Congratulations on your new single, "Ride Home", off of your upcoming album. You also had a music video that you released. What was that whole process like? How long were you working on the song? What inspired it? Can you give us any behind-the-scenes tidbits?
I began writing most of it, I would say, 2017 into 2018. Right around the time that I was going to start self-producing it, which I had done with previous works, I met my current producer. His name is Ravi Bhavsar. He goes by SPHMRE [pronounced SOPH-O-MORE]. He was working at a place called Flux Studios in New York City. Basically, through a very weird kind of butterfly effect chain of events, we linked up and hit it off instantly. After going back and forth with just a one-off song that we did together, he actually offered to do the entire album for me/with me, and so what we basically did was we just worked in Flux any time that it wasn't booked. It's a super busy studio, so we ended up doing sessions from midnight to 4:00 in the morning. We worked from noon to midnight on the 4th of July one year. We worked on New Year's Day 2020. So basically, this has been a year's long process now because of the way that we went about making this, and we really took our time with it, which is something that I'm learning not all artists get to do in the studio.
Regarding the video, I'd been familiar with Bob Sweeney's work for a while, and so when it came time for me to reach out for someone to do the video, he was an obvious choice for me. I was lucky enough that he was down to do it. The other actress in the video, her name is Leah Scully. I've known her since my freshman year of college, so I reached out and asked if she would want to do it and she was down. My brother, who produced my first two EPs, was on set with us and was helping during the day, too. We shot that out behind the house I grew up. It backs up onto a lot of state land up in North Jersey. It kind of just fit the mood. Bob is super talented. He brought this great vision to life that just totally brings a new dimension to the song. So I'm very excited about both the song and the video.
It's beautifully shot. I was like, "Is that shot on film, or was it shot digitally and then had cinematic effects added to it?" The sun, the time of the day that you shot, it came together really beautifully.
Thank you. The very next day was the first day that it snowed that year, so we got it right at the perfect time when it was like that dead kind of end-of-fall vibe going on. The very next day, it looked totally different. So that was pretty cool.
It looked like it was cold. Was it cold?
It definitely was cold, yeah. My friend Leah is a trooper. She was just wearing a dress of mine that I wore to a wedding a few years ago. She did really great that day, too.
What is your process like in terms of writing songs? Does the music comes first and then the lyrics? Do you see a movie playing in your head and you write a story? Or is it based on personal experiences?
It's part fiction and part nonfiction is kind of what ends up happening. There's not really a set process for me, necessarily. A lot of times it'll just be little dribbles of lines or notes here and there, and sometimes those will grow into songs, and then other times I'll hear the whole thing all at once and it's done.
I'll be inspired by something that I observe or experience in my day-to-day, and then that transforms itself through the writing process into something that's "me" but it's also separate from me. I don't know how else to really explain it. Then other times, a song just comes out of nowhere, and then a year or two later, I'll be like, "Oh, that's what that was about" and it makes sense in retrospect.
You started out as a solo project and now you're a five-piece band. What inspired that? Who are your bandmates?
A big part of the reason that I started as a solo project is because a previous bandmate of mine, who's actually with one of my current bandmates and my best friend, logistically our lives kind of physically separated us, and so our project took a backseat because of the way that life happens.
From the beginning, I always wanted my best friends Vin [Karaitis] and Elyse [Kiedaisch] to be a part of Kate Dressed Up. The two of them were pretty much always non-negotiable from the start. We've been singing together for pretty much a decade now, and the three of us have just been very much a unit through our late teens into adult lives. Vin is one of the best musicians and the best songwriter that I know, period. He's just next level. Elyse is one of the best singers I know.
There have been a lot of other iterations of Kate Dressed Up over the past two and a half or so years. My cousin Christopher, who's a drummer, and my friend Elaine Rasnake, who owns Daughterboard Audio — she's a Mastering Engineer — they were in the band at times.
