FEATURE
FEATURE
ate’ s upbringing in the
KUSA clearly had a huge influence on her music today, not least the influence of her architect father, an avid music lover, who once had the honour of performing with Hank Williams at the Louisiana Hayride, which came about through his guitar teacher, Williams’ base player. Despite this, Kate’ s own path to music was not as one might expect:“ I was born in Louisiana and I grew up in Manhattan. I have an English Mother,” a prominent New York magazine editor,“ and a Louisiana Dad. I did music growing up, but it was piano, classical. I didn’ t think about song-writing then, but I was introduced to a lot of music that I think really influenced me when I was young through my Dad. He loved classical music, but he also loved a lot of the stuff coming out of the south: Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, also Harry Bellafonte and Randy Newman later on. So, he introduced me to a lot of stuff that I think shaped the kind of music I love.” In fact, Kate has recently completed a series of 10 shorts of her father’ s records that influenced her, including Pete Seeger – ' Red River Valley ' and Johnny Cash – ' My Grandfather’ s Clock '( search‘ Kate Ellis – My Dad’ s Records’ on www. youtube. com).“ So that’ s probably where it started in terms of the music that I love.”
Ellis may have been brought up in a household passionate about music, but it wasn’ t a career she immediately wanted to pursue. In her own words:“ I actually sort of did kind of various weird things like going to law school!” Kate majored in law at university and actually practised law for a couple of years until she decided it
" I was introduced to a lot of music that I think really influenced me when I was young through my Dad."
wasn’ t for her. Like many of us when it comes to choosing a degree so early in life, you make the best decision you can at the time.“ I was actually very interested in art. I loved painting particularly, so I did a lot of that in high school. When I went to university I decided not to go down the fine arts route of doing my own work, but I did art and architectural history, that was my major( you‘ read’ here right?) I thought a bit naively I think, I’ ll do art law which will be really interesting because I’ ll be working for artists, galleries and museums, but in the field of law. Long story short, I got into intellectual property stuff. I did do other areas of law as well, but I realised, at least from my perspective, that with every different area of law, it doesn’ t matter who the client is- they could be a museum or a widget factory- you’ re doing the same kind of thing for them. It’ s not like you’ re in that really interesting field of art. I think it was just a bit of a wrong turn. I don’ t regret it. Law school was really interesting, but I made the right decision to leave as it wasn’ t really right for me.
“ I went into music pretty quickly after. I also did other jobs on the way. I worked at a magazine, I got into organisational behaviour – psychometric assessment, which interested me as I’ m interested in psychology fields. It was of interest because when I was unhappy in law I went to a career counsellor and they gave me the Myers Briggs. I found it extremely useful and helpful to me in terms of things being not quite right and what I might want to do, but also in of itself and actually got trained to administer it, so that got me started on psychometric assessment. I did a bit of that here and there, but music was the thing I was really loving and wanted to carry on doing. I realised I needed to do something creative. That’ s what made me happy and