Interviews

Following are interviews Kate MacLeod held with Catalyst Magazine and Dirty Linen.

Live performanceCatalyst Magazine Interview

Kate MacLeod: In pursuit of 'Glorious Imperfection'
By Barry Scholl
Published in the March 2005 Issue: Vol. 24, #3 Page 81

The way Kate MacLeod figures it, music lovers in this surgically sterile new millenium have had enough of music that offers little more than a machine-tooled veneer.

"I think people are getting tired of perfection," asserts the Salt Lake City violinist-guitarist-songwriter-vocalist and bandleader. "They're ready for something that's fun to listen to."

That would be a good description of the new release "Breakfast", MacLeod recorded with her rock band The Pancakes, which is now available in local stores or at the band's gigs. Comprised of a mixture of originals, public domain traditionals, and a Bob Dylan cover, the release accurately reflects the bands live sound, which is characterized by the intuitive and fluid interplay of members Mark Hazel (guitar and vocals), Barry Carter (Bass), and Cliff Smith (drums).

"The album was done live in the studio. We recorded the vocals live with everybody playing," MacLeod notes. "It's the way recordings used to be made, and people seem to be going back to that."

"But as for me, " she adds with a grin,"I never got away from that because it's cheaper to record that way."

Widely lauded among fellow musicians both for her well-honed compositions (she's had songs covered by a number of roots stalwarts including, most recently, bluegrass avatar Laurie Lewis) as well as her accomplished musicianship, MacLeod avers that Breakfast offers the first recorded evidence of her more extroverted rock sensibilities.

"It's always been there, in my heart. I was raised on Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and that influence doesn't go away," MacLeod says.

Compare the musicians unselfish arrangements to similar song-oriented Americana legends like The Band or Creedence and MacLeod brightens.

"We like those kinds of spare recordings a lot," she nods. "It's an art form to play with simplicity. It really takes an effort for a band to work together to put a song across and not get in the way. These guys are good at that glorious imperfection that comes from emotionally involved musicians pushing toward a common goal."

In this case, identifying a common goal was the easy part; it was the process of songwriting, recording and mixing that turned out to be far more involved than she had anticipated. "Songs are unpredictable," MacLeod reflects. "They can take anywhere from a day to a couple of years to complete."

Once she had built up a stockpile of material, the recording required only three days in the studio. Yet it would be four years before she deemed the recording ready for release.

A combination of factors conspired to delay the final product, including MacLeod's other projects, the tragedy of September 11, and some costly remixing which she believes was necessary to present the songs in their best light. "I didn't want to rush it, because I liked the project," she says.

Not that she has any unreasonable expectations of a major windfall as a result of her latest release. "I'm an independent musician, and that world involves small numbers (of units sold) collecting small amounts of money along the way. A lot of my music is played on public radio and college radio, and that's slow too, because they're not monitored the same way as commercial radio."

However, she adds, "I did recently get a check for $5.65 from the Czech Republic for radio royalties!"

Okay, so she didn't enter the music business in pursuit of riches. "I did try to do other things, but it always came back to I couldn't stop playing music," she confesses. "It's more important to me than financial security. If I'm going to have to choose between financial security and the arts, I'll choose the arts any day."

MacLeod's past work is known for it's serious subject matter (i.e., love, loss and aging, among other adult topics). She seems to have lightened up a bit on this project. Is that why she named her band the Pancakes?

"The name is kind of the opposite of the music," she says. "I wanted it to be simple and mean nothing. That way, I won't [dictate to] listeners whether this is heavy or light music. Also if I saw the name written up somewhere without knowing anything about it, I'd be curious. And finally," she concludes, "We couldn't think of anything better."

Does Breakfast reveal a more overt sense of humor than she has exhibited to date? MacLeod breaks into a broad grin. "It's hard to convey humor on a recording," she asserts, then adds: "But lately, I've been wondering something: What if the Hokey Pokey is really what it's all about?"

For more information on Breakfast or for a schedule of upcoming performances, visit katemacleod.com

Dirty Linen Magazine Interview

Kate MacLeod: Doing it All
by Michael Parrish
published in the August/September 2000 issue #89

Depending on your musical interests, you might have run across Kate MacLeod in any of a variety of contexts. Fans of singer/songwriter work might well have heard her two starkly beautiful solo albums from Waterbug. Bluegrass aficionados might know her because her songs have been recorded by artists like Loose Ties and Mollie O'Brien, or because her discs were produced by the late Hot Rize guitarist Charles Sawtelle and feature other bluegrass heavyweights like Matt Flinner and Peter Rowan. Finally, fans of Irish music may have run across MacLeod singing and playing fiddle in her part-time Celtic band, Shanahy.