Going into 2020, I had plans to take the band on a real full band national tour. I planned that with my business partner, Mickey [Skabla]. I set up the band to be me and Vin. Ryan Hilsinger, who is a producer and owns AGL Sounds which is a studio in New Jersey, he's a drummer. I asked him to come on tour and he was down, so I added him. My friend Nick [Iacobelli], who I actually met through Christopher in a previous iteration of the band, is an incredible bassist and an incredible musician, like next level. Same thing as Vin. They're like freaks. So are Ryan and Elyse, honestly. They're all kind of like musical freaks in my eyes, in the best possible way. Nick, I'm lucky enough that he likes my band and my music and he was down to come on tour.
Then when the tour fell through, I just asked them if they wanted to stay in the band and keep making music even though there's not really any prospects right now, and they all said yes, and so we've been making more music. This current lineup that I have is like… Something is making sense in a way that it hasn't yet, that I've been looking for. So I'm feeling good. I'm feeling excited about releasing all this new stuff and having them back me up.
What are you most looking forward to in 2021, assuming the world opens up more than it has and things return a little more to "normal"?
I'm getting married in May. I was supposed to get married last May, and you know, everything happened.
We have more songs in the pipeline. We have a ten-song full LP in the pipeline. Ravi engineered all the production at Flux, and he's also mixing and mastering it. At this point, years we've been working together, our visions have not diverged at all, like musically and in the sound palette and what the finished product should sound like. He understands my imagination of the songs and not only understands it, but he also supplements it and agrees with a lot of my tastes and ideas and supports me to bring them all to fruition and manifest this vision together, so it's cool.
When Ravi and I'm very first met, there was definitely just an understanding. We musically clicked right off the bat, which was cool because Ravi mostly produces hip hop, and so him working on my stuff is really different for him, and it was a new thing for me to be working not with my brother as a producer. It's been just amazing. This album, the whole thing has live drums, which is fun. I had a drummer from New Brunswick, Evan Tsioni, and he's just extremely talented. I'm lucky that he played on these songs. That was fun for me, too.
So take us back to the beginning. Do you come from a musical family?
Both sides of my family — moms and dads — there are musicians on both sides. In my house growing up, my dad played the guitar. He was the musician. So that was just always around. I started with piano lessons when I was young. As I got a little older and got slightly into my teen years, you have these new feelings and you want to start expressing them. You know what I mean? So it just was totally natural for me to pick up the guitar. I started on drums because hitting stuff to music is really fun. And then I wanted to sing, and singing to the drums is kind of hard. So there are guitars around. That's what my dad played. I picked up the guitar. That was that. I've been playing ever since.
That's nice that you have a little bit of a drumming background. You don't hear that a lot. You usually hear piano or clarinet.
I played piano before that. I took piano lessons from 7-13, but when I started wanting to get into more contemporary music and stuff, the first thing that I wanted was drums. So I played that for six months, a year, and then onto the guitar.
What words of advice or encouragement would you give to other fellow creative people who are maybe trying to stay mentally healthy during this very unusual time? Do you have any words of advice for people who are maybe just trying to get through day to day, some things to look forward to?
I would say, take care of the basics. Try to sleep and eat well. Try to walk a little bit, as much as you can. If you want to talk on the creative side, remember to be nice to yourself and have fun with it and let it be a therapeutic thing and not something that causes you to feel like you're under some kind of pressure because you're not.
That is important, just remembering the simple things like sleeping, turning off your phone, and making sure that you actually get to sleep through the night.
I actually started leaving my cell phone in a different room when I go to bed. Going to sleep and waking up without a cell phone, I mean, it's a very small thing, but I found it to make a pretty good difference in the way that I start and end my days.
That's a good idea, putting it in a different room. I feel like I need to put it in another zip code.
Looking back, what would you say are some of the highlights that you've experienced musically, either performing, writing, or anything about the creative process?
