FEATURE
" I like having that freedom to see what the song becomes " but it is fascinating. Her music is filled with influences, but also has a unique sound all of its own. I was curious to know how Kate herself would describe her sound, to someone who had never heard it before.“ It’ s so hard to describe your own music. I’ ve heard people say about my music, and I feel it makes sense to me, that it’ s straddling genres. The term Americana is now used as a genre that will encompass country, folk, blues, bluegrass, rock, pop. I don’ t fit neatly into any of those so I guess I fit into Americana as it’ s a fluid genre. I guess some of my songs are quite folky and some of them are quite country, some of them have a rocky feel, some of them have a bluesier feel. I like having that freedom to see what the song becomes. Sometimes it changes quite dramatically. Like‘ Holding The Whole Thing’ was originally quite a slow song, but became one of my rockier songs. I think it’ s more important what the song becomes.
FEATURE
" I like having that freedom to see what the song becomes " but it is fascinating. Her music is filled with influences, but also has a unique sound all of its own. I was curious to know how Kate herself would describe her sound, to someone who had never heard it before.“ It’ s so hard to describe your own music. I’ ve heard people say about my music, and I feel it makes sense to me, that it’ s straddling genres. The term Americana is now used as a genre that will encompass country, folk, blues, bluegrass, rock, pop. I don’ t fit neatly into any of those so I guess I fit into Americana as it’ s a fluid genre. I guess some of my songs are quite folky and some of them are quite country, some of them have a rocky feel, some of them have a bluesier feel. I like having that freedom to see what the song becomes. Sometimes it changes quite dramatically. Like‘ Holding The Whole Thing’ was originally quite a slow song, but became one of my rockier songs. I think it’ s more important what the song becomes.
“ I have loads of music influences. A lot of the old classics. I think my first musical love was Bob Dylan, absolutely and still is. There are lots of others – Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter. A lot of new contemporary people I’ m enjoying listening to – First Aid Kit, I love, Jason Isbell, Tift Merritt. But I wouldn’ t say that any one of those people influenced what I write. It’ s more that what they made me feel was what music can do. The power it has to put you in this emotional space that I think comes from the writer and through the lyrics and the melody and how they mesh together, how they are anchored in that space you get put into and its incredibly powerful. I think me
as a listener that’ s what I love about music, so then me as a writer is always trying to do that. The biggest influence is the emotional power of something, whether it be the melody or lyric. So, when I hear it in something I’ m playing around with or thought of that’ s what I want to build on.”
' Carve Me Out ' is Ellis’ debut album, released earlier this year. It is a deeply heartfelt and very carefully considered body of work.“ I’ d written these songs over several years. This has been a long time in the making,” Kate tells me.“ I started in New York, then came over here, I had young kids and I sort of took a break from song writing for a bit, to take care of the kids. I think it’ s almost a bit unusual for an album to take this long. But the benefit of it is that I’ ve sat with some of these songs for a very long time and we were able to decide what was going to make it on to the album from a great big group of songs and really pick the best ones. Let those songs develop both from the writing side of things and then record. We started in NY with a friend of mine who had his own studio, we recorded several songs and felt that some of them needed something else, so Sometimes it’ s easier than others. Sometimes the whole song comes.” Incredibly personal and moving, Kate reveals the circumstances behind‘ Carve Me Out’ the title track.“ The whole song came out the day after my mother died. It was just whole in 20 minutes. That’ s unusual, that only comes when there’ s a really strong emotion attached to it. Whereas other songs a big chunk of it will come out and you’ ll work on the rest of it over time. Or maybe just the music comes first and then you play with it, something will come into your head that’ s coming from the melody, an association, something that feels like it fits. Sometimes, more rarely