Originally from the Washington, D.C. region, MacLeod now calls Salt Lake City, Utah home. She first made the pilgrimage 20 years ago, when she moved there to attend a school for violin making. MacLeod found Utah to her liking and stayed there.

Although MacLeod wrote songs and did a bit of performing during that period, she was not inspired to pursue music seriously until a series of encounters moved her in that direction. "At the time I was beginning my first recording, I didn't know anything about doing that sort of thing, and I didn't know anybody in Salt Lake who could help me make a recording. I had been playing a little bit in coffee-houses, had been on the radio a lot, and there were some people in the region singing my songs. I didn't really think about recording. I was a mother, had three kids, and had been working at the violin school for about 10 years. I met Charles, he heard me, and he said, 'Kate, we've gotta get you a recording.' So I thought about it for about six months and finally called him up and said, 'Why don't we try to do this?' It was one of those meeting- the-right-person-who-can-help-me-through-this situations."

After recording her first disc, MacLeod was given a scholarship to the 1995 Folk Alliance in Portland, Oregon, where another chance encounter occurred. "I didn't know what it was. I went up there with my little recording and that's when I ran into Andrew [Calhoun]. I felt like Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter when she didn't know what she was saying. I feel that way a lot in this business."

Calhoun was entranced by MacLeod's music and put out her first disc, Trying to Get it Right, on his own Waterbug label. That disc, containing stirring, evocative tunes like "Prairyerth" and "Lark in the Morning," along with the bluesy "Alaska," gave MacLeod a national audience. She recorded a second disc, Constant Emotion, in 1997, but literally hit a roadblock of sorts. "I had to take a lot of time off after Constant Emotion because I was in a car accident, and I was sick for about a year. It happened after the mastering for the recording but before it was released. It made me incapable of doing much, so now I'm just catching up on things."

Since her recovery, MacLeod has been involved in a flurry of musical activity. Shanahy, the Celtic band MacLeod has been part of since 1994, just released their second CD, Far Away. MacLeod sings and plays fiddle with the quintet, which also features vocalist/guitarist Mark Hazel and three talented multi-instrumentalists, Paul Mitchell, Laura Dupuy, and Andrew Morrill. MacLeod has also been honing her producer's chops: In addition to producing Far Away, she sat in the producer's chair for The Roots Run Deep, a disc by German singer/songwriter Anke Summerhill.

MacLeod has three recordings of her own in various stages of production. The first is her third solo project, as yet untitled. "I've been working on it for a while. It's almost done. A collection of my songs, with one cover. It has more of my violin backup. I played all the instruments myself." Also ready to go is a live EP, recorded with Mark Hazel of Shanahy, who is MacLeod's frequent performing partner. The third recording in the works is a studio effort with the four-piece band which MacLeod performs with in and around Salt Lake City. It features Hazel, Cliff Smith, and Barry Carter.

Now that the children are a bit older, she is able to devote most of her time to music. "The oldest one is in college now, and the next one is a junior in high school. I stayed at home with them for years. That was my primary job during that time. All three of them moved in with their father about a year ago, and that freed me up some, also. They live up the street, so I see them every day."

She tries to arrange her touring in small doses. "I don't go out for long periods of time because I have so much going on here. I do a lot of weekend touring. I fly in and out a lot. I think of the last couple of years as getting my feet wet, because I was very unfamiliar with the whole scene. As I get out there and play, I find that I really, really like to tour, and I think as the years go on I would like to do it more."

In late April, MacLeod was about to take off for two weeks in Europe playing with New York City songwriter Jack Hardy. "I've been playing fiddle with his band. He's got this tour over in Europe, and we're all going over. He's been a great catalyst for songwriting. I went to his songwriting group a couple of times, and it's brilliant what goes on there."

Over the last few years, MacLeod has seen more and more other musicians covering her songs. I asked her why so many of those playing her songs tend to be from the bluegrass world. "I used to play a lot of bluegrass, and I used to play in an old time group, hence the ties with Loose Ties, Charles Sawtelle, and so on. A lot of my songs are very appropriate for bluegrass. Although I'm not playing bluegrass anymore, because I've gone back to my first love, which is Celtic fiddling, the songs do work very well in that format. People call me up and say, 'Would you mind if we sing your song?' I'm glad that they get something out of it. Working in this business is a funny, quirky thing, and the point of writing a song is for it to enrich or move somebody.

"I would say that I'm much more comfortable in the studio than I used to be, and I'm more open as a person than I used to be. Part of it was the accident, because it really opened me up to a lot of things. There were a few years when I wondered if I should be doing this at all, but I don't wonder that anymore. I'm just delving into it more and more."