Oh, she’s great. Modest in everything but guitar and voice, I said. Echo on guitar and drums and voice a glow as much a sound. Let’s apply the liner notes to my Sammi Smith LP:

[Soul] covers a pretty diversified field of artists (many of whom have little else in common), from Janis Joplin to George Jones, and if its various forms have a common denominator it is in the simple outpouring of honest emotion in which the singer’s ’self’ is lost in the song and feelings are naked and exposed. It’s not something that can be faked or learned, no matter how many of the ‘moves’ or surface characteristics the artist may try to master. You’ve either got it our you haven’t. [Katie's] got it… She’s blessed (or cursed, as the case may be — few names of happy soul singers leap to mind) with a voice that’s somehow tough and tender and touchingly honest, with the same shadow of sadness that haunted the songs of Edith Piaf.

‘If winters were just three days long
And all the rest were springs
I might feel up to writing songs
As sweet as [Katie] sings.’

– Kris Kristofferson, 1970

Katie live at Pehrspace tonight (9 PM / $5 / Glendale exit south off 101 N) and also at Prospector on Tuesday for me and the rest of the residents.

Here’s a song I lifted off her newer demo. I can’t find the tracklist but I think this is ‘Le Weekend.’ Also did you have a song called ‘Sadness’? Send me if you do!

Tags: katie the pest, local music, mp3