 so this year is the centenary party which I m hoping to get to. I always find it confounding when I hear people say I leave the politics to the politicians ..
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that in itself is an act of disengagement, surely? That old apathy chestnut again. There s no point whinging about stuff that you can ostensibly affect change about if you don t make your feelings known to the people in power who are supposed to be there to represent and implement our ideas and opinions.
Bitching and complaining can be great fun but pretty ineffectual unless it spawns great literature or art or is backed up with calls and letters and voting with your feet on polling day. Unless of course you are a member of the Anarchist Party whose motto is Don t Vote ! Because whoever you vote for The Government always gets in.
Naomi Klein has written a book called No Logo, in an attempt to de-mystify and critique globalisation and capitalism. She makes clear the complete lack of unbranded public space, ie gigs, art exhibitions, murals - multinationals have crept into patronising all these events and use them as a tool to enhance a brand culture for themselves. What s your view on this?
I instinctively disapprove of obvious branding and am much more likely to be positively predisposed to companies that keep their sponsorship on the down low. but therein lies the rub; no brand - no visibility and no easily attributable credit. Whatever happened to the buzz that came as a result of anonymous altruism?
It got sponsored by Nike. When will Tony Blair be in the dock for war crimes, I wonder? My guess is never.
Just as it s only a matter of history that booze is legal and marijuana isn t. With Blair, it s a question of whose in power, when, and whose empire of dirt is the most omnipotent. I don t think history will be kind to him but he seems to be getting away with it at the moment.
think the Iraq atrocities will follow him around like a bad smell for the rest of his pampered, cushioned life. I recently interviewed writer Chris Salewicz who has published a bio on Joe Strummer, were you a fan of Strummer and The Clash? The attitude, the energy, and the sheer balls that came across through the music was radical and exciting.
Sonically/melodically I was challenged to a duel by them and the music left me feeling agitated and unresolved, which maybe was the point in the first place. I already had a young baby and so couldn t/didn t throw myself into that anarchic whirlwind lifestyle. How was it singing on Neil Young s album, ?
How did it come about? It was thrilling! It was combining my favourite things, singing and shouting about what s gone wrong with our Jesus take the wheel form of government and how it s been hijacked and being pillaged by this right wing cabal even as we speak.
I had flown into LA after having spent 2 very productive days recording the new album with Chuck Prophet in San Francisco, still high from the art we had begun to make. I was awakened around 8:30 am by a phone call from my great friend Dan Navarro (Lowen Navarro) asking if I would be up for a 12 hour backing vocal session in the Capitol Records building. At first I was kind of blas about it cause I was half asleep and sort of on vacation.
But when he said Kath, it s for Neil Young I let out a yelp and dropped the phone. I had to be ok d by the great Rosemary Butler who along with Neil conducted the choir. She had heard me sing and at a festival in Durango we had both played at the previous summer and so I was in.
Dan came and got me and off we went. We sang for 12 hours with 2 half hour breaks for food. As soon as we arrived we were split into bass, alto, and sopranos.
The lyrics were rolled up on a giant overhead projector screen and as we read them people would audibly gasp or burst into spontaneous applause. I couldn t believe that finally someone with his sort of high profile and access to the big media machine was coming out of the closet and singing/saying/shouting even, about the injustices of this war and the hypocrisies that we tend to tolerate in our society on a daily basis. We came out of the session 12 plus hours later exhausted, elated, and floating in a surrealistic we can change the world bubble.
My throat chakra was buzzing and glowing. Yeah that s right the healing power of music . You have many songwriting credits, via Bug Music.
Do you write songs with people like Stacey Earle in mind, or do they hear your version and arrangement first? Yeah I have a couple of songs on other people s albums but they have all been direct collaborations. Stacey Earle and I met through her publisher at the time Jewel Coburn (Ten Ten Music) who wanted us to get together and write so as to combine our writing sensibilities.
Stacey has this folk/hillbilly country/Mexican mariachi thang she does and I m a kinda genre blended west coast, alt blues rock, folk rock noire, jaded by living in London kind of writer. So we wrote Losers Weep for her first album and her big brother Steve sang harmonies on it. It s a song that we both drew out of our shared experiences of being single teenage mothers.
Stacey s dad Jack Earle helped us finish it off.
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