Oh, man. I have been so lucky and just really blessed with a lot of really great experiences. So, to take it back first, to my best friend Vin. I was like 22 and living with my mom after I graduated college, and he was in his freshman year and was going for music. At the time we had our band together, which was called The Fox and the Rose, and for a whole year of my life, every day he would finish school and come to my mom's house and we would just make music for, I would say, anywhere from 3-5 hours, and he would teach me everything that he learned that day in school. So I basically got the first year of a music education through him just telling me what he learned that day. That year made me a way, way, way better musician, guitar player, singer-songwriter, the whole deal. That was super formative to my whole musical existence. So that's a big highlight.
Then, for Kate Dressed Up, we've played at World Cafe Live. We've headlined there. That was really, really fun, one of my favorite shows. Last December, we got to play Asbury Lanes for the "What a Wonderful Year" show. That stage is just so much fun to be on. It sounds so good up there.
I've been lucky enough to do three Gurlzilla shows, which is a feminist benefit show that I've been doing since 2016. I did one in Flemington in 2016, one in Asbury in 2018, and then last November [2020] we did a virtual one where it was Philly artists and artists from Minneapolis, so we had a two-city virtual thing going on.
Making the album with Ravi at Flux Studios is obviously top of the list. I'm just so lucky to have had a series of really great events, whether they've led to a person's conventional idea of "success" or not, I am having a great time and everything is working out in a way that I'm very happy with.
It just comes down to gratitude because happiness, that's like a little too lofty of a goal, I think. If you're like, "Oh, I want to be happy." Happy? That's a transient feeling. You're happy for a moment and then it... It's not like a state of constant being. But you could be grateful constantly. You could choose to just look around you and say, "You know, I am fortunate in my own way to have these things" and I very much feel that.
Very wise words. That was deep. I feel like I gotta put that somewhere, like on an arch over a castle or something.
That sounds good to me. Just put my initials "KM" in the corner. Or "KDU" for Kate Dressed Up. I don't know.
Put your URL up there.
It's like a little QR code just chiseled into it.
Oh, for sure!
Interview Part 2 (February 2022)
I've been scouring social media to check up on everything that's been going on. You've been busy!
I've been as busy as possible, yeah.
In March 2021, you had some vinyls printed?
Yes, the Leesta Vall stuff. We marketed it in March, took preorders, and then we actually recorded it in Cherry Hill at AGL Studios in June, and then we sent those files off to Leesta Vall and they got printed and sent out over the summer. So that was really exciting to have some physical music of ours out in the world. They turned out beautifully.
That was a cool idea. How did you think of that?
Actually, the label, Leesta Vall, their whole business model is to have bands sign up to run preorders on these singles, and then bands most often will actually go to the Leesta Vall studio, and they'll print the performance directly to vinyl there in the studio, but because my drummer actually owns a studio, we chose to use their studio, AGL. That turned out great, and we sent off the digital files for them to print. It was a lot of fun. We ended up — in one day — recording for 33 vinyl prints.
That's amazing!
It was pretty intense. We played "Ride Home" like 20 times and a bunch of other songs. I think there were only five songs to choose from, so there were a lot of repeats. We just had a marathon of recording for four or five hours, where we just banged them all out and sent them off. We were all very tired at the end, but also very satisfied. It was physically taxing but spiritually fulfilling to be able to do that.
That's a really cool concept. I think I read something about there'd be a customizable greeting in the beginning?
Yeah, so they sent us the names for each order and what song they wanted, and so each performance was for a specific person. So to start the recording, Ryan would hit "1, 2, 3, go" and then I would say, like, "Hey, Evan, thanks for supporting" and do a little personalized message in the beginning. So everyone that got one of those has a completely unique, doesn't exist anywhere else performance from us.
That's brilliant.
Yeah, it is a pretty cool model. I'm really glad that Leesta Vall asked us to be a part of it. I actually had done a run with Elaine Rasnake a couple of years ago. We actually did go to their studio and recorded some songs with her. So I've been aware of it for a while and I knew that they ran a tight ship. So when they reached out, I was very excited.
Nice. It sounds like it must have been very organized for all that to run so smoothly.
Yeah, they definitely have a good operation going over there. I'm just very glad that a few vinyls exist out in the world with my music on it